Comic Review: Avengers (2018-) #19

Avengers (2018-) #19

Marvel Comics

Writer: Jason Aaron

Artist: Ed McGuiness

The War of the Realms is in full swing, and things are getting a little crazy. Jason Aaron is the author of that main series and this current Avengers series. So, it’s understandable that this series will tie in pretty heavily with the main event. But, rather than make this an essential comic to read, we instead are getting a fun “behind the scenes” look at the events.

New York and the Earth are being invaded by Malekith and his armies. Black Panther calls in his Agents of Wakanda, including Gorilla-Man, the head of security for Avengers Mountain. This issue follows him from the beginning of the invasion to current events in the story. There are glimpses of the “main heroes” like Doctor Strange and Captain America, as well as other Agents of Wakanda.

I like issues like this. In the main series, we see these major moments, like Doctor Strange evacuating the citizens of New York. This issue, we get to see Doctor Strange exhausted from the spell he used. There have been some one-shot comic issues about the various strike teams, and in this we see them assembling. They’re all small moments, no more than a page or a few panels, but it adds depth to the story for me. On top of that, we get a pretty big moment with Gorilla-Man, that will have a pretty big effect once the War of the Realms ends.

The art is all from Ed McGuiness, so you know this is a good looking issue. The characters are all on the muscular side, which is great for Gorilla-Man, the main character. On top of that, there’s a large range of characters in the issue. There’s Spider-Man, The Wasp, Odin, plus frost giants and dark elves. The first couple of pages shows everything I think is great about the art in this issue, with a large spread of the Avengers. The inks are great, and the colors are from Erick Arciniego, and the late, great Justin Ponsor.

If you’re reading the main War of the Realms series, you don’t have to read this issue. But I think you should, there are some great alternate viewpoints for the main events story. There are also some big developments concerning the Vampire story from Jason Aaron. On top of that, the art is fantastic all around. If you’ve been reading this series you’ll enjoy this issue. But, if you’ve only been reading War of the Realms, this is an issue worth picking up.