Comic Review: Avengers #3

Avengers #3

Marvel Comics

Writer: Jason Aaron

Artist: Ed McGuinness

Jason Aaron’s Avengers run slowly moves on in this new issue. And when I say slowly I quite literally mean slowly because my God is it dull. I had high hopes for Aaron’s take on the Avengers since he has done such a good job on Thor for the last 6 years or so.

But lets back up a second – whats actually happening in this book?
Well, there are some bugs in the ground, dead celestials all over the place and Loki has a gang of corrupted celestials trying to destroy Midgard. Of course, Loki describes it as salvation because he is millions of years old and has a greater understanding and all of the usual stuff associated with the oblivious villain trope. This all ties back to Aaron’s (equally dull) Marvel Legacy we got way back in September and the story will very likely “rewrite everything we know about the origin of the Marvel Universe”.

Until the next relaunch, that is.

The characters feel off, for a lack of better word. Aaron tries a bit too hard to emulate Whedon’s witty-banter, with the end result being all of the characters sounding kind of the same and annoying. Iron Man is especially nerve-wracking with his constant “WE ARE NOT THE AVENGERS” proclamations and there was this one line about “raising his IQ” that made my eyes roll.

As mentioned before, Loki is too much of a delusional villain to be even remotely interesting, which is also a shame considering he was the sorcerer supreme until recently, and has been nicely utilized by Aaron in his Thor books. The only character that Aaron wrote well is Thor, which makes sense. Did I reference his Thor run too much so far? I think I have.

The art department is headed by Ed McGuinness and he does a pretty good job. It’s colorful and vibrant, with nice and clean lines. There are, on occasion, some less than perfect panels with some really weird faces and lacking in details, but it’s a nice-looking book overall.

It’s hard not to compare this to the Justice League relaunch. Both of these books try to add some of that classic flavor with their rosters and try to shake up “the very foundation” of their respective universes. Hell, even the stories of this book and DC’s No Justice have a similar premise. But, unfortunately, Avengers feel lacking thanks to a dull pace and poor character development. Hopefully, it will get better soon. Real soon.

P.S. Aaron references the legendary “DISAPPOINTED” line from the Hercules TV series. That was nice.