Mighty Avengers #1
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Greg Land
Cover: Greg Land
Leading yet another incarnation of Heroes for Hire, Luke Cage is soon brought to task by one Superior Spider-Man while in the middle of a job. After the two have words, a member of his team quits and another questions Luke’s resolve and dedication. At the same time the bulk of the Avengers are off planet dealing with a cosmic threat, so Thanos sends The Black Order to attack for his own purposes. This leads to Cage, a mysterious hero, Spectrum, and the Superior Spider-Man to jump into action.
Ewing makes having to tie this in to the “Infinity” event work pretty well. Though at times it does feel as if the “Infinity” events are shoehorned in the book, it really begins to shine when focus is solely on the heroes. There is a solid story here as we see where Cage has been since leaving the New Avengers. Ewing keeps that flavor of who Cage is and builds on what Bendis had been doing with him over the past few years. The idea that the mystery character (it’s obvious who he’ll be, but I won’t spoil it for you) is only known to Monica so far is a nice touch, while the addition of Superior Spider-Man adds a bit of fun to the story. Only because Ewing shows that there is going to be some intense dialog between him and Cage, which looks to make for some good character moments. Both have quite strong personalities, and when you throw Monica in the mix Ewing has the right characters for panel after panel of great dialog.
Now, as we move into the art things get a bit “meh.” Greg Land deserves some praise when it comes to the tech, settings, and some backgrounds. Those things look good and help to set up a lot of what’s going on. However, it’s the characters that are the draw here, and when they don’t look as good as they could have then things distract from the narrative. Most of the panels Monica appeared in she either looked like one of Land’s X-Women (pick any one), just colored brown or her proportions were really off. There is a panel of her in the costume shop with linebacker shoulders and anatomically incorrect hips/thighs. It really distracted since she was in the middle of the page, as well as the panel where her back seemed to blend into her upper thighs. Amid everything else that was unappealing visually the last page just topped it as we see Luke Cage is either making a duck face or he was stung by a hornet in his lips.
The Mighty Avengers reads as a fun start to what could be a promising series if things are handled well. With the team being composed of mostly minority characters and females there’s a chance for something really good to come out of this. So hopefully when the “Infinity” event is over we’ll get to see how Ewing will develop this team and tell their stories. As far as the art goes, it would set some worries aside if this was a temporary choice. All in all, Mighty Avengers deserves a look and you can decide for yourself if it’s for you.
Infinite Speech
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