Sunday, July 29, 2018

Not Too Sorry to Be Late: A Review of The Avengers #5

written by Jason Aaron
penciled by Paco Medina, Ed McGuinness
inked by Juan Vlasco, Mark Morales, Karl Story
colored by David Curiel

The adventures of the "non-Avenger" team continues as Loki continues to explain to a captive, but defiant Captain America how a dying celestial accidentally gave birth to humanity, a fighting mad Ghost Rider finally catches up with the Dark Celestials (and Loki and Cap), and the lot of them converge with the rest of the "non-Avengers" that is, Iron Man, Thor, She Hulk, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and Black Panther, who are still battling with the giant bugs that seem to have sprung up at exactly the same time that the dead Celestials started coming down. As Loki explains, the two phenomena are very much related, and things would seem grim, if not for the fact that Iron Man, Thor, She Hulk and Ghost Rider, finally have a plan to deal with the Dark Celestials. A BIG plan.

Anyone who's been following this blog knows that I've had issues (no, not the printed kind) with this series relaunch for some time now; while I genuinely enjoyed issue #1 it's pretty much been all downhill from there, from Aaron spinning his wheels with issues #2 and #3 to the big old exposition dump that took up most of issue #4 and even carries on into this issue. There are some pretty interesting ideas contained in the story, but for some reason Aaron just drops the ball in making his big revelations. The grand story has just been really poorly paced all throughout, and the one thing I'm grateful for about this issue is how Aaron sets up the story for a somewhat definitive finale next issue.

The upside to this particular chapter is the art, with both Paco Medina, who draws majority of the issue, and Ed McGuinness delivering their strongest work since the second issue, after which quality really kind of tailed off. I'm hoping this portends a well-done finale, because I have to say, this particular story really didn't do it for me.

6.5/10

No comments:

Post a Comment