written by Jason Aaron
drawn by David Marquez, Ed McGuinness, Frazer Irving, Adam Kubert and Andrea Sorrentino
colored by Justin Ponsor, Erick Arciniega, Frazer Irving, Matthew Wilson, Giada Marchisio
With few exceptions, I usually enjoy anniversary issues. They may cost extra, but usually the additional content is worth the premium. Sometimes I'm not at all happy with them thanks to lots of filler, but other times, Marvel really hits it out of the park as they did a few months back with The Amazing Spider-Man #800. This issue, Avengers #700, is not quite in that league, but it is a genuinely satisfying read just the same.
Following Namor's declaration of war on the surface world and his skirmish with his former teammates in issue #9, he continues his warpath on surface dwellers occupying the ocean when he and his team of mostly ex-supervillains attacks Hydropolis, a community of scientists living in an artificial underwater community. The Avengers, again, come to the rescue, but this time, another team alerted to Namor's attacks has come to take him down as well: the team of former Soviet operatives known as the Winter Guard, who were sent by Russia after Namor's crew attacked a Russian submarine in the Black Sea. The whole gang is there: Red Guardian, Crimson Dynamo, Ursa Major, Perun, Darkstar, Chernobog, Vostok and a mysterious new product of the Red Room, Red Widow. Will this strange team-up of sorts work against the threat of Namor and his crew, or will things turn out even worse for the Avengers? Meanwhile, Thunderbolt Ross, now wary of the Avengers since they've decided to station themselves outside of the United States and put Black Panther, the sovereign ruler of Wakanda, in charge of the team, takes decisive action to fill in the void they've left.
This is a pretty impressively-sized issue, with about forty-eight pages of story, but for me this would have gone for naught if the main story was not its strongest. Fortunately, Jason Aaron, David Marquez and Ed McGuinness really deliver the goods here, especially McGuinness, who delivers the strongest single issue he's worked on since he came onto this book. It helps that his colorist is Justin Ponsor, whose palette is a lot more pleasing to the eye than the previous colorist David Curiel. This was real steak-and-potatoes storytelling, with crackling dialogue, gorgeous art, some hard-hitting, if sometimes predictable story beats, and a conclusion that has me hankering for me.
The three shorter stories that follow, only two of which are really substantial, are not quite as entertaining as the main tale, but they don't need to be, and they tie in nicely to the ongoing narrative. The short story featuring Ghost Rider and Odin is entertaining and beautifully illustrated by Frazer Irving, while the story that looks up Loki for the first time since the defeat of the Dark Sentinels several issues back is fun if only for showing us what happened to him, even as it teases an all-new story to be told another time, and possibly in another book. And then, there's the two page tease for an all-new member of the Avengers.
Yes, this issue's been out for a couple of weeks now and really doesn't need the hype, but I've been wanting to share much I enjoyed it ever since I read it and so here I go.
8.5/10
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