Review: Avengers World Vol. 1: A.I.M.pire

Marvel’s Avengers line is now so big and full of so many books—five as of the last round of solicitations—that I’m not sure where each book falls in the hierarchy of official Avengers title. Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers and his New Avengers seem to be the A-books at this very moment, with one featuring the real, official Avengers, the other the behind-the-scenes, not-really-Avengers The Illuminati, although the books share at least one character (Iron Man), and have kinda sorta intersected (in Infinity).

So I think that would make Avengers World , which was co-written by Hickman and featuring his cast from the pages of Avengers, the B-title…but just the B-title to the A-title of Avengers, as there seem to be other B-titles, like Uncanny Avengers (Although Uncanny Avengers seems to be the book that’s generating the next big Marvel crossover/event series Axis, which will replace it on the schedule this fall, so maybe Uncanny Avengers is the new A-title…? Hickman should make a chart of the importance of various Avengers titles, given that he’s so in to making charts).

Anyway, this ongoing monthly series takes its name from the first story arc of Hickman's Avengers—and the sub-title of the first Avengers collection—for maximum confusification. This collection, A.I.M.pire (Or, Advanced Idea Mechanics-pire, which loses some of its kick when de-acronymized) opens with a weird short story from the incredibly ridiculously-entitled promotional book, All-New Marvel Now Point One #1. In that, which is written by Nick Spencer, Hickman's co-writer for the rest of the issues appearing in this collection, Captain America Steve Rogers, who ran SHIELD after Norman Osborn’s HAMMER was disbanded, has a meeting with Maria Hill, who is maybe back to being the head of SHIELD again, although I could have sworn one of the two Nick Furys was doing that now (I could use a chart of this too, actually).

They decide that they should maybe work together more, which is kind of a weird conversation, given how many Avengers work regularly with SHIELD and/or have run the organization in the past few years, and, no sooner do they shake on it, then threats start pouring in from all over the world, just as they did in the first few issues of Hickman’s Avengers title.

There’s something incredibly, awesomely insane doing on in Madripoor! Wolverine, Black Widow, Falcon, Shang-Chi—check it out! There’s an abandoned city and weird mystical box thing in Italy, leading to a city of the dead! Get on that, Hawkeye, Spider-Woman, Nightmask and Starbrand! A.I.M.’s island fortress is hyper-evolving, growing in size and architectural and biodiversity sophistication at an impossible rate! You’re up, Smasher, Sunspot and Cannonball!

It eventually starts to coalesce, at least a bit, as some of the threats seem somewhat related, but the book nevertheless carries Hickman’s Morrison’s JLA-style of hyperbolic, apocalyptic world threatening—Madripoor, for example, is revealed to be a city built atop the head of a gigantic dragon, which has just been awoken and is now ready to run amok—and the idea of The Avengers as an army of superheroes under Captain America’s command, splitting up to stamp out fires (forest fires, really) all over the world whenever and wherever they flare up.

Because Hickman’s Avengers book was and is so plot-heavy, and its cast so large, he hasn’t had a whole lot of time to explore the characters, who often appear as remote plot elements or background filler more than characters. For the most part, that isn’t a bad thing in the context of the book. Many of those characters have their own books and appear in so many others—Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Captain Marvel, Wolverine, Hawkeye, Black Widow—that Hickman doesn’t really need to waste the space on them in the book.

But here there’s a bit more room, and so Spencer and Hickman give us not only more of the sorts of scenes found in Avengers, but longer, character-focused scenes, like Shang-Chi narrating his life-and-death battle with Gorgon, or Smasher remembering more of her childhood during her confrontation with the A.I.M. leadership, or Starbrand re-living the nightmarish aspects of his own origin.

In a very palpable way, this book reads like more of the same of Avengers, which is either a good thing—if you like what you’re reading in Avengers—or a bad thing, if you don’t. Where it differs is that the plot seems slightly less urgent, and there’s a little more room for the characters to breathe, and the dialogue, likely owing to Spencer, is a bit snappier and a bit funnier.

The art was unremarkable, but unremarkable in a good way. Rags Moreales, one of my favorite super-comics artists, draws the prologue from that goofy one-shot, while Stefano Caselli—whose past Avengers experience includes chunks of Avengers Assemble and Avengers: The Initiative draws the five issue of Avengers World proper.

I liked it well enough, but neither artist did anything particularly remarkable with what amounted to work-for-hire jobs. As with a lot of the publisher’s team books of late, particularly since they started accelerating the schedules of their monthlies, this book seemed more like a writer’s book than an artist’s book, or book where the two contributing components develop style, personality and tone in equal measures.

Young Avengers Catch-Up: Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways (2006) and Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers (2008)

Marvel's big line-wide event/crossover stories generally provide the publisher with the opportunity to pump up their output for a few months, and a positive side effect of that is that it allows for book-less characters to appear. That was the case with the Young Avengers characters during both Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's super-successful Civil War (in which heroes fight heroes over 9/11 metaphors) and Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu's less-successful Secret Invasion (in which heroes fight Skrulls over gross, clumsily executed fear-of-Muslims metaphors). In both instances, the characters met up with Marvel's other team of young, created-this-century heroes, The Runaways.

Their very first meeting came during the so-called Civil War, during which Iron Man wanted every single super-powered person in the United States to register with the government and then be drafted/press-ganged into a huge superhero army to make sure Speedball never accidentally makes an explosion-powered supervillain blow-up near a school again. And he felt so strongly about it that he was willing to murder his former teammates and imprison them without trial in extra-dimensional concentration camps.

Captain America disagreed.

The Young Avengers sided with Captain America (although Stature would eventually come around to Iron Man's position, after the conclusion of this series), while The Runaways were essentially conscientious objectors, seeking to avoid this conflict as they generally seek to avoid all of the Marvel Universe's conflicts. Conflict finds them, of course, as it usually does—otherwise, Runaways wouldn't have been much of a Marvel comic.

So when a TV camera catches The Runaways being attacked by SHIELD agents and their android member Victor Mancha is badly injured, the Young Avengers track them down and try to recruit them to Cap's side. In the might Marvel manner, they fight before realizing there's been a misunderstanding, and they're all on the same side.

Meanwhile, a sinister SHIELD agent sics a brainwashed and reprogrammed Marvel Boy (the Grant Morrison/J.G. Jones version from 2000's Marvel Boy) on both teams, but instead of capturing them all, he's ordered to simply retrieve a handful of aliens for his controller to experiment upon.

Zeb Wells wrote this one, and Stefano Caselli drew it. Typically of Wells, it was very well-written (Or is that Wells-written..? Ha!), and organically funny. There are jokes in here, but they are jokes made by the characters—it's funny because the characters are being funny, not because the writer is manipulating them.

The story doesn't really go anywhere in terms of status quo, at least not in terms of the Civil War. The Young Avengers are still with Cap at the end of the story, and The Runaways remain determined to stay out of it. Wells does manage to come up with some interesting suggestions for relationships between some of the characters—most unexpected being the friendship between Speed and Molly—and to move a few emotional arcs forward. Similarly, Marvel Boy is put right back where Morrison left him at the end of Marvel Boy, but in a rather triumphant manner.

Caselli's art is excellent, and he handles the straight superhero designs of the Young Avengers and the street-clothes of the Runaways with equal aplomb. He does a fine job of juggling some dozen or so characters, and making each distinct. He also does remarkably strong work with his "acting" through the characters.

This was an odd one to re-read after reading Young Avengers #1, as Marvel Boy is apparently being added to the cast of the new, ongoing Young Avengers title, and, in fact, the book opens with Hawkeye Kate Bishop waking up in Marvel Boy's bed after having spending the night with him.

She casually refers to the events of this series—she apparently didn't recognize Marvel Boy until she sobered up the next morning with "Oh, yeah! You kicked all our asses that one time! Billy, Teddy, everyone!"

In fact, he beat the living hell out of both teams, killing one of the Runaways (who was a shape-shifting Skrull, and thus able to recover from a broken neck), capturing Billy, Teddy and Karolina and delivering them to his boss for a few hours of torture and he began strangling Kate until he was interrupted by Nico, and started strangling her instead.

In other words, whatever Kate was drinking the night before Young Avengers #1, it must have been some strong stuff.

In Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers, the two teams once again meet, this time on the Avengers' home turf of New York City (The Runaways were still visiting there after recently returning from the 19th century with a new member in tow).

The actual events of Secret Invasion are so nonsensical that I don't think I can recount them in a way that makes a whole lot of sense. Essentially, a bunch of religious fanatic Skrulls think their gods promised them Earth as their homeland, and want to take it over; they've been taking it over by secretly infiltrating it for years, and then they simultaneously try a PR push to convince the Earthlings to join their religion while also violently invading New York City with spaceships and an army of Super-Skrulls.

The two teen teams are there when the Super-Skrulls attack and, as it turns out, both teams have their own Super-Skrulls on their teams. Teddy/Hulkling of the Young Avengers is a half-Skrull, half-Kree who was prophesied as a savior meant to unite the various warring factions of Skrulls, while Xavin of the Runaways was a Skrull prince and Super-Skrull in training who ran away.

The plot of this series focuses on Xavin's efforts to infiltrate the infiltrators, providing cover for his superhero team to get safely out of New York City, and to try and rescue Hulkling. Both Xavin and Hulkling are targeted for special attention by the invading Skrulls, since the former betrayed them and the latter's existence could maybe sway some Skrulls from their Skrullegion.

Despite the prominent roles played by several characters from both teams—mainly Xavin, Hulkling, Wiccan and Speed—this isn't really much of a Young Avengers comic. Many of the team barely cameo, with Patriot and Hawkeye barely getting a line or three. The Runaways don't fare much better, but they are certainly more of the focus of this story, as their Xavin is the de facto star, and the story starts with their point of view.This one is written by Christopher Yost, and features art by Takeshi Miyazawa. It's Miyazawa's art that is probably the most noteworthy aspect of this collection. It's rare to see teenage superheroes actually look this young, but Miyazawa actually draws them all to resemble children, rather than shorter than usual adults.

That the Secret Invasion mini seems the weaker of the two in terms of its scripting may have something to do with how short it is (it's just three issues), and the fact that the premise of the story its tied to makes it more difficult to expand the focus too far from the Skrull-related characters.

Yost's effort isn't as all around strong as Wells', but there are some fun moments in this—Speed's rescue of Molly and the Runaways' newest recruit is particularly memorable—and Miyazawa's charming art goes a long way towards making this well worth a read.