Avengers: The Initiative #8 - "Killed In Action, Part 1 of 4: Snafu"
(Writers: Dan Slott & Christos N. Gage,
Artist: Stefano Caselli, Color Art:
Daniele Rudoni)
(jump to last issue)
Wandering around in the carnage of a disaster at Camp Hammond, Hank Pym reflects on what brought him to this moment.
I'm not sure I'm going to like where the storyline is going (since if it doesn't drastically redefine the Initiative I might find I have run out of patience with them), but as an opening issue this one works pretty well. There are some decent character moments, in some cases relying on continuity (and for goodness' sake, there's even a footnote to events in another book), and all through that a fair bit of action, too.
I think it still suffers from the format of the series, though. We have too many characters and usually the focus is only on one per issue, so when some characters get the spotlight turned on them again, things have happened, but we haven't really seen them happen so it feels like it comes out of nowhere when they're talked about. This is my biggest stumbling block with the book thus far... I don't feel like I've connected with the characters, I feel like I'm seeing bits and pieces.
Still, there's enough I liked in this book that I'm going to call it my Pick of the Week.
Review: 3.25 Stars
Donyell visits the grave of his brother and meets and old friend, while
the New Warriors practice.
Here's another book with, perhaps, too many characters, but it doesn't
quite have the same problem as the Initiative. It has a rather different
one. Too few of the characters have gotten development and in this issue
most of them are out of costume. I had trouble keeping straight who was
who. There were differences (hairstyles and clothing mostly) but
there was a sameness underlying them that made me have to spend too
much time trying to keep people straight.
The plot is decent enough, except I don't have enough of a connection
to the old school New Warriors to have much connection to the Night
Thrasher plot, and the rest of the team's plot didn't really go
anywhere beyond a (needed) attempt to get into the personalities of
the characters. That left a chunk of plot that dealt with the
Initiative and somehow succeeded in making them even more creepy than
in their main title.
So, it was an okay issue, but fell a little flat. Might have worked
better with the regular artist.
Review: 3 stars
Well, that's it for this week folks. Next week, according to the
shipping list, there is just a single book on my 'maybe' list, Exiles:
Days of Then and Now. However, because comics are delayed again, unless
something particularly exciting shows up on the finalized shipping list,
I'll skip next week and, if I decide to get it at all, pick it up the
week after.
I usually do a "Year in Review" about now, but to be frank, this year's
been pretty hard on my interest in comics, both Marvel and DC, and has
caused me to drastically reduce my buy list, and more titles are still
teetering on the edge... I don't feel all that inclined to want to look
over the year.
Happy New Year!
See you next time, in 2008...
Peter Dimitriadis
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New Warriors #7 - "Reunion, Part One of Two" (Writer: Kevin Grevioux,
Penciler: John Malin, Inker: Victor Dlazaba, Colorist:
Marte Gracia)
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