For the last 20 years or so, Avengers has primarily been a book in which big things happen. During the Bendis era, New Avengers was a major tent pole for the larger chain of Marvel events; during the Jonathan Hickman era, both Avengers and New Avengers told the story of the impending collapse of the multiverse, leading into Secret Wars. More recently, Jason Aaron’s run saw the Avengers at the heart of a multiversal war.
The book was not always so central to the Marvel narrative; its roots lie in the simple spectacle of team-ups, an excuse to put interesting characters in the same story together. For decades, Avengers stories, while exciting, weren’t necessarily the narrative around which Marvel comics revolved. It was a book that had fun with itself, took bewildering diversions to check in on very minor characters, and hosted not-so-star-studded rosters.
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Jed MacKay’s contemporary run on Avengers is happy to have it both ways: a massive cosmic plot stretches across its dozens of issues, but it’s equally pleased with quirky narrative diversions. The book doesn’t let a Kang-centric mystery box get in the way of intergalactic casino heists or would-be world-destroying supermen. Neither does it forget about its larger ambitions.
Storm begins with larger lingering threads: regret over the results of Blood Hunt leaves the team burdened with guilt. Further, there is a pocket dimension that has been left unaddressed for a long stretch of the series. There is gravity to the events of these stories, and the characters feel that gravity, but the conflict in these stories is bright, shiny, and new.
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In just eight issues, Storm deals with: a genocidal (and suicidal) Hyperion (left over from Heroes Reborn), Doctor Doom (and his pre-One World Under Doom preparations), a sub-dimensonal prison planet, a baseball game against the X-Men, and the aforementioned intergalactic casino heist (where they square off against Kang, Black Cat and her dad, the Grandmaster, and – and I’m not screwing around here – Technet).
That is a lot of disparate action for a book driven by an overarching narrative, and all of it is fun; there isn’t a point in the entire collection without conflict and action, and all of it feels as pressing and exciting as any of the rest. Our heroes get to solve problems, use their powers in novel ways, and play. Storm and the Scarlet Witch get to pretend to fight while Captain Marvel, Captain America, and Iron Man crack a cosmic safe.
Artists Valerio Schiti and Farid Karami deliver wonderfully novel versions of the characters – this is an all-modern aesthetic played against a classic sense of oddball whimsy, and it’s stunning to take in. Having the privilege of seeing oft-forgotten oddballs like Joyboy, Bodybag, and Waxworks rendered in the contemporary style is worth every cent.
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Avengers – Storm is a mile-a-minute action fest, and it pulls this off without losing sight of the larger aspects of its story. It is the marriage of two distinct types of Avengers story, and it’s a delightful highlight of the current Marvel schedule.
The marriage of two distinct types of Avengers story. Read More