By Brian Bendis (writer) , Lee Weeks, Jim Cheung, and Carlo Paglayan (artists), Jeffrey Huet (inks), Dean White and Jason Keith (colorists)
The Story: Serving as the Secret Invasion epilogue, Mighty Avengers #20 closes the book on the current Avengers team and follows Hank Pym as he deals with the loss of The Wasp. Readers are treated to a series of flashbacks and backstory as Hank gets caught up to speed on the events that have transpired since his capture. The story also follows his continuing journey leading up to Janet’s funeral.
What’s Good? The four big splash pages by Jim Cheung are hauntingly beautiful and poster worthy.
What’s Not So Good? With the exception of Hank lashing out at Tony Stark and the brief confrontation with Norman Osborn in the closing pages, everything in this issue is a rehash of crap we’ve seen before. Sure, I love Jimmy Cheung’s four splash pages, but they’re completely unnecessary in a book like this. Hell, they could have been compressed down to one splash page, but nope, we get four pinups over story.
The issue stumbles along trying to make us feel sorry for Ant Man. And it doesn’t work because A) Ant Man’s a jerk B) The Wasp hasn’t been a relevant character in decades and C) No corpse means she’ll be back any day now. At least with Captain America’s death it was noble and treated with the utmost respect (and we had a body to see). Here? It’s empty (pun intended).
Conclusion: Read it at your comic store and use your $2.99 on another book.
Grade: F
- J. Montes
Filed under: Marvel Comics, Reviews Tagged: | Ant Man, Brian Bendis, Carlo Paglayan, Dean White, Jason Keith, Jeffrey Huet, Jim Cheung, Lee Weeks, Mighty Avengers #20, Secret Invasion
