By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Tom Grummett (pencils), Cory Hamscher (inks), Andy Troy & Sotocolor (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)
The Story: The Dead Avengers continue in an attempt to protect the current/living/comatose Avengers from a “back from the dead” Grim Reaper.
What’s Good: This is a great little tie-in series to the Chaos War event for a few reasons, a) it makes sense with the overall story and doesn’t seem forced, b) it is not essential to your enjoyment of Chaos War proper, c) it adds to your enjoyment of the overall event if you read it and d) it is not causing any continuity problems.
The basic story is that the Chaos King has put all mortal humans on Earth into a coma and brought all of the dead back to life. Only, they aren’t ghoulish zombies…. they’re just who they were before they died, with all their memories, motives, etc. intact. Oh, and the bad guys seem to be really powered up. So, when a group of Dead Avengers is revived and finds current Avengers flopped around comatose with a revived Grim Reaper trying to kill them, they leap into action.
What is great is that writer Van Lente is spending a little bit of time showing the back story of each of the Dead Avengers. That’s appreciated because some of these characters have been out of comics for a long time. He also gives each of them a unique voice and motivation for wanting to help out. And, in true Van Lente fashion, there are a couple of “panels of the week candidates” that make you snicker as you read (loved the Swordsman coming on to Yellowjacket and explaining that he can’t help it because he is French). Van Lente is one of the real stars at Marvel and why they haven’t locked him up with an “exclusive” deal is beyond me. His comics are always entertaining and even when I don’t think I’ll enjoy the subject matter (i.e. Dead Avengers) I find myself having a great time reading. I think his secret is that he’s using just the right about of continuity to “matter” but not so much that the story is bogged down.
Grummett’s pencils are also really sweet. He’s a veteran of comic art and for some reason his style has kinda fallen out of favor, but I don’t know why. Perhaps it is because his characters look like they conform to more of a “house style” and artists today have to be individuals? But, this is just flat out nice artwork in a very throwback way (i.e. is faithful to human muscle groups). And, for this type of story, dealing with mortal danger, this sort of classic, super-hero art is more appropriate than a more cartooning style. Also kudos to the rest of the art team. Nice inks, pretty colors and even some creative lettering.
What’s Not So Good: Well…it is an event tie-in, so there is only so far you can allow your imagination to go with the whole mortal danger theme. To put it another way, I strongly doubt that if a current Avenger dies it will be in the pages of an event tie-in. That isn’t really a “complaint” per se, but more of an explanation of why this issue doesn’t get an “A” when you get down to the Grade below. I really have very little negative to say about the issue, but it isn’t “epic” or a contender for “best issue of the year” in the way our WCBR grading scale requires to get an “A”.
As much as I love the art, it does get wonky in a few places. With the high angle shots (those where the view point is 45 degrees above horizontal), the floor and backgrounds do some weird, Inception-like, pivots if you stare at them for too long. I’m not sure what causes that, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t Grummett’s pencils. Maybe they just needed to throw a shadow onto the floor to fix the perspective? This is a minor issue, but once you see it, you can’t look at the panel again without it popping out at you kinda like those old Magic Eye posters that were in style 15 years ago.
Conclusion: What all event tie-ins should aspire to: Enhance your enjoyment of the event, but not be required reading. It also isn’t causing continuity problems like the Thor tie-ins because the heroes in this tie-in were taking dirt naps before. Beautiful, classic superhero art from Grummett!
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion