By Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Alan Davis (pencils), Mark Farmer (inks), Javier Rodriguez (colors) and Chris Eliopoulos (letters)
The Story: Thor, Tony and Cap make a final stand against Hela, leading the diverse group they’ve managed to recruit in a giant, all-out battle. The outcome is far from certain, and even if they win, who knows if they’ll ever find their way back home?
What’s Good: What a great read this was! Taken on its own merits, the exciting battles and witty interplay between the characters make for an exciting and fun time. Bendis does a very good job capturing the feel of a large scale, old school Avengers adventure, and Alan Davis backs him up beautifully on pencils with excellent detail and some truly gorgeous splash pages. While I’m not a huge fan of contrived-feeling moral dilemmas like the one Thor faces at the end, Bendis treats it seriously enough, and treats the characters involved with enough respect, that it didn’t irk me nearly as much as it could have. That alone speaks volumes about the books overall quality.
What’s Not So Good: Now that I’ve gushed for a bit, here’s the thing about this book: in spite of how much fun it was, and in spite of the highly enjoyable time I had reading it (and the series as a whole), I ultimately have to count it as a disappointment. Firstly, I’m confused about it’s place in continuity. Maybe this is something that will be clarified in later Avengers books, but I do want to know just how much the things we saw–especially in this last issue–are going to reverberate into the main titles. Thor, especially (should) have some major issues that he’ll be dealing with for some time, if this is treated as strict cannon.
Most majorly, though, I’m disappointed by the way Bendis resolved the conflict between Steve Rogers and Tony Stark. I’m a huge and unabashed fangirl for both of them, so you can imagine how I felt reading Civil War, and watching my two favorite Marvel characters fighting against each other. Things have felt…unsettled for me on the Marvel side of the universe ever since then. We got Tony back, we got Cap back…but things still weren’t right. This mini-series, as I understood it, was the big chance to resolve a big chunk of the issues standing between the characters, and get things back to where they should be. And that did happen. Kind of. In the last few panels. THAT bugs, majorly. After a rift of the magnitude Tony and Steve suffered, they–and we!–deserve far more than a hasty two-page wrap up and calling things all better. The adventure and battle were fun, but to me the main attraction of the mini-series was the characters, and getting a chance to see Iron Man and Captain America finally overcome their differences and get fully back on the same side. Focusing more on that, and less on the explody action stuff (which Siege gave us plenty of anyway) would have left me so, SO much happier and more satisfied.
Conclusion A fun, action packed conclusion to a great mini-series, but one that still leaves room for quite a bit of disappointment on the character and relationship development front.
Grade: This is tough. Objectively, and simply as a story, I give it a B+. But as someone waiting for a couple of big character beats that were insultingly glossed over, C.
-Soldierhawk
Grade
Conclusion