By: Fred Van Lente (writer), Tom Grummett (pencils), Cory Hamscher & Terry Pallot (inks), Andy Troy & Matt Milla (colors), Ed Dukeshire (letters) & Mark Paniccia (editor)
The Story: Will the Dead Avengers be able to withstand the final assault by the Grim Reaper and save the Comatose Avengers.
What’s Good: This has been the best of the Chaos War tie-ins by a long way. It has felt very connected with the main Chaos War story and it also just makes sense as a story. The credit for that (I assume) goes to writer, Fred Van Lente. Mr. Van Lente is also writing Chaos War proper (thus the congruence with the main event) and generally hasn’t written a bad story in quite a while. I’m always impressed by his ability to make just about any comic scenario interesting.
This issue has a high degree of difficulty too. The general premise is that since “death” has been destroyed by the Chaos King (and all mortal humans have been tossed into a coma), some Dead Avengers are back and take it upon themselves to make sure that some Dead Villains (notably The Grim Reaper) don’t kill Spidey, Bucky Cap, Spiderwoman, et al while they’re flopped out on the floor. The trouble for Van Lente is that he needs to have most of his toys put away by the end of this issue because you just know that the end result of Chaos War isn’t going to be that all the Dead Avengers are alive again. Maybe one or two, but not all. So, Van Lente sets about writing an entertaining and well-paced story under this constraint. Most of the toys are put away by the end of the issue and a few others look to have roles to play in the finale of Chaos War proper.
Inkers make a big difference. I should know better since I collect original comic art, but I often gloss over inkers in doing reviews because it is just hard to distinguish (at least for me) how much is inker and how much is penciler. What we get in this issue is still some very classic Tom Grummett super-heroes, but the fact that we have two inkers on this issue allows me to appreciate inker Cory Hamscher too. A lot of that classic goodness in the past couple issues of Dead Avengers was his work. Let me also take a minute to talk about an artistic subject that has been bugging me recently: Noses! There is a current trend with some of our younger artists (many of whom I LOVE) to shade noses such that it looks like they have a Breathe-Right Nasal Strip on their snout. I think that some of these younger artists (who have worked largely in the B&W world previously) are used to letting colorist highlight that nose for you. I draw your attention to how Grummett and Hamscher draw noses on the Vision in this book. Perfect! No weird shading! Young artists should take note of this!
What’s Not So Good: Well…. I mentioned above that this issue is a little tricky because you kinda know how it’ll end up. Van Lente made it as good as he could, but tie-in series usually are more of a neat concept to execute within the event itself. Kinda a, “Hey! While this event has changed the status quo, we could do ________.” But, it is just hard to do much with that concept because us cynical comic fans kinda assume that major dead Avengers (like the Vision) will not return to the Marvel U in an event tie-in. Sad, but true….
It is always a bit hard to critique art when you get the sense that the art might have been rushed a bit. When you don’t know the creators, you don’t know what is going on behind the scenes, so you have to go by symptoms: Art that isn’t quite as kick ass as last issue, a new inker being brought on, two colorists, issue that needs to ship before the final issue of the main event, etc. That’s not a blame an inker. Some of the older inkers I know can spend an entire month inking an issue, but sometimes they also get called in to do a fire drill to protect a ship date. The art is by no means “bad”, but I was really kinda looking forward to more of what we got with the first two issues and was just a little disappointed.
Conclusion: Most event tie-ins make you feel like a chump for plunking down $3.99. Not this one. This was worth reading (and seeing) even if it does have some limitations in story-telling placed upon it being a tie-in. Well worth tracking down at your LCS or in back-issue bins in the future.
Grade: B
-Dean Stell
Grade
Conclusion