By: Allan Heinberg (writer), Jim Cheung (pencils), Mark Morales, John Livesay & Dave Meikis (inks), Justin Ponsor (colors), Cory Petit (letters), Lauren Sankovitch (associate editor) & Tom Brevoort (editor)
The Story: Now that the Young Avengers have found the Scarlet Witch, what do you think will happen?
What’s Good: How sneaky good and (possibly) momentous was this issue? The cynical comic reader will look at this issue with a jaded eye and think that the events that seem to be taking place in this issue can’t be real. Surely, if this was going to happen, Marvel would have had a press release hyping the issue or structured an event around the concept. One could argue that this maxi-series is kind of an “event”, but it comes sans all the hype and tie-in miniseries that bloat most events in today’s comics.
Clearly, I’m being incredibly vague about this story because an event this cool that was completely unspoiled in this day of the internet, doesn’t deserve to be spoiled by a mere review. And, it may not even hold up. We might get to issue #7 in a few months and have everything reversed, but until then, this sort of spontaneous surprise in a comic reminded me of reading comics when I was a kid.
Aside from the big event that takes place, it is just a really nice comic that features the Young Avengers (who are just fun as hell), the Avengers and a bunch of stuff from the Avengers going all the way back to Disassembled. No Avengers fan could fail to enjoy this comic.
What Wasn’t Quite As Good As I’d hoped: The Jimmy Cheung art in this series has been awesomely beautiful. So far, I’ve looked at his art and said, “Yup! I don’t mind waiting 60 days if that’s what it takes to get this level of art.” While the art in this issue isn’t bad, it isn’t 5/5 art either and it get’s a little inconsistent from page to page. That’s to be expected when you see 3 inkers listed on an issue and it’s disappointing not because of the slight dip in art quality, but because it causes me some concerns about future release dates and I don’t want the remainder of this story to get delayed.
Conclusion: Wow! A BIG event happens in this comic that is out of left field. What happens in this issue is bigger than anything that has happened in Fear Itself so far. Don’t be a dope and wait for the trade on this because it could be 6-9 months before that happens and people will be talking about this series before then.
Grade: B+
-Dean Stell
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Conclusion