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A review by ameliepoptart
Avengers: Disassembled by Olivier Coipel, Dick Ayers, Pete Pantazis, Mike Perkins, Brian Michael Bendis, Bob Sharen, Andy Tory, Scott Kolins, Steve McNiven, Brian Reber, Justin Ponsor, Kieron Dwyer, Laura Martin, Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Frank D'Armata, Mark Morales, Morry Hollowell, Jim Cheung, Danny Miki, David Finch
2.0
The hard thing about Marvel/DC is that you can never 100% smoothly drop into reading something. Everything is connected, there is history, and everything had to be written in an accessible way that means people can pick up from wherever (ie. expositional and clunky writing).
I knew this was a good place to pick up on for the newer line of Avengers related comics. That and I’ve always been a huge X-Men fan and wanted to build up to AvX (with the juicy Jean Grey/Phoenix Force/Wanda content).
The start of this was... awkward. Badly paced. Crammed with action and no breathing room, or anything to properly set up the stakes. The only reason I knew this was such a catastrophic moment was because I kept being repeatedly told it was. Side note, other comic writers (Rainbow Rowell for Runaways, Marv Wolfman for New Teen Titans) have smooth ways of referencing past material and catching readers up... maybe Bendis should look to them for guidance.
Also, the artwork is not great. Not Greg Land level awful, but it’s the same typical overly dark, overly lined, ill proportioned shit I usually see from these titles. It makes the experience worse, when really the artwork should elevate the story. A lot of the time, I found myself either completely skimming pages for the speech bubbles because I couldn’t clearly read the images, or I was looking at the artwork and picking out what was wrong.
(side-note, why is it so damn hard for male comic book artists to draw female characters? Do y’all know how breasts work?? Do you have any understanding of anatomy and the human body? Hint, if someone is in an action pose and stretching their arms out then their breasts are going to following that direction — NOT stay pushed together up to the person’s chin. Also, can we stop twisting spines so we get both an ass and tit shot?).
Overall, I’m glad I watched Endgame/WandaVision before reading this. This definitely feels like a rough draft that the MCU improved upon.
I knew this was a good place to pick up on for the newer line of Avengers related comics. That and I’ve always been a huge X-Men fan and wanted to build up to AvX (with the juicy Jean Grey/Phoenix Force/Wanda content).
The start of this was... awkward. Badly paced. Crammed with action and no breathing room, or anything to properly set up the stakes. The only reason I knew this was such a catastrophic moment was because I kept being repeatedly told it was. Side note, other comic writers (Rainbow Rowell for Runaways, Marv Wolfman for New Teen Titans) have smooth ways of referencing past material and catching readers up... maybe Bendis should look to them for guidance.
Also, the artwork is not great. Not Greg Land level awful, but it’s the same typical overly dark, overly lined, ill proportioned shit I usually see from these titles. It makes the experience worse, when really the artwork should elevate the story. A lot of the time, I found myself either completely skimming pages for the speech bubbles because I couldn’t clearly read the images, or I was looking at the artwork and picking out what was wrong.
(side-note, why is it so damn hard for male comic book artists to draw female characters? Do y’all know how breasts work?? Do you have any understanding of anatomy and the human body? Hint, if someone is in an action pose and stretching their arms out then their breasts are going to following that direction — NOT stay pushed together up to the person’s chin. Also, can we stop twisting spines so we get both an ass and tit shot?).
Overall, I’m glad I watched Endgame/WandaVision before reading this. This definitely feels like a rough draft that the MCU improved upon.