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A review by devinr
Avengers Legends, Vol. 1: Avengers Forever by Roger Stern, Carlos Pacheco, Kurt Busiek
3.0
Avengers Forever is a superhero adventure story that spans the history of recorded time and a couple of theoretical dimensions, as well as nearly 40 years of Marvel Comics continuity. And with all that baggage, while it's really trying to soar, sometimes it gets held back. I really liked the idea of gathering 7 Avengers from throughout the team's history and trying to get them to work together. Having future members keeping secrets from past members, awkward interactions: the attention to the interpersonal details is the stuff of great comics. And Carlos Pacheco, one of my favourite current pencillers, does some really great fight scenes. The heroes look incredibly athletic, and their feats really do seem fantastic. And co-writers Kurt Busiek and Roger Stern do an AWESOME job of characterizing one of the most interesting and powerful villains in the Marvel Universe, Kang the Conqueror. After reading this, he's become one of my favourite villains.
However, it's not all interdimensional hijinks and kicks to the face. There is a LOT of exposition in this book: explaining who some characters are in great detail, retelling old Avengers adventures from the past, retconning certain character developments. It's hard to read an issue when about 3/4 of it feels like it is footnotes. Add to that the fact that the story seemed really convoluted. Long-time Avengers readers probably ate it up, but even with the amount of exposition I sometimes felt overwhelmed by the continuity. The inks on Pacheco's pencils seemed a little thin; I would have liked to have seen a stronger line on some of the characters, particularly when they were in the foreground. Also, the dialogue seemed a little trite sometimes. I think that was probably Stern's influence more than Busiek, but I felt sometimes like it was hackneyed dialogued lifted right from the Bronze age that seemed out of place in this book. (Note: nothing wrong with the Bronze Age, per se. Just...well, the dialogue wasn't always the most plausible.)
Overall I thought that this book was high adventure that was a little too bogged down. Long-time Marvel and Avengers fans would definitely like it, but the casual reader such as myself might feel overwhelmed, despite the book's strengths.
However, it's not all interdimensional hijinks and kicks to the face. There is a LOT of exposition in this book: explaining who some characters are in great detail, retelling old Avengers adventures from the past, retconning certain character developments. It's hard to read an issue when about 3/4 of it feels like it is footnotes. Add to that the fact that the story seemed really convoluted. Long-time Avengers readers probably ate it up, but even with the amount of exposition I sometimes felt overwhelmed by the continuity. The inks on Pacheco's pencils seemed a little thin; I would have liked to have seen a stronger line on some of the characters, particularly when they were in the foreground. Also, the dialogue seemed a little trite sometimes. I think that was probably Stern's influence more than Busiek, but I felt sometimes like it was hackneyed dialogued lifted right from the Bronze age that seemed out of place in this book. (Note: nothing wrong with the Bronze Age, per se. Just...well, the dialogue wasn't always the most plausible.)
Overall I thought that this book was high adventure that was a little too bogged down. Long-time Marvel and Avengers fans would definitely like it, but the casual reader such as myself might feel overwhelmed, despite the book's strengths.