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A review by loop
The Mighty Avengers, Vol. 1: The Ultron Initiative by Brian Michael Bendis, Frank Cho
2.0
I wasn't a huge fan of this. It's not a bad arc by any means; the villain was cool, some of the character interactions were good, and the art was good. But at the end of the day, I just couldn't bring myself to care about most of these characters, especially coming from New Avengers where every single character is interesting. This roster is just so one-note. Seriously do we need 3 superman-types? AND Ares on top of that? How much super-strength do we need in one team? Not to mention most of these characters act the exact same. I really had to drag myself to finish this, and honestly I probably will read the rest of this run because not doing so would bother me a bit, but I think New Avengers is better in every way.
The dialogue was especially bad, and this is coming from someone who does generally like Bendis dialogue. That poor poor letterer. I don't know how he does it. He had to fit in so much text into each panel, and some of the panels were minuscule. It was just needlessly wordy and didn't end up actually saying much. Twice in this arc characters repeated themselves and twice another character told them "You already said that" as if Bendis is poking fun at himself. I just don't get it. This is even worse than his bad habit of having characters say "what?" and having the other one repeat what they just said (which is also present here). Also, thought bubbles?! What?! Thought bubbles jammed between word balloons? What? While I'm not a huge fan of thought bubbles, I can see their worth in some books. But wow, what the hell was Bendis thinking here? They were just unnecessary and lazy ways to have a semblance of characterization in these otherwise hollow characters. That poor poor letterer. I've never felt so claustrophobic reading a book.
The female Ultron was actually kinda cool, though perhaps a bit self-indulgent in its fanservice. I know it's Frank Cho's thing to draw voluptuous women, but when the hell did Janet Van Dyne have those curves? I can't complain too much because at least Black Widow was depicted as extremely muscular, which I found refreshing. Other than that, art was decent, and there were some actually really cool layouts here and there. Unfortunately, everything was also way too busy, which was exacerbated by the aforementioned wordiness and unnecessary thought bubbles.
I'll have to give this a 6/10. It really wasn't bad, and I wish I could give it a higher rating, but when compared to New Avengers, this team just isn't doing it for me.
The dialogue was especially bad, and this is coming from someone who does generally like Bendis dialogue. That poor poor letterer. I don't know how he does it. He had to fit in so much text into each panel, and some of the panels were minuscule. It was just needlessly wordy and didn't end up actually saying much. Twice in this arc characters repeated themselves and twice another character told them "You already said that" as if Bendis is poking fun at himself. I just don't get it. This is even worse than his bad habit of having characters say "what?" and having the other one repeat what they just said (which is also present here). Also, thought bubbles?! What?! Thought bubbles jammed between word balloons? What? While I'm not a huge fan of thought bubbles, I can see their worth in some books. But wow, what the hell was Bendis thinking here? They were just unnecessary and lazy ways to have a semblance of characterization in these otherwise hollow characters. That poor poor letterer. I've never felt so claustrophobic reading a book.
The female Ultron was actually kinda cool, though perhaps a bit self-indulgent in its fanservice. I know it's Frank Cho's thing to draw voluptuous women, but when the hell did Janet Van Dyne have those curves? I can't complain too much because at least Black Widow was depicted as extremely muscular, which I found refreshing. Other than that, art was decent, and there were some actually really cool layouts here and there. Unfortunately, everything was also way too busy, which was exacerbated by the aforementioned wordiness and unnecessary thought bubbles.
I'll have to give this a 6/10. It really wasn't bad, and I wish I could give it a higher rating, but when compared to New Avengers, this team just isn't doing it for me.