George Perez draws everyone.
Everyone?
The Avengers roar back to life with issue slapped with a #1 but later affirmed as being issue #416 of volume one. Kurt Busiek, a fanboy letter-writer, was given the helm, and the script is great.
He’s got the “big” sense of awe (look at all those characters!), the humor….
…Nobody wants to sit next to D-Man because he smells bad. (D-Man stinks because, in case you don’t know, he’s a homeless guy turned superhero)…And a tight script. Extremely well-done.
And with art by George Perez, who is absolutely the best at drawing large casts, this is truly an issue worth calling #1. Even if it’s #416.
Rather than immediately whittle the team down, Kurt Busiek let’s every single hero who has ever been an Avenger–and many who have not–officially join the team. After so many of the Earth’s heroes had spent a year shunted by Franklin Richards into bad comic series, it felt good to see them all here in full George Perez glory.
For the villains, it’s Morgan Le Fay! Frost Giants! The Midgard Serpent! Mordred the Mystic!
Sorry. Modred the Evil.
Asgard was destroyed while the heroes were returning from being reborn, and the Twilight Sword was stolen.
Morgan kidnaps Scarlet Witch and uses her powers to access the Sword’s reality-shifting powers. So no sooner did the heroes return than…
…They’re in another alternate reality!
Why does Hawkeye look like Dreadstar?
I mean, he really looks like Dreadstar:
And if you thought the ridiculously overmuscled Captain America by Rob Liefeld was bad…
Wow.
The midevil part of the adventure is fun but what’s important is…
Simon Williams is resurrected!
By Wanda.
To do chores.
Also, Morgan LaFay is still a thing.
I really do like how much of a badass Scarlet Witch is in this reboot.
Wonder Man kicks Morgan’s ass.
He needs more power, which is channeled through Scarlet Witch.
This is a fairly typical “I need more power” scene, but with this many Avengers, I get that there has to be a way to give each of them skin in the game.
It’s fine. Just hard to be excited by scenes like this because we all know how it’s going to end.
As with the best Avengers runs, the really great moments are the smaller, character-based ones and the stuff about what it means to be on The Avengers’ team. Speaking of which, by the end it’s decided that there is in fact a maximum number of acceptable heroes on a team, and it is less than 39.
A lineup change is promised at the end of issue #3