Avengers Classic preview

[dlw66]

www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/0705/23/marvelfirsts.htm

That art on the new stuff Give me Lenil Yu!!!

Shiryu, I need the puke-face smilie!!!!!

I will not be picking up this Avengers ongoing, either.

[Tana Nile]

Aw, dammit! I really would enjoy seeing more pre-Cap Avengers stories, but that "art" is so terrible! It looks like Oeming is experimenting with water colors...sort of like how a talented 6 year old would.

[Doctor Doom]

I'm not seeing this horribleness in the art that everyone else spoke of... but not sure my budget allows me to pick this up.

[von Bek]

The Stan "The Man" Lee piece was funny, the other was crap (the art was bad and the text didn´t help either).

[Alchemist-X]

I always felt Oeming's style was more suited for Alternative type comics. Standard superheroes are often hit and miss in his style (Which he changed for this book, and not for hte better)


Still, I'd say it's a little better than Yu's work

[redstatecap]

Blorf!

[sharkar]

That doesn't really look much like Stan (even as a young man), but his dialogue is certainly apt! I will be buying this series--I love stories that deal with that timeframe (like X-Men First Class--I've read that Byrne is upset about it; he calls it a "Hidden Years" rip-off!).

[Tone-Loc]

I don't know how I missed this preview, but this certainly puts my ongoing purchase (if not the first issue as well) into jeopardy.

Now, if the comic was drawn by the Kevin Maguire, a la the Stan Lee bit, then I would have no problem buying this book.

But as of right now, a thumb through is defintely in order before I just put it in my stack.

[Bored Yesterday]

I like the color pallette a lot, but Thor's jaw looks like a sidewalk caricature portrait. Wasp looks like Betty Boop. It does capture the spirit of those early issues, with all the back and forth arguing. On the other hand, all the characters are acting like jerks.

[Shiryu]

Ohi !!

It looks very cartoonish, kind of Cartoon Network's shows. Reminds me of Erik Larsen to some extent. I've seen worse, but I can also see why it would put people off.

Let's hope the stories are good...

[dlw66]

dlw66 said:

I will not be picking up this Avengers ongoing, either.

OK, so I lied. I shelled out my $3 yesterday and took this book home for a read.

Wow. Bad. Very, very bad. Really bad. Almost awful. However, given my expectations for my Avengers these days, it wasn't out of the what-we've-come-to-know-as ordinary. Marvel keeps telling us (or making us think anyway) that the Avengers are going to be promoted, hyped, pumped up, etc. like the X-Men were in the 90's. Well if this book is part of that marketing vehicle, and if it actually does bring in new readers, then what we formerly knew as the Avengers will only sink further into oblivion.

Specifics:

The reprint was the best part, and it's not even all that great of an origin story. A little corny, but typical of what Stan and Jack were doing in 1963. The recoloring was OK, although as I've commented before, too much of modern retouching tends to brighten the older stuff which sometimes looks a little better in it's "muddy" context.

The first "extra" story, by McDuffie and Oeming was, as a story, better than the second back-up by Stan Lee and Kevin Maguire. McDuffie's script was at times funny, and really nailed the characterization of those first three issues of the Avengers. Lee's script was horrible. Oeming's art ("painted", they tell us -- Alex Ross paints; Oeming's art looked like some child was turned loose on the nursery walls with some water colors) was quite possibly among the worst delineation I have ever paid for. Maguire's, on the other hand, was great -- what I've come to expect and admire from him through the years. Had they paired him with McDuffie and just eliminated Lee's story, we might have been able to save this book.

And this leads to my biggest gripe: when taken as a tandem, the two back-ups (which to me are the selling point of the book) were farcical. There was no backstory, not even an homage. Both stories were silly, to the point of stupid. When this series was announced, I think many of us hoped it would be as well-received as Classic X-Men. What we're missing is that willingness (or ability) to add layers to the mythos. Claremont and Bolton respected the old and enhanced it with the new. It seems to me that McDuffie/Oeming are more interested in making fun of what Lee and Kirby did -- highlighting the oft-implausible, oft-wackiness of the early Silver Age instead of giving us "I wonder what the Hulk was really thinking" or "what did Thor feel as he began to grow closer to these 'mortal warriors'?"

[Bored Yesterday]

A voice from a Manhatten office, "Well, the lack of support for this book just confirms that the internet ravings about the 'glory days' of the Avengers really amount to just a few cyber-cranks and do not represent the interest of the comic book buying community as a whole."

Thanks for the review. I've come to trust your taste on comics. Tell me when it's safe to come out of the back issue bin.

[Tone-Loc]

I just couldn't pull the trigger on this. Why do I need this book, when I have the Avengers DVD-ROM? What for the bad art of the "real" extra stories? I sure as heck wouldn't buy it for the Stan Lee segment alone. I would only buy it fro the extra stories, and the art is just so god-awful.

I'll just keep hoping that a real Avengers title resurfaces someday, who aren't pawns of SHIELD or some ego-maniac's "Initiative" or off fighting ninjas.

[dlw66]

I have no background on Oeming's work -- they bill him inside the back cover as using some "new style". If this was an improvement, I can only imagine what his previous style looked like.

And again, I just felt like the two extra stories (there will only be one from now on) did more to make fun of issue #1 rather than support it with new information. If you've read Bruce Timm's Avengers #1 1/2, you pretty much got a taste of what the stories were in this book.

Thank the gods for the beautiful Arthur Adams cover, which is the only redeeming quality of the book. I understand it's been released as a poster -- too bad I can't erase all of the stupid Avengers from the picture...