Avengers Arena #1 *Advance Review*

[kakitamike]

I got the impression that mettle, hazmat and striker had all been pretty well off. Reptil is cool, I feel like he get's overshadowed too much by the kids that like to be criminals. I think i'm also annoyed by some of the writing in the book. THese kids weren't raised to be killers. WHen they beat up the hood, they knew exactly what they were doing, they're not learning it's bad now.

I only stuck hazmat out as expendable. I like most of the other kids. I was more talking about their backstories as examples of ones i found pretty lackluster or uninspired.

[Majin Gojira]

Striker and Hazmat are the ones explicitly so (I'd think Hazmat more since Striker 'earned' his). Mettle might be upper middle class at best, but compared to the others, that's not to much. Reptil's eventually gets more focus later on (in the second half of the series which many consider weaker, but has even stronger parts than some off the initial stuff). The Hood revenge thing was honestly one of their worst arcs, in my opinion, for precisely the reasons you pointed out.

Truth be told, compared to the writers work on Angel & Faith, it's not his overall best. That may be the Joss Whedon Polish all those books get, but I will readily admit there's some off moments in it.

I still like it a lot, of course.

Edit to add: I honestly wouldn't call any character not created to die 'expendable' unless it's either a heroic death or a death akin to an opera tenor.

And we really don't see either of those very often these days.