Avengers #1 *Spoilers*

**Harpoon** · 12-05-2012, 04:31 PM

Originally Posted by jackolover

There's the inner circle of the originals, the outer circles of the MA and NA, and then a connection to the Illuminati, and then whatever this second team is on the last page. The two outer balls probably refer to Fury and POTUS.

Those are all members of the adjectiveless team. The Illuminati, guys like Fury, etc. there's no reason for them to be part of that diagram unless Hickman makes them members of this team.

**midnightshrink** · 12-05-2012, 04:35 PM

I loved the new villains. Ex Nihilo has a great personality and look. The book was great except for all the movie influence. That ticked me off a little bit. Seemed like shameless product placement. It started with an idea. Please...

**PupsOfWar** · 12-05-2012, 04:36 PM

Originally Posted by Brandon McKinnis

That's too bad. I feel like that's just shelving great characters. Also Monica has been used since Nextwave so the genie is out of the bottle anyway.

Yeah, it's kind of confusing that people seize such a flimsy reason to keep Monica and the rest of those guys sidelined.

Particularly in Monica's case, since Ellis played her pretty straightforwardly in that book. Nothing remotely as absurd as what he did with Machine Man or Meltdown.

NEXTWAVE Monica was a cool, straightlaced if kinda world-weary and apathetic heroine who happened to be leading a team of ridiculous wackjobs against an organization of ridiculous wackjobs. She kicked ass and pretended to take names.

She just appeared in the most recent Captain Marvel, and there was really nothing in Madame DeConnick's portrayal that I couldn't reconcile with Ellis's. Similar stoic world-weariness, similar hard-nosed attitude, similar propensity to become frazzled by some things you wouldn't expect while being strangely cool with mounting piles of nonsense, what have you.

**jackolover** · 12-05-2012, 04:36 PM

Originally Posted by murdershewrote

This is what happened - Tony and Cap felt it in the air that Bad Stuff was going to happen. They didn't know what - but they knew something was coming (probably because something bad ALWAYS happens in their universe), so to prepare they went around recruiting for the Avengers, bumping up their membership to 18 so far. They didn't put them all on the team yet, they basically said: when we need you and call you, please come help.

Sure enough, something happened. Terraform bombs hit the earth (2), wiping out approximately 2 million people. Cap collects the movie Avengers to go check it out (they found the guys on mars by tracking the terra-bombs trajectory). Avengers engage, get beaten up and captured, and the bad guys rough up Cap and send him in a flaming, breaking ship back to earth as a warning against standing up before them. When Cap's able to get to his feet 3 days later, he assembles the Avenger team he recruited earlier with Tony, and there we go.

I guess you can argue that this is the setup for an event - but you can basically say that about 80% of comic book stories, to be honest. But, Hickman is trying to go 'bigger' with the Avengers, and not just in terms of cast. It'd make sense if he's trying for event-scale action in his Avengers biweekly.

Thanks for that clarification. But you get a rippling effect from the Origin Bombs from everyone looking up and going," gee, that looks bad". You have nothing much going on, and then, POW, Origin bombs with tragectories from Mars. It's so totally wild, that you would have to recover from reeling fairly badly, and then go see about it. If Lee and Kirby did this, it would be a Galactus level Event happening to the Avengers. Steve Rogers is supposed to be the new FF and he has to take the can about anything like this happening from now on. Earth attacked by Galactus or Dormammu and Steve Rogers has the job.

**NinjaMic** · 12-05-2012, 04:37 PM

See what happens when you let the hype consume you?

Granted, it really wasnt a 10/10 issue.

9/10 sure

**jackolover** · 12-05-2012, 04:42 PM

Originally Posted by Harpoon

Those are all members of the adjectiveless team. The Illuminati, guys like Fury, etc. there's no reason for them to be part of that diagram unless Hickman makes them members of this team.

Fury formed the first Avengers. Just me speculating. Steve Rogers is now in the Illuminati, so I see them being a component of the organization.

**EuphemismForSex** · 12-05-2012, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by jackolover

Fury formed the first Avengers. Just me speculating. Steve Rogers is now in the Illuminati, so I see them being a component of the organization.

He's retired...

**Deep_Sleeper** · 12-05-2012, 04:43 PM

One thing I noticed on my second read through of Avengers # 1 was that Ex Nihilo's head looks kind of like Skip from Angel. Anyone else notice that?

**Maestro** · 12-05-2012, 04:47 PM

Originally Posted by EuphemismForSex

You asked what was so evil about the villains and why they were going to Mars. Simple as that. Don't make it out as though readers wouldn't understand the Avengers' motivations because you didn't get a two page spread of people being warped by bioterrorism or something. There's no information missing here. It's made readily apparent.

You're wrong, of course. Some kind of setup, or even a two page spread like you said would have absolutely helped set up the villains better!

**EuphemismForSex** · 12-05-2012, 04:50 PM

Originally Posted by Maestro

You're wrong, of course. Some kind of setup, or even a two page spread like you said would have absolutely helped set up the villains better!

I must be pretty talented then for figuring out why they were going to Mars without that spread. And have a huge moral compass for considering the murder of two million a good enough reason to pursue villains.

**rsreed13** · 12-05-2012, 04:54 PM

Originally Posted by Brandon McKinnis

Is Monica Rambeau the new Captain Universe!? That would make my month.

I really dug this issue. I'm looking forward to seeing this rescue roster in action. There is a great mix of High-Mid-Low powered heroes.

No. Hickman said he didn't want to write any of the characters involved in Nextwave as he didn't think he could escape Ellis' imprint on those characters.

EDIT: Nevermind. Someone said basically the same thing on the previous page.

**jackolover** · 12-05-2012, 04:55 PM

Originally Posted by Cryptid

This is a great-looking book thanks to Jerome Opena and Dean White, but the voice-over captions have a breathless prophetic sound that just doesn't square with the conventional story elements we've seen so far. Hulk clocking Thor felt like a conspicuous nod to the movie, whether or not that's what Hickman intended, and the expanded roster makes Tony Stark's eureka moment with Cap feel faintly silly. Future issues may well prove that the bigger team comes with a broader vision, but for now it seems like the smartest man on earth suddenly thought to himself, "Of course! We'll overcome these strange new threats with...like thirty dudes. Why didn't I see it before!" Hype aside, the tone oversells the content, such that a perfectly good Avengers issue suffers from the overweening ambition it's obviously meant to fulfill.

Still, I basically liked it. As usual, Hickman delivers the coolest logos and giantest headlines in comics. And once again he writes villains who have an even more aggressive utopian agenda than the heroes. In Ultimates, his Reed Richards creates a futuristic city in a bottle that replaces half of Europe. This time out, we have a villain with the delightfully goofy name of Ex Nihilo who fails to understand why any remedial earth ape would object to his evolutionary improvements and terraforming bombs. Both from the man who brought us a dastardly Isaac Newton in SHIELD. Hickman's villains are better at delivering the future than his heroes, serving as tempter figures as well as physical threats. Perhaps it falls to the heroes to justify why history needs to take a little longer. In that light, why wouldn't this issue brandish its classicism instead of tip-toeing around it?

Yeah. As badass as the villains are portrayed, the heroes are destined to win out in the end, while setting the heroes up to fail, first. Galactus was another one who didn't understand what the Earth was here for and just saw it as a snack stop. It took a wake up call for the big G to see that maybe it's not a good idea to ruffle the heroes on this one. El Nihilo will come to the same conclusion, no doubt.

**nosocialize100** · 12-05-2012, 04:57 PM

As a new reader, there's a comment on this review of the issue that dislikes the comic a lot.

What do you guys think? Is he/she right?

**jackolover** · 12-05-2012, 04:57 PM

Originally Posted by EuphemismForSex

He's retired...

People are probably right, that Fury and the POTUS and Illuminati are not a part of this. I may be looking too deeply at what Hickman generally just shows as simple lists. Hickman did predict there were two others still to come, so that's all that probably is.

**nosocialize100** · 12-05-2012, 04:58 PM

Originally Posted by jackolover

There's the inner circle of the originals, the outer circles of the MA and NA, and then a connection to the Illuminati, and then whatever this second team is on the last page. The two outer balls probably refer to Fury and POTUS.

See...I want to think it's darker and more mysterious than that. Like some kind of celestial is one of those lol.