PREVIEW: Avengers #5

[Hound of UIster]

spoilers:

The King of the Universal Inhumans is a main character in New Avengers.

end of spoilers

The NW issue was there to make the point, Nick's willingness to sacrifice his nearest and dearest including his squads to take down Hydra.

[hawkeyefan]

isn't it sort of disrespectful for captain america to invite all these amateurs to his big team but not invite people he's actively working with in other titles? wanda, havok, and rogue are just his hired mutants for uncanny avenger?

It's only disrespectful if you're actively looking for it to be so.

Plus, blaming a character for things that are probably determined editorially just seems a bit silly, no? I'm all for verisimilitude, but sometimes you have to just chalk it up to being fiction.

[mdg1]

spoilers:

No, Black Bolt is. And Hickman spent 2 issues of his run bringing him back so that the Universal Inhumans could... um... what point did they serve in the plot again?

end of spoilers

[Hound of UIster]

spoilers:

No, Black Bolt is. And Hickman spent 2 issues of his run bringing him back so that the Universal Inhumans could... um... what point did they serve in the plot again?

end of spoilers

spoilers:

Serve as the impetus for the Supreme Intelligence trying to sterilize the Earth

end of spoilers I think Hickman laid it out very well in that story. It was probably one of his most tightly plotted out stories.

[timeismoney]

isn't it sort of disrespectful for captain america to invite all these amateurs to his big team but not invite people he's actively working with in other titles? wanda, havok, and rogue are just his hired mutants for uncanny avenger?

Wanda has always been an Avenger, the others not at all.

[mdg1]

It's a 2-year old story. We don't need the spoiler block. :)

The thing is... he didn't need to create an ancient conspiracy involving 4 alien cultures for that. Sometimes I think Hickman's problem isn't that he has too many big ideas, but he tries to use them ALL AT ONCE. He's spinning so many plates that every plot feels like a subplot.

I mean, look at this series. He already has the main villain, PLUS a new Captain Universe, PLUS a new look at the Imperial Guard, PLUS the Hyperion thing, PLUS the New Universe plot coming up. Any of those could be a story arc unto themselves., but instead, they are all shoved into one storyline, and none of them have room to breathe.

[CyberHubbs]

It's a 2-year old story. We don't need the spoiler block. :)

The thing is... he didn't need to create an ancient conspiracy involving 4 alien cultures for that. Sometimes I think Hickman's problem isn't that he has too many big ideas, but he tries to use them ALL AT ONCE. He's spinning so many plates that every plot feels like a subplot.

I mean, look at this series. He already has the main villain, PLUS a new Captain Universe, PLUS a new look at the Imperial Guard, PLUS the Hyperion thing, PLUS the New Universe plot coming up. Any of those could be a story arc unto themselves., but instead, they are all shoved into one storyline, and none of them have room to breathe.

The Hyperion thing and the New Universe are part of the larger storyline, though. And I'd say we don't really have the main villain yet.

[Hound of UIster]

The thing is... he didn't need to create an ancient conspiracy involving 4 alien cultures for that.

They were the leftovers of the Kree's breeding program. It was one to demonstrate why the Kree abandoned the Inhumans, two to show that the Inhumans were no longer just exclusively humans, they were the *universal* inhumans and three to get rid of the Inhumans as being part of the Kree Empire.

I mean, look at this series. He already has the main villain, PLUS a new Captain Universe, PLUS a new look at the Imperial Guard, PLUS the Hyperion thing, PLUS the New Universe plot coming up. Any of those could be a story arc unto themselves., but instead, they are all shoved into one storyline, and none of them have room to breathe.

The Captain Universe, New Universe and the thing that is destroying universe are the progression of the theme that he developed with Ex Nihlo/Aleph and Hyperion. Captain Universe, NU & the mystery threat are ultimately colossal system that change or destroy worlds. The threat in a ways is his or Marvel's attempt at doing a more intelligent version of CoiE.

[infinitEEntropy]

I like the colors.

[Vic Vega]

The pouches look outrageous. I don't think I've ever seen Cap use anything other than his shield before.

Cap had the pouches when the Captain America title was relaunched in the aughts when Bachalo was the artist.

He had the same canteen on the back deal that Bucky had. He also chucked a grenade or two in that run.

I have to say if anybody was gonna be running around with high explosives, it'd be Cap.

He has to blow up a robot at LEAST twice a month.

[Danvidar]

I thought the Shi'ar greatest strength was 1) that their culture was designed around force-assimilation of alien cultures and 2) that they had the Raptors to keep order.

The Goggle info-dump refers to the IA as the greatest military assest, not that it is the Shi'ars' greatest strength.

[nosocialize100]

Cap had the pouches when the Captain America title was relaunched in the aughts when Bachalo was the artist.

He had the same canteen on the back deal that Bucky had. He also chucked a grenade or two in that run.

I have to say if anybody was gonna be running around with high explosives, it'd be Cap.

He has to blow up a robot at LEAST twice a month.

I want to see them stick to this quota!

[PupsOfWar]

It's a 2-year old story. We don't need the spoiler block. :)

The thing is... he didn't need to create an ancient conspiracy involving 4 alien cultures for that. Sometimes I think Hickman's problem isn't that he has too many big ideas, but he tries to use them ALL AT ONCE. He's spinning so many plates that every plot feels like a subplot.

I mean, look at this series. He already has the main villain, PLUS a new Captain Universe, PLUS a new look at the Imperial Guard, PLUS the Hyperion thing, PLUS the New Universe plot coming up. Any of those could be a story arc unto themselves., but instead, they are all shoved into one storyline, and none of them have room to breathe.

I can kind of agree with this.

Near the close of his main F4/FF storyline, there was one level wherein it was nice to see everything througout the run all colliding together into this one massive conflict. Then here was another level where you noticed that the stuff with Mole Man, the High Evolutionary and Old Atlantis was rapidly overshadowed once the Kree/Inhumans conflict took stage, and this in turn was rapidly overshadowed once we had Mad Celestials and Galactus and Mr Franklin kicking each other around.

So it was hard not to think that there were some things that could have been replaced with more stand-alone arcs. I never thought the whole Four Cities motif contributed much to the overarching narrative other than as continuity nods and as a mechanism for giving Sue, Ben and Johnny more presence in an arc that ultimately boiled down to the generational tale of the Richards boys. So that element's presence in the big conflagration in the end didn't seem strictly needed.

Stand-alone arcs aren't bad.

[Karl H]

Has it ever been a worse time to be an Avengers fan?

I remember the bomber jackets, Carol leading the team and Jack of Hearts so, yes.

Stop being dramatic.

[Monty_Cristo]

Has it ever been a worse time to be an Avengers fan?

no. we need more of Earth's Mightiest losing to ninja and sitting around the dinner table; while constantly asking other characters to repeat themselves. this book doesn't even have a pu***-whipped Luke Cage or jokes about diaper smells.