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July 31, 2002

Avengers 56
X-Statix 1

Only two this week! And not cause i'm making good on my threats to drop everything except black panther: the only in-continuity marvel books that i skipped this week are Wolverine and X-Men Unlimited, and i don't think that anyone expects me (or anyone else, i'd think) to be buying them.

Avengers #56
Kurt Busiek/ Yanick Paquette

I was looking forward to this. I knew it was an inventory story, so i was hoping that it was written back Kurt wrote innovative stories from a unique perspective, instead of the straight boring super hero stuff he’s been doing on this title. And, from a structural standpoint, i got what i was hoping for with this. From a quality perspective, however, it’s as bad as the recent stuff. The dialogue is stiff, and the action plot is mundane. The last time Kurt wrote a Beast guest appearance it was fun. This time, there was no energy in it. The last time Kurt wrote about the Elements of Doom (in Thunderbolts) was the last time anyone ever needed to hear about them. In fact, i’m not sure such DC cheese ever belonged in a marvel comic, and it certainly didn’t need to be brought back twice in the late 90s/early 2000s. Oh well. The premise, with the Maria Stark Foundation auditing an Avengers expedition, was interesting and had a lot of potential, but it was bungled by questionable characterization and way too much exposition. It might have helped that this was a particularly lame group of avengers: Silverclaw, Jack Of Hearts, US Agent, and a Triathlon who has already been relegated to standing in the back of the group shots with no speaking parts. Also, while i know the story was written a while ago, the idea of the auditors “fudging it” for the good guys was unfortunate with the current corporate accounting crime wave being revealed.

The art was fill-in quality, which means it wasn’t very good. Paquette needs to work on his faces, and detail in general on the wide shots, but i suppose fill-in issues are a good place for him(?) to develop his abilities. More importantly, he needs to take a less juvenile approach to drawing women. We’re graced with two butt shots of the young (Snowbird… no wait! i mean…) Silverclaw, and several compromising poses from She-Hulk as well. Maybe the artists coming in today grew up reading Image comics in the early 90s. If so, this is a disturbing trend that someone needs to hurry up and put a stop to.

Overall this was a perfect end to Kurt’s run: disappointing.

X-Statix #1
Peter Milligan / Michael Allred & Darwyn Cooke

There’s no good in-story reason for the title change and the re-numbering, but this continues to be a great comic. Hopefully people who complained that “This isn’t X-Force, it’s just a bunch of whiny kids with stupid names and ridiculous powers!” will now be able to read it for the satire-with-depth that it is.

The back-up story was cute and disturbing, but i thought Doop was the cameraman. Who’s filming this? Also, in my copy, at least, the page order was screwed up, and it took me a few minutes to notice, which is never a good sign (whether of the artists’ story telling ability or my basic reading comprehension skills, i can’t say).

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