Mighty Avengers #2 by Al Ewing (Comics Review)

Despite my initial hesitations and concerns, mostly to do with the artist, Mighty Avengers #1 proved to be a rather satisfying read. It maintained a good balance between action and story progression and characterisation. It wasn’t the best first issue I’ve read, but given that I had no idea who any of these characters were, outside of the cameo by Thanos himself, it was still a pretty good comic. Plus it tied into the whole Infinity ongoing crossover event and provided a nice side-story, much like Frank Tieri’s Infinity: Heist (review) is doing.

With the new issue however, Al Ewing has to face a bit of an uphill battle for the precise reason that this series launched in the middle of a crossover and its premise depends on that very crossover. So there are some sacrifices being made here that work against the comic, rather than for. That’s really the big negative point of this series so far.

Most of this issue is taken up with the action sequences that have resulted from Proxima Midnight’s attack on New York, intended to serve up the city to her master Thanos. There are some other events that happen, events that end up directly affecting this main story, and its a nice varied bunch, although I would have liked to have some kind of a context for one of them, the first that we see.

This issue introduces two new characters, Dr. Strange and Blue Marvel. With the former, he is engaged in some psychic battle, one where he is being manipulated to serve the ends of some supervillain who goes unnamed even while his… mentor does his best to guide him off that path. With Blue Marvel, we get a recap of what the character thinks of his fellow superheroes and the agencies associated with them, such as SHIELD. Its somewhat disparaging commentary because he sees himself as a hero for everybody, and someone who holds himself accountable and doesn’t abuse his authority, as he thinks SHIELD is often wont to do and because he doesn’t like Tony Stark’s brand of leadership.

All of this creates an interesting dynamic for these characters in terms of how they are going to tie in to the “main” team of the Mighty Avengers, as led by Luke Cage. As we see over the course of this issue, Luke and his teammates are heroes for the people, heroes who hold the people first and foremost in their minds and have their support. This is all backed up with a very moving and powerful scene in the second half of the issue when the team (inevitably) bounces back from all the hurt and pain that Proxima Midnight is dishing out. This helps set the tone of what is undoubtedly going to happen with the team in future issues and even in the context of the current events since most of Earth’s superheroes are off on a space adventure against galactic threats.

Compared to the previous issue, there wasn’t any stilted dialogue from the villains, or any awkward moments between the characters, which was a good improvement. However, we don’t see anything about the current Power Man, who was shown as being mentored by Luke Cage in the previous issue, and White Panther, a character that I kind of enjoyed seeing a glimpse of previously. There whereabouts go unmentioned and unremarked, which I found to be a bit of a let down. However, that’s really it on the story issue, aside from the fact that any context for Dr. Strange’s actions is missing and thus appears clunky and random when inserted in as a part of the main story.

The art this time isn’t all that much different from the previous issue. The problems with Greg Land’s artwork, the “perfect” poses and lack of diversity in character expressions, remain. His pencils are fairly solid and he can definitely draw both single characters and a multitude in the same panel equally well, but he still needs to work on making his characters appear more natural. Jay Leisten’s inks and Frank D’Armata’s colours however definitely make for a great visual appearance and help raise the level of the artwork. There are some great blends of colours panel-to-panel throughout the issue, and I’m really liking what those two are doing. They are building on the pencils by Land and making the art standout in a way that it can’t on its own.

A fairly decent issue all told, but there are still some hurdles to cross. I’m going to stick with the series in the near future, and hope that it gets out of all the Infinity madness soon, so we can get to how these characters are all going to interact in more… normal circumstances.

Rating: 8/10

More Mighty Avengers: #1.