By Nick Spencer, Jonathan Hickman, Stephano Caselli
All-New Marvel Now! is upon us and I couldn’t be more excited. Come on! Stand up and cheer! Get pumped! Yay for superhero comics!
Sorry, I sort of lost it, there. Anyway, Avengers World #1 is here. Hickman is plotting some things out, but this is Spencer’s book. It even feels like a Spencer book. It has numerous intertwined plots that are all going on at the same time and AIM is here, too. In other words, it feels like Spencer’s work on Secret Avengers. That series is awesome, so that’s not a bad thing; it just means that it doesn’t have the feel of a Hickman book. This is probably the book for those mouth breathers that hate Hickman.
Hickman’s roster is all here and Spencer does his best to try to give everybody a little spotlight. Spencer seems to do well with little character moments, so hopefully this will be the characterization companion to Avengers and New Avengers. Nick can give us the emotion and Jonathan can give us the spectacle. Hey, it sounds great to me.
AIM is involved in some mysterious plot and numerous disasters (both natural and supernatural) are happening simultaneously across the globe. The Avengers (working with SHIELD) send little teams to do recon and attempt to contain these situations. This sets the tone for the book while giving lesser known characters a chance to interact and have their voice heard.
Stephano Caselli’s pencils further distinguish Avengers World from the other Hickman books by making things less epic and more like standard superhero fare. Everything looks smooth and some panels are almost perfect in execution. The character’s faces have tons of fun expressions to make the emotional scenes work even better. This is a really pretty book. I hope he stays for a while.
Avengers World is off to a great start. If there must be a book that replaces one of my two Hickman Avengers issues every month, I’m glad that this is it. With Caselli’s pencils and Spencer’s knack for anything involving SHIELD/Avengers-relations, we appear to be in capable hands.
