Avengers #0

By Al Ewing, Kenneth Rocafort and Laura Martin

Avengers #0 is a hard book to review. In this issue we get six short tales that deal with six different and all-new teams. There are multiple writers and artists since there are so many different stories. In this review we’ll pick out the highlights and unfortunately, the low points.

Our main story here revolves around the newly formed Squadron Supreme as they go over the different Avengers teams that have formed. This particular part of the story is written by James Robinson, and is a pretty good segue into our look of the other teams. Robinson succeeds in making this fun for readers. Many times a part like this in a book can come off as boring, but Robinson keeps things fresh and the cast is diverse in their personalities. The least entertaining of these stories is from G.Willow Wilson and it features Captain Marvel and Alpha Flight. Wilson is a very good writer, but this just fell a bit flat and focuses on Captain Marvel investigating an entity in space. As a reader, it’s hard to really care about any of this in the six page preview that we get. The story was just not the best and the resolution was a bit lame too. Wilson is definitely capable of better, but this little preview shouldn’t make anyone that interested in the book.

There are a bunch of artists at work here, but the one that sticks out the most is Kenneth Rocafort in The Ultimates preview. Rocafort has a very distinct style and as a fan, it’s cool to see him able to draw some of the characters in the Marvel Universe for once. His work in this snippet of the book brings a lot of texture to the title as well. A panel where Ms. America is dancing and stars are coming out of her feet is made infinitely better by the texture that Rocafort uses in his art. Gerardo Sandoval does the pencils for New Avengers, and it’s a rough looking section of the book. The pages are muddy and poorly drawn. In some panels, faces are odd looking and just completely off. It’s not a great display of work so far for New Avengers. The colorist that kicks the most ass here is Frank Martin. His colors on the Squadron Supreme section of the book are wonderful and fit the tone of the book well. The colors come off very good, and they’re not too dark for the tone of the book.

As far as preview books go, this was all right. There are some hits in here, but there also appears to be some misses. Avengers #0 is honestly a book that you don’t really need to buy, and with a $5.99 price tag, it would be difficult to blame anyone for passing. This is a book for people who haven’t paid attention to the Marvel Universe last year.