Review: The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #17

STORY

Continuing with the story arc The Kingdom of Vampires the story starts off with what is presumably a flashback. Why do I say presumably? Because the comic does not inform the reader one way or the other. If you have not read the last few issues of this story the third scene suddenly becomes quite jarring and leaving you wondering what exactly you’ve missed. At least this comic is all about action so you can get past that a bit and just roll with the punches. The action is really quite entertaining for the most part but there are moments that wont make any sense. How are rats for instance leaving bite marks on She Hulk? Or the fact the the explosives tied to the vermin would bother her at all? For anyone who understands the capabilities of the characters this is a real disconnect. Not that I haven’t seen this sort of thing before in a comic but it always takes me out of the story when a hero is hampered by someone they totally outclass.

The sory is a three way struggle between the vampires, the Avengers and the Winter Guard as each has their own methods and agendas for dealing with the crisis of the vampire war. As in previous issues Dracula narrates the story, though it might not always seem like it by the end you will understand that this is indeed his story and always has been. This part of the story is handled masterfully and throughout this arc Aaron has shown that he can write a very complex villain in Dracula. His other narrator Blade is sadly off the mark a bit. Some of his dialogue/monologues come across as clunky. I don’t know if he’s trying to write the old school Marv Wolfman Blade because some of this comes across as being very Silver Age and not modern comic prose. It’s blade saying very Blade things referring to his condition in a very Blade way, it just feels recycled. What is nice is Blade’s insights into the Avengers and the completely awesome battle he has with the Shadow Colonel. Its a real slugfest and each fighter shows what a badass they are.

The other characters are mostly in the background in this story which is fine here as Blade and Dracula are the real meat of the piece and the humor in this issue works out a lot better than it did in issue 15 (Thor jokes are redeemed). But I can’t get past how disjointed some of this is, there is an issue with the She Hulk’s powers that is both poorly described and poorly illustrated and you sort of have to guess at how it was all resolved. It’s just really clunky and it’s another scene that drags down what could have been a much better comic. There’s even a scene set up with the Black Panther and his vampire opponent that is just left hanging on a pivotal moment, so unless Aaron is setting something up for later you are just left wondering about that bit.

I’ve seen Jason Aaron write well and I’ve seen him write badly, this time he’s somewhere in the middle.

ART

The art is once again quite good, with the heroes looking awesome and the villains being dastardly. The panels are packed with action and energy, they have a terrific flow and there is no confusion as to what I’m looking at or where I should look. A lot of the pages are saturated with night time hues or bloody reds which I find to be both appealing and appropriate in a story with vampires. The one bit that didn’t quite work has Dracula being cast into the wastes of Chernobyl. The sky is very light but a truck has its headlights on. So, is it day, night, twilight? Its hard to say but its one minor gaff on the colorist’s part in an otherwise stellar job.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The comic has a grate conclusion with a nice twist but its not all good as there are issues writing wise. 3 out of 5!

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REVIEW: AVENGERS: EARTH’S MIGHTIEST HEROES 17
Writer:Jason Aaron
Art:David Marquez
Colors:Clayton Cowles