Review by Frank Plowright
Jason Aaron’s five years writing The Avengers has all built toward Avengers Assemble’s ten chapters of mayhem. The Masters of Evil have been tinkering with time across the multiverse, ensuring the Avengers, and in some cases humanity, never evolve. Ghost Rider, Robbie Reyes, now the All-Rider has been collecting the ultimate Avengers team as seen in Avengers Forever: The Pillars. Simultaneously, as seen in History’s Mightiest Heroes, the primary Avengers team has journeyed back in time and is on the verge of meeting their prehistoric counterparts.
Avengers Assemble is Aaron’s attempt to show that even with the Avengers being among the highest grossing film franchises now, with the right artists comics can still trump the movie screen. Javier Garrón and Aaron Kuder alternate on the central chapters, and they are the right artists. There’s barely a moment for conversation as the waves of disaster follow one after the other, and it’s all magnificently drawn if either of those two are involved. With other artists, though, especially on the final chapter, standards slip.
The only real break in the action is for an interlude explaining Avenger Prime, the person who sits at the end of the universe as humanity’s final hope. Aaron’s been building some mystery about who exactly that might be, and perpetuates that until a disclosure that readers steeped in Avengers history may have already figured out. Even if you’re among them, it’s still a nice touch.
However, that’s rare in what’s just one grinding battle chapter after another. Aaron has built each of the Masters of Evil up as the ultimate of their ilk, and so defeating them one by one can be no easy matter, and then there’s also Mephisto and his machinations, not to be confused with the 1960s psychedelic soul band of the same name. Aaron keeps inflating the threat, so ever more Avengers are needed, and as the core cast can’t be killed the casualties among their alternatives build up, yet the tragedy is absent as we barely know them.
Better aspects are Aaron not forgetting some bit players he’s introduced to the Avengers and using them cleverly; nice roles for Atu, Ellisiv and Frigg, the Goddesses of Thunder; and the way Doom is eventually defeated. The absolute best sequence occurs near the end with a character Aaron has cherished throughout his run, but who sits out most of Avengers Assemble. It’s an all too rare moment of contemplation in what’s otherwise excess. What Aaron’s attempting shines through, but there’s not the necessary balance between spectacle and the smaller moments that should illuminate it.
