Review by Frank Plowright
Ahead of the Curve’s unfortunate cover is both exploitative and indiscreet, as anyone seeing it and heading on in will have a fair clue as to the surprise inside. Civil War ended with a kid bringing a jarful of coins and wanting to hire the heroes. It turns out his robot friend has been abducted by some rough vagrants, and he wants the robot back. The team member least suited to accompanying a kid is Humbug, so he’s allocated. Think of the sleazy confidence of the early Howard Wolowitz poured into a black leather costume and able to control insects. You won’t pity him much when he gets what’s coming to him.
The story is one that escalates, the kid originally treated with patronising kindness, but leading the team into exceptionally dangerous circumstances and toward adaptable and nutty genius villains. Along the way they also have to deal with more traditional, although no less dangerous characters who’ve fought the Avengers to a standstill. Justin Gray and Jimmy Palmiotti take a pleasingly tongue in cheek approach, continued when Zeb Wells takes over the writing. He finishes off the plot he’s inherited well enough, and reintroduces Paladin, unwelcome after betraying the team earlier.
Al Rio must have wondered what madness he’d been handed when the plot came through, but he draws everything as if it’s straightforward superhero action, which is the right approach, making the silliness even funnier. Clay Mann’s art on the remaining two chapters is proof of one hell of a natural talent who still has some developing to do, but his layouts are ambitious even if featuring unattractively stylised people.
He draws the team working for S.H.I.E.L.D. wanting to capture Moon Boy, whose untainted prehistoric DNA is the geneticist’s gold mine. That’s Wells’ plot for getting the team to the Savage Land, but once there he uses the unconventional environment to explore characters under stress. It’s quite the change in some cases, but the verdict’s out until the impact is seen in World War Hulk.
This continues to be a solid superhero series with imaginative plots, but inconsistent art.
