Review Roundup: JLA/AVENGERS #1

WHO FARTED?!??

Now that I've read JLA/AVENGERS #1, I wanted to see what other reviewers were saying about the issue.  I'd already read Jess Lemon's review over at The PULSE (best response to Jess's review came from J. Kevin Carrier over on the Micah Wright forum: "Yeah. I'm the Bizarro Jess Lemon -- 'Me want superheroes to be MORE ridiculous.'  The writers take themselves and the characters WAY too seriously, and have sucked all the enjoyment out of the genre. Grant Morrison is about the only guy writing superheroes who even comes close to getting it.  'Oh boo hoo, they're shooting beams from their hands and fighting giant starfish, it's just too far-fetched.'  Amateur hour. Let's give Jess a couple of Bob Kanigher METAL MEN issues and watch her head explode!") but I knew that there had to be some dyed-in-the-wool comics fans who were reviewing this comic.  Here's a sampling of what I found:

• Franklin Harris described the book as "crisply drawn, fast-paced and, at times, quite funny."  (Franklin also reacts to Jess Lemon's review in a separate entry.)
  

• Paul Brian McCoy of Silver Bullet Comics gave the comic 2.5 bullets (out of a possible 5) "for successful pandering" but only 2 bullets "for actual creative effort" and warned "don't start acting like it's the best thing you've read in a while, because then I'll know you're just faking."  (I actually thought Paul raised some interesting points in his review, especially with respect to how well Pérez's hyper-detailed, hyper-crammed art really serves the story, but he lost me with gratuitously crass comments such as "corporate masturbation.")

• A different SBC reviewer, Ray Tate, gave it 5/5 bullets, but after reading McCoy's interview, we know Tate's just faking it.

• Randy Lander and Don MacPherson both gave it a "Recommended (8/10)" rating.  Randy called it "a gorgeous, slam-bang super-hero epic 20 years in the making" and Don described it as "an action-oriented story that celebrates the extensive histories and traditions of two distinct forces in pop culture."  Don also made an interesting observation about what might underpin the differences between each universe's attitude toward its respective heroes (which Busiek uses to great effect):  "It all stems from the origins of each continuity. The DC Universe has its roots in the 1940s, when American pride was strong and trust in the country's leaders was unequalled. Marvel's characters, on the other hand, really took off in the 1960s, when its readership was immersed in philosophies of rebellion and growing corruption in government."

• I was surprised (as was Paul himself) that Paul O'Brien liked JLA/AVENGERS as much as he did.  I never expected him to give it an A.

• Augie De Blieck  Jr. was also surprised to find how much he enjoyed JLA/AVENGERS.  It wasn't so much that Augie didn't know what he was getting into; he had the "big boffo" "cosmic storyline" pegged pretty much from the start.  But despite that, as Augie wrote, "Kurt Busiek pleasantly surprised me with a cosmic storyline that not only doesn't seem to stick its head up where the sun doesn't shine, but also could pull some clever things out of its hat."  (At least it was pulling things out of its hat...)  Augie does have some problems with the art, though, including the proportions on heads and faces (which also bugged me):  "Superman's head on the second panel three pages from the end looks no better proportioned than what most people would lance into Rob Liefeld for."  Yowch - comparing Pérez's artwork to Rob Liefeld's?  I hope Augie's flame insurance is paid up, because that's not a comparison that's going to sit well with die-hard Pérez fans.

• The aptly-named "Axe To Grind" review said:  "JLA/Avengers #1 encompasses everything that is wrong with the medium; An overpriced wankfest where the characters are one dimensional, the dialogue is insipid and a plot that obviously caters to the lowest common denominator."  (I have no idea who wrote this review; it appears on the site of Fremto, "a division of our comic store located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada."  Perhaps Fremto is a self-aware store (kind of like Ego, The Living Planet; or Krakoa, The Living Island) and wrote the review itself.  If so, nice work, Fremto!  I'm sure you'll eventually master the concept of parallel construction.)

• But by far my favorite review of JLA/AVENGERS was the tag-team crossover review between Alan David Doane and Chris Allen.  Alan played the bad cop to Chris's good, but Chris got off many good lines despite his casting:  "[T]hat cover just about says it all, huh? I guess we'd just be trading clichés, but one would hope the characters would be moving on it, instead of posing for a mall photographer's family portrait and looking the wrong way. 'You folks want the hearth background or the giant starfish?'"  And Chris also seemed to take issue with Pérez's faces:  "Pérez drew [Superman] much better back in ACTION COMICS, rather than this J.C. Penney mannequin on the cover."  (The CBG variant of the review has ADD's numeric score for the book: 3.5/5.  Which is interesting, because if I were still using a ten-point scale as I did when I first started reviewing, that's equivalent to what I would have given (7/10) if I'd been forced to assign the book a rating.)

And for those who (like me) were sure that they were missing things in the first issue, X-Fan has a very helpful thread on JLA/AVENGERS Annotations.  It doesn't mention if Starro ever appeared in SPOOKY ECHINODERM TALES or not, but it's still a good resource for fans old or new.  ¶ 10:16 AM | |