Jason Aaron's Avengers Sucks Ass

This whole article came out of a dumb joke. Just doing what fills the time, bullshitting with friends about comics. Filling time comes naturally on Mondays when the Marvel review copies drop. Out of habit, I read it all, eventually dropping the books that bore me and making sure I read the worst trash being published in a week.

For years now it’s been the same reaction week after week: Jason Aaron’s Avengers sucks ass.

For a while, I thought that was all the book deserved — the effort of criticism matching the apparent effort put into making me give a shit about Avenger Prime or Mephisto. But it bugged me that what should have been the dopest shit, like Galactus being an honorary Avenger so he could eat a Doctor Doom-possessed Ego the Living Planet, landed with the same grandiosity as a log of Galan’s cosmic crap after passing said living planet. And since I’m cursed with the login information to this website, you’re going to be cursed with hearing why.

Look and listen to Jason Aaron, and you’ll see he doesn’t care about subtlety. He’s got a big beard, big opinions on barbecue and a big back piece talking about how euphoric his thoughts on theism make him. In his comics, he similarly makes sure to fullass things, not half. If you wanted to be reductive, and I do, his famous Thor run can be summed up as “More Thors.” It’s the same writing philosophy as Axe Cop.

So his Avengers is about escalation. It opens with cavemen Avengers (a perfect concept), and keeps growing from there. We get the Squadron Supreme and the Winter Guard and the multiversal Avengers and on and on. It’s interchangeable IP, another hero Aaron will write a one-shot about, then file away until they are needed for a big, beautifully drawn fight scene.

And let’s pause here to make one thing clear: Comic artists are more important than the writer. Guys like Javier Garrón, Aaron Kuder and Ed McGuinness kill it on this book. The art is consistently incredible, almost making me care about what they’re drawing. It’s a shame, because for a midcard up-and-comer like Garrón, this should be a career-making gig, but strong workmanship has a habit of getting ignored when no one is invested in the plot.

For a book that should be the central cog of Marvel’s line, the entire story has felt strangely isolated. Now, I’m not here simping for crossovers; y’all know we got too many. That said, when the book called Avengers, about Marvel’s Avengers, doesn’t seem like it knows what is happening with its characters in other books, or what big, universe-ending threat is attacking the world this week, it breaks that facade of continuity investment that keeps Wednesday Warriors warring.

And it isn’t like Aaron wanted the book to stand on its own. Throughout the run he made sure to tie into things like Heroes Reborn and War of the Realms. Those just happened to be Aaron’s events to begin with. By the time there’s a line-wide, blockbuster summer event co-starring the Avengers, about the Avengers’ house becoming God (the inscrutably strong A.X.E.: Judgement Day), what we don’t see is this book acknowledging it at all. What we do see is Mark Russell and Greg “Greg Land” Land doing a fill-in issue about Hawkeye, a character who otherwise is not in this book.

The title becomes a revolving door, with characters coming and going willy-nilly. You never have long enough with Blade or She-Hulk or Echo to get invested in the journey Aaron is putting them on. The book is, like all too many corporate comics out there, a heartless, reanimated husk, dredging along through the muck and the mire, waiting for their corporate overlords to do us all a favor and end their misery.

We’re at the climax, and despite all the big, giant, cool Marvel shit Aaron is throwing around, I don’t even have a half-chub. The chub I do have is from those perfect artists mentioned above, who have never done anything wrong in their life. I’m exhausted by the monotony of a big story where nothing will ever be the same followed by everything being the same and the characters remaining chiseled in stone as if nothing happened. It’s been five years of forgettable nothingness. It’s a never-ending feats compilation thread, not a narrative.

Said climax is “Avengers Assemble,” a 10-part crossover that started with one giant fight scene that refuses to end. Why must they fight? To save the universe. Who must they fight? Evil people who want to destroy the universe because they are evil and also one of them is actual Satan. There’s not an underlying emotional thread to any of this. They fight because it’s a superhero comic. It’s filling time and churning out IP until Marvel finds someone to do it for cheaper.

Despite what you might think after reading this, I don’t get angry about comics anymore. Can you be angry at a volcano for erupting? Can you rage against a bird for singing? Can you be angry that a hella conservative, IP-hoarding corporation isn’t taking risks? They are the scorpion, we are the frog and we are sitting in the stock pot as it slowly comes to a boil. (I think those are different metaphors, but don’t stop me, baby, I’m on a roll.)

Jason Aaron’s Avengers is a herald of the future of comics. A future that sells you on the ouroboros that is this IP driven world. It exists because it existed in the past and it will continue to exists because it is proven. The age of risk taking and trying new stuff is over. Funny that the last golden Marvel age, the period of Marvel Now!, is the time we all decided Jason Aaron was awesome because we had Esad Ribic on Thor: God of Thunder and we didn’t read all the words. We’ve been at this since 2018, and while it’s harsh, I feel the need to caution you, these assembled Avengers suck a phenomenal amount of ass.

Or hell, maybe I’m channeling all my anger about meeting my mom’s new boyfriend today and the book is good. But I’m a professional who would never let that impact my work. So I doubt it.