Kang the Conqueror is in need of the Avengers’ help, but what could possibly convince them to help him? The means to save 1000 lives is a good start, because the Master of Time is slowly running out of time himself — the Tribulation events are coming. Avengers #2 is written by Jed MacKay, drawn by C.F. Villa, colored by Federico Blee, and lettered by Cory Petit.
Armaan Babu: We may not have a thousand lives to save, but we have only a thousand words (note to readers: please don’t check the actual word count for this bit to work) to talk about Avengers #2! Steel yourself, for we are already running out of time! Are you up for this, our own personal trial? Are you prepared to face what’s coming, with your hyperlinks, vast knowledge of comic book history and intelligent, articulate insights? Are you ready to face…The Review?
Anna Peppard: If not, I’ll probably dramatically monologue at you about mysterious outer space mysteries while painfully clutching a gaping bloody hole in my chest until you learn to appreciate the gravity of my words. Just kidding! Me and Kang have nothing in common except our taste in boots. But you should read on anyway because we are going to talk about explosive action and exemplary exposition and also, Armaan read Timeless so you don’t have to!
Moment By Moment
Armaan: It appears that Jed MacKay is out planning a long game, and as such, there’s still a lot of setup to do that #1 just didn’t have time for. We’re still very much in the setup phase, which has got me feeling restless and impatient — but we get some lovely Avengers moments in between. Shall we get to those, first?
Anna: In our review of #1, we talked a bunch about the mechanics of relaunching a franchise, and I found myself thinking those thoughts again here, contending with this more exposition-heavy issue. I understand and share your restlessness while simultaneously admiring MacKay’s solid decisions around pacing.
Issue #1 hooked us with beautiful bombast while Avengers #2 starts laying the narrative groundwork the debut largely eschewed. This is just some good old fashioned “rules of serialized storytelling” stuff, but it’s surprising how many relaunches get the balance wrong. And the moments! The moments are similarly solid, giving us great glimpses of character within action set pieces (or subversions thereof — more about that in a minute).
Armaan: These are really fun for me. Where half of the comic is wrapped up in Carol and Kang’s conversation (which we’ll get to in a bit), the rest of the comic gives each Avenger a great little moment to shine — some more than others. Iron Man, Thor, and the Vision, for instance, deal with your standard superhero disasters of crashing vehicles while looking damn good doing it.
The Black Panther, however, gets a little more spotlight in which to play. Bouncing off buildings, leaping through windows, and taking out Hydra terrorists in quick succession. I especially enjoyed the smaller panels showing his moves: Black Panther is a fighter of quick, efficient precision, less grandiose than his team members but getting the job done just as well, if not better.
Anna: When I teach comics, I often use a Jack Kirby page from Tales of Suspense #85 (1967), featuring a nine-panel grid of Captain America wordlessly fighting Batroc the Leaper, to talk about how Scott McCloud’s concept of “closure” relates to superhero fight mechanics. (I think I might have stolen this idea from a Comics Journal roundtable discussing Charles Hatfield’s excellent book on Kirby, Hand of Fire.)
Artist C.F. Villa’s half-page, 8-panel grid of Black Panther beating up Hydra goons would work almost as well. I’m a sucker for this classic type of action sequence, cropped and paced so you move with the rhythm of the kicks and punches and dodges and feel the power of the superhero reverberating against the thick black panel borders. The page 2 splash featuring Black Panther powerfully striding-but-sort-of-flying over the rooftops of Mexico City was also excellent, hitting a mix of grounded-ness and awesomeness that’s perfect for BP.
Armaan: The other great moment is with Captain America, filling the exact role Captain Marvel recruited him for: being a man of the people. No action, not even anyone evil to confront — just helping a tired truck driver deliver medical supplies. He could have just asked the driver to stop, flown in the medical supplies himself, or any number of things…but he chose the most grounded approach possible, and it’s a really great beat to have in a superhero comic.
Last issue gave us the whys of the comic, and showed how the team works off of each other’s strengths. Here, we see the strengths of each team member individually. Some grounded, some quick action bit, some big, glamorous, Save The Day moments — it feels like a great take on what an alternate #1 might have looked like.
Anna: The Cap scene shook me a little because there was a terrible accident last week in Carberry, Manitoba that’s been all over the Canadian news, involving exactly what almost happens here — a collision between a bus and a transport truck. Wish Sam had been there to stop it.
The Tribulation Events (and a quick nod to Timeless)
Armaan: While (for whatever value that word has here) the Avengers are out saving a thousand lives, Kang catches Captain Marvel up on what she needs to know. I love moments when villains acknowledge they’re at a disadvantage, when they freely offer up something just as a peace offering for a chance to be heard. The knowledge of how to save those people was such a gift — Kang’s at a low point, and bald-faced bribery is the best chance he’s got.
Anna: It’s definitely a familiar trope, but I appreciated that we get that acknowledged here, with Kang denying the initial assumption that he wants the Avengers to take out his enemies, in favor of setting up a more cerebral yet also very practically cataclysmic scenario, involving space MacGuffins and our heroes getting judged by cosmic forces. (Again? But I digress, I’ll save any complaining for later, when we have a better understanding of what the Tribunal involves.)
Armaan: Now, Avengers #2 comes straight out 2022’s Timeless, the second of such comic books MacKay has written. Both of them are Kang-centric stories, but ones that offer little teases into what people can expect from the Marvel Universe overall. A summer brochure wrapped up as a Conqueror story.
All that you really need to know is summarized in this issue: something called the Tribulation events are coming, and a man named Myrddin engineered a group of heroes to take out Kang, and seek the prize the Tribulation Events would bring.
For those of you who haven’t read Timeless, however, there are a few key things left out. The first, which may be revealed later, is that Kang is seeking out something called The Missing Moment — that is the prize he and Myrddin are ultimately seeking. We know nothing about what it is, or why it’s so important: only that Kang knows when and where it is, and that Myrddin does not.
The second, and more interesting thing is that Myrddin has engineered a group of Arthurian heroes (Myrddin is even meant to take on the role of Merlin, himself) — and that each of those heroes has a title, a role. One that corresponds 1:1 against the roles we see the Avengers filling up in those credits pages. The Star, the King, the God, the Engineer and so on — Myrddin has one of each, himself.
Anna: I had such good intentions to read Timeless in preparation for this review, but there are so many other comics out there that don’t feature Greg Land art, so I read some of those instead. But I’m very thankful you read it. Me and our readers owe you a debt of gratitude, to be repaid in silly memes and/or cute animal pics and/or me reminding you you’re awesome even more often than usual.
Armaan: Readers, you heard here. Send those memes and/or cute animal pics my way!
I will say, I may not usually enjoy Greg Land art, but Timeless does feature this defeated, exasperated alien in its opening pages who is just so clearly done with Kang’s bullshit that may be my favorite panel Land has ever drawn.
I like this exchange between the two. As leader of the Avengers and thus default recipient for Exposition of Grand Import, Captain Marvel’s a lot more fun than say, Steve Rogers would have been. They would both have the same goals and same general patterns of distrust, begrudging willingness to listen, and a need to help a bleeding Kang out, but Carol spends much of her time looking for an excuse to punch Kang into accepting life-saving treatment.
I also greatly enjoy the line “You’ve been trying to crush the Avengers since Steve Rogers was the new kid.” Kang has this sense of urgency, but he’s on his knees for the entire exchange, mask off, shirtless, bleeding — he’s bargaining from a position of weakness and vulnerability but still never once displays a shred of humility. He’s on death’s door and he refuses to give up his pride. Or even attempt to hide his maniacal grin at the thought of approaching “megadeaths”.
Anna: Perhaps the thing I appreciated most about this sequence was Villa’s attention to giving Kang some noticeable yet nicely manscaped chest hair. It feels like hairy chests are making a comeback in superhero comics lately and I’m here for it. Also, Kang reopens his wound by… monologuing too hard? I’d ask him whether he needed to gesticulate like a classically trained Shakespearian actor while blood seeps from his chest but that’s a rhetorical question — of course he needed to do this, Kang’s flamboyance is his only redeeming virtue.
Armaan: However, if this scene was meant to get me all excited about what’s to come, it left me…well, not flat, entirely, but I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat. Between this and the extra-sized Timeless, we have had three issues so far of teases, some of which are just intriguing but meaningless combinations of words thrown at us. By the second tease issue, I’ve already bought into this comic. I’m excited to read about the Avengers Avengering. There were some really great moments in this issue…but they’re self-contained moments.
Also — knowing there’s an “Impossible City” is nowhere near as interesting as it would be to know what it is that makes that city impossible. There’s only so far a tease can go.
We still haven’t gotten to the story itself, and see what parts the Avengers as a team have to play in it. I’m really hoping the next issue is where things finally get started.
Anna: Confronting how out-of-date I am with my knowledge of Marvel’s cosmic entities makes me feel old but hey, I brought that on myself by reading too many comics from before I was born. If we can keep up the bombast and add a little more space and time (or time and space?) for our team to coalesce, I’ll be happy with what comes next. Just don’t make it another “Judgement Day.” Feels like we just had one of those.
In terms of what comes next, I’m probably most excited to watch the progression of Carol Danver’s journey as leader of the team. We’ve seen her in leadership roles before, and when she’s been a leader, one of her core differences from someone like Steve Rogers is that where Steve is an idealist, Carol is more of a pragmatist. Not the way Tony Stark or the other members of the Illuminati are; despite Civil War II trying hard to convince me otherwise, I don’t see Carol as the type to sacrifice folks for the greater good. But I do see her as the type who would do what she does here — accept that life-saving info from Kang even though she knows he definitely can’t be trusted, because she’s a hero, and heroes save lives.
Importantly, this decision feels like it extends from character, and doesn’t make Carol look stupid. Her watching Kang like a hawk as he snoozes in his hospital bed speaks to her understanding of the fact she made a terribly risky choice, and that the consequences of that choice will ultimately rest on her shoulders.
Avengers Assortments!
- The silliest part of this is that Kang mentally put together a list of people to save and he made sure it was exactly 1000. Picture him going, “Hmm, if they stop the bus crash AND help with that earthquake, it’s 1023 people, that won’t do, I could not mention the earthquake, but I’d need that leaves me 47 deaths deficient..”
- I like that Vision is the one who gets to do the Superman pose lifting the plane. There was a time when Vision was such a core member of the Avengers, he went solo in the title’s corner box. Giving him this issue’s most classical hero moment feels nostalgic and hey, nostalgia’s not always bad.
- The Avengers are operating out of the Jarvis Lounge, a space recently introduced by Al Ewing in the pages of his Wasp series with Kate Niemczyk. It’s built into the former lab of Janet Van Dyne’s scientist father and features a swanky bar where the Avengers former butler serves drinks. We haven’t seen much of the space in the pages of this book yet, but we’re promised more in the issues to come, with Scarlet Witch and Thor discussing future transportation options (“mayhap something might be done with the bifrost…”).
- Poor Wanda. The team’s magic-user with power she’s barely scratching the surface of and she’s stuck on transportation duty. Magik knows exactly what you’re going through, Wanda!
- Between this and Avengers Beyond, all Avengers books currently revolve around a top-tier villain coming to the Avengers for their help with a much more dangerous new nemesis. It’s weird that that’s apparently the new Avengers standard, but hey, it’s working!
Anna Peppard
Anna is a PhD-haver who writes and talks a lot about representations of gender and sexuality in pop culture, for academic books and journals and places like Shelfdust, The Middle Spaces, and The Walrus. She’s the editor of the award-winning anthology Supersex: Sexuality, Fantasy, and the Superhero and co-hosts the podcasts Three Panel Contrast and Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow!
