Hello friends and readers, it’s time to close out some miniseries as we finish our final week of Captain America and Avengers! How will Zack and Vishal feel this time? Plus, we combine with our final Fantastic Four tie-in with Fantastic Four #23, featuring some very nontraditional FF members. Tony Thornley will be bringing us home on Empyre with his thoughts
Empyre: Captain America #3
The most annoying thing anyone doing literary critique is Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey”. It posits that, on a high level
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
There are other steps, tighter moments that form the structure of the journey, but this monomyth can be an interesting, if reductive, way to analyse stories. Empyre: Captain America #3 would make Joseph Campbell angry.
You need to understand that this template isn’t the only way to tell stories, it’s just a common and effective one. It’s three act structure. It’s ensures that, at worst, you are echoing an ancient human tale. The important thing isn’t following the path beat by beat, but showing your audience a relatable character who experiences something interesting and then grows from it. That’s the meat of a solid story.
What Philip Kennedy Johnson does alongside artist Ariel Olivetti (who isn’t doing amazing work, but also isn’t still tracing over Warhammer 40k models) in this story is that middle part of the journey. They have heroes encounter fabulous forces and win a decisive victory. They don’t grow, they don’t change, their experiences are empty calories. Cap and his soldiers are the same jingoistic parodies they were in the opening issue. Anyone who stands in their way falls. Writing about it is like picking the last scraps of meat off a chick thigh.
It’s, in some ways, the worst kind of event tie-in comic. It isn’t additive, not to the characters and not to the event on the whole. You see, these tie-ins have a dissatisfying job. They can never provide resolution to the main story, so instead the best ones add depth to their character, so that, when the event ends and everyone goes back home, more has happened than action figures getting smashed together. This can’t even manage to do anything additive. Cap is always right and anyone who challenges him falls without a struggle. Perhaps it’s trying to show up the strength of Captain America as a military leader, which may not be the message anyone wants to emphisize in an age of rising American fascism. This was sixty pages of propaganda and punches. It isn’t worth going on this journey.
Empyre: Avengers #3
Boy, am I tired of Ka-Zar.
Seriously, I don’t get the point of him. He’s some dude named Kevin who ended up in the Savage Land and became its ruler or tamer or something and calls himself Ka-Zar and wears a loincloth and shows up in boring X-Men stories. That’s his whole deal. And yet, he gets the majority of the focus throughout this tie-in, as some Avengers I like (Scarlet Witch) and some Avengers I don’t care for (Black Knight) just kind of exist and play supporting roles to what Jim Zub seems to think is some incredible romance between Ka-Zar and Shanna. The thing is, it’s not. Ka-Zar and Shanna are incredibly boring characters – they were before this series, they are during this series, and they will be after this series. It’s not a fault of Jim Zub, but at a certain point it feels like drawing blood from a stone.
The other stories also got wrapped up in this issue, and for the life of me I could not tell you what actually happened. I think Chris will yell at me [Ed. Note: Yep!] if I don’t come up with something to talk about for a bit though, so let me go back and reread just to see what’s up….
Okay so Vision, Luke Cage, and Dr. Nemesis (my favorite group of characters in this book) finish their fight with Plant-Man by throwing a car at him and otherwise causing explosions. Which is fine, I guess? I don’t know, it felt mostly dull and was incredibly forgettable. The very small portion with Mockingbird, Wonder Man, and Quicksilver ends with a really dull Pietro ex machina where he beats everyone up to save the day because wouldn’t you know, he’s incredibly fast. Hooray!
Now, I’ll admit. I did not come into this book with high expectations, and I really did expect to be bored by it. But the thing is, I wanted to like the first issue a lot! But it made it very clear very quickly that it would not be a really enjoyable experience, and stayed consistent until the end. One day I will get the Avengers book I crave, but sadly it is not today and probably not this year.
Fantastic Four #23
I like Spider-Man. I like Wolverine. Nine times out of ten, I like them together. Unfortunately, this is the tenth time.
The best thing I can say about this tie-in is that the final issue of the main series itself made it essential reading. However, once again the characters are cliched, the plot is too convenient, and the stakes end up pretty low. The bad guys are defeated by the power of love via the Richards siblings, Logan and Spidey both crack wise, and it’s over.
It’s also disappointing that this issue wastes one of the best things about its villains. The Priests of Pama are plant loving (and powered) martial artists who live in and train in the jungle. Yet, their sinister plot is hatched in… the Upper East Side? Harlem? Maybe Soho? And that’s kinda boring, then they punch the heroes and get turned into trees.
It’s a dull, emotionless tie-in that gives us a couple okay moments, and some solid Alicia Masters content. But it at least was real good looking, thanks to Medina and Issake, and it gave us that snazzy blue Wolverine costume, which is probably the best new costume Logan’s gotten since around 2004 (sorry, not counting the HOXPOX costume, which is just the yellow and brown with some piping).
Tony Thornley is a geek dad, blogger, Spider-Man and Superman aficionado, X-Men guru, autism daddy, amateur novelist, and all around awesome guy. He’s also very humble.
Vishal Gullapalli is highly opinionated and reads way too much.
Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
