*of course, huge spoilers ahead*
Avengers #31
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Pencilled by Leinil Francis Yu
Inked by Gerry Alanguilan
Coloured by Sunny Gho
Cover by Yu and Gho
Dated August 2014
Quick recap: Captain America remembers how the Illuminati betrayed him, despite Dr. Strange giving him the ol’ Identity Crisis-style mindwipe. He storms Iron Man’s toy-room with a few trusted Avengers and for some reason the previously missing time-gem appears and zaps them all to the future. In the future they meet some new Avengers and older versions of themselves and the old Hawkeye informs them that they’ll keep on jumping, but not every Avenger will make every jump. The next jump lands them about 500 years in the future, with Iron Man and Hawkeye checking out.
And here we are, “Betrayal +422 Years” as Jonathan Hickman puts it. There’s very little plot to this book so I’ll tackle it as quickly and cleanly as possible:
Our Avengers land in the future, realize they are trapped in an energy bubble and the future-Avengers come to greet them. Except, these future-Avengers aren’t good guys—in this future Ultron has taken over. So the evil, future-Captain America and Black Widow kidnap the good, past-Cap and Widow. Evil Widow tells Good Widow to tell some future guy about Ultron-World. Apparently this will benefit Evil Widow, who then tells Good Widow to tell past Stark “I’m giving you a gift”. Yeah, this is one of those things that doesn’t make sense now but sort of plays out down the road. I wouldn’t get your hopes up, though; it’s more pointless mystery than it is meaningful foreshadowing.
Back in the energy bubble trap we find out Starbrand doesn’t need to breathe, Thor can hold is breathe and Hyperion ain’t afraid of no gas. Evil Thor tells Good Thor that serving Ultron is just great. Good Thor gets pissed.
The quick trip in this era comes to a swift close when Evil Cap does a little surgery on Good Cap, planting a bomb inside him. Apparently there is something in the future that Evil Cap wants to blow up—and in comes the time-gem to sweep them all away to their next destination! This time its way in the future—year 5045!
This issue ends with a quick epilogue showing Thor and Hyperion dissolving in the time-stream, clearly not making it to the next future jump, and rematerializing in their native time-period. Hawkeye is there too, unharmed, right where they left off and nobody knows what’s going on.
Do I really need to review this? I think you can tell how it plays out…
Jonathan Hickman has a few good ideas, but instead of really fleshing them out he opts for enigmatic dialogue, wasted pages full of repeated scenes and foreshadowing without any satisfying payoff.
The real dropped ball here is the work of Leinil Francis Yu. He’s an artist that is known to get sloppy when rushed—and boy do these pages looked rushed! His full-page depictions of the future are sloppy and lack any defining detail. What does the year 422 look like? I don’t know…angled? Moebius this is not. His illustration of 5045 might be the most disappointing; everything looks like it’s cut-out from stacks of cardboard. I know it must be hard to picture different futures (heck, don’t ask me what 500 years and 5000 years from now will look like) but what we get here is boring and hard on the eyes.
And it isn’t just the visions of the future that look hazy. Detail is absent from almost every element of the art—nothing here is pretty, or even complete-looking. With art this bad, it’s hard to concentrate on any positives with this issue.
Which is no big deal—I can’t seem to think of too many positives anyways. We see Captain America remembering how the Illuminati don’t like him… We get a little story about how future/evil Cap doesn’t like that he was programmed to be Captain America… No, there isn’t really anything to like here.
Avengers #32
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Pencilled by Leinil Francis Yu
Inked by Gerry Alanguilan
Coloured by Sunny Gho
Cover by Yu and Gho
Dated September 2014
Hey, you like being teased? If you didn’t, you probably wouldn’t still be reading Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers. Or, like me, you’d be rather pissed about this whole thing.
So Captain America, Black Widow and Starbrand get launched into year 5045. They end up in a garden where they meet Hickman’s favourite avatar, Franklin Richards. See, Franklin can’t die, so he’s seen it all. He’s godlike too, so he knows it all. He asks Captain America if we want to know who is behind the incursions or the nature of the multiversal collapse. Cap says “No, I’m mad at the Illuminati, tell me how to beat them up”. Of all the *&^$#%$^&*.
In this future, people have figured out how to live peacefully and sustain themselves. They are without borders or nations or needs and most have taken off into space. Franklin shows the Avengers around and treats the tour like the future is Jurassic Park. It’s impressive n’all, but we just saw the Avengers go to the far-reaches of space to defeat the homicidal builders of the universe in Infinity—and that was like 5000 years ago. Watching some miners drive a space-truck around Saturn isn’t all that impressive, Frankie. We also get to see the Avengers World, where there are big mech-versions of the Avengers, but it’s all very inconsequential. I mean it’s like he’s purposely wasting our time, introducing these high concepts without giving them much purpose.
The one thing we do learn is where the rogue planet came from. Apparently the mech-Avengers of the future knocked in back in time, and Franklin Richards orchestrated the whole “future Iron Girl helps knock it out of phase” plan we saw in that lazy .1 issue. Why? Because it was necessary. Because fate. Sure, sure.
Oh, and Black Widow mentions the Ultron World to Franklin just like she was supposed to. He says great, thanks, the maybe-not-so-evil Ultron-Black-Widow is doing just fine now.
So Cap, ignoring the marvels of the future, prods Franklin some more. He really wants to beat up the Illuminati. Franklin says that the incursions will not stop, the world will end and the Illuminati will fail—all thanks to Cap. But then how is this future possible? We don’t get the details. Franklin says “remember what Old Hawkeye told you?” (we readers were never filled in, and it remains a mystery here), “forget it. But you won’t,” which leads to a tirade on time travel and fate and will and crap. It’s as pedantic and forgettable as you imagine it will be.
So do we learn? Well, we got the goods on the rogue planet. It wasn’t entirely satisfying, but it was conclusive enough. What else…?
Anything?
Nope, just a lot of talk that goes nowhere. We should all feel right at home.
Cap says “let’s get back to the incursions and everything dying”. Franklin says “Nope, we’re out of time” and the Avengers are zapped away once more. Franklin ponders to himself once everyone has left if his message was understood. No, it wasn’t. If you wanted to be clear about it, you should have been clear about it. You made the mistake of getting Jonathan Hickman to write your dialogue. We all know it isn’t meant to be understood.
Neat, pointless-but-I-love-it twist: the big tree in the garden they were all hanging around? It was Groot. Ha!
Next time destination: “Betrayal +51 028 Years”. What does this future look like? The Death Star, apparently. Oh, and Black Widow and Starbrand are out. Cap is on his lonesome from here on.
Fortunately, Leinil Francis Yu ups his game here. It isn’t anything impressive, but there is much more detail than last issue and the characters aren’t all downright ugly all the time. That much is nice. It seems some time and effort was put into this book and I can proudly say it wasn’t all so hard on the eyes. Yu still isn’t an artist I really appreciate, but his work here isn’t half-bad.
I’m mad at this issue. We were given the keys to the kingdom of knowledge, but they were left with Captain America. Apparently he’s a bit of a dunce in the hands of Hickman, so we don’t actually learn anything. We focus on the petty rivalry between Cap and Iron Man instead of exploring the meat of the conflicts Hickman has set-up thus far. We’re too invested in the mystery of the incursions for this to all be some huge McGuffin. I don’t care about pissed off Cap and his beliefs and the egomaniac that is Iron Man. That’s been done. Move on.
And all of this is still supposed to have something to do with Original Sin?
It was all a big tease and we’re left wondering if even Hickman really knows what’s going on. Or maybe he’s just making it up as he goes along and biding his time before he actually has to explain something.
