One of the problems of comics is figuring out where the puzzle pieces fit. Miniseries, limited series, and sidequels can help set up your grand finale, but if you haven’t been keeping tabs on the main story, it can be a tall task for the average reader. If you don’t catch your audience up quickly, you can lose someone and possibly impact the greater story. By trying out creative storytelling techniques or making unique decisions, you can help make your mark. On the other hand, if you don’t set yourself apart, you might crash and burn. While “Avengers: Beyond” #1 has an intriguing start, the issue screeches to an expository halt once the titular character gets pulled into the action.
Written by Derek LandyCover by Greg Land & Frank D’armata
Illustrated by Greg Land
Inked by Jay Leisten
Colored by Frank D’armata
Lettered by VC’s Cory PetitSomeone has been manipulating the Avengers for the past several months, altering the very fabric of reality in an attempt to prepare the planet for a threat that could destroy everything. Here, now, this unseen individual is to be dragged, kicking and screaming, from the shadows and into the light—and is revealed as the Beyonder! Something big is coming to the Marvel Universe…
Let’s start with the biggest problem with “Avengers: Beyond” #1. It’s not a good premier issue. While the series begins with your traditional recap page, and Landy works hard to catch you up to speed, you will have a steep learning curve if you haven’t followed the exploits of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Fortunately, Landy finds a way to give a bit of grounding and fun via the narration. While we discover who is behind these omnipotent and somewhat snarky narrative text boxes, it feels like a classic narrator. Not quite as winking to the audience as Stan Lee’s narration, there is a level of meta-commentary that keeps you going. There’s a level of genre savvy and mystery that keeps you guessing. Again, all you know at the beginning is that the avengers have forgotten their missions and that a supposed puppetmaster is behind the scenes. By having that puppetmaster put in their two cents, you have a pretty solid opening action sequence, highlighted by some excellent combat illustrations.
While Greg Land’s art isn’t doing anything revolutionary, it’s easy to follow and features some impressive physicality. This is especially true with She-Hulk giving a German suplex to The Autocrat or watching Blade take a pot shot on the foe. The opening pages of “Avengers: Beyond” #1 are the highlight of the issue. There were also some impressive visuals of the weird future tech you can only get when combining Stark Enterprises and Wakandan technology. But, again, it’s all pretty simple visual storytelling. Still, Land’s angles make the machine feel larger than life, and the almost omnipresent tentacles of the machine remind you that it will be a big deal. Other moments feature incredibly detailed action, the Avenger’s fight with Tiamok stands out, but these early pages just have a specific energy. The issue starts strong between the impressive display of physical strength and the unique but not overbearing narration. But when the machine turns on, and the narrator gets pulled into the action, it becomes painfully evident that this issue is here to do one thing, set the stage for another event in another comic.
It’s not entirely clear why taking the Beyonder out of the narrator’s box and putting him onto the pages of “Avengers: Beyond” #1 doesn’t quite work, but that’s exactly what happens. Once the Beyonder gets ripped into the action, it becomes the worst form of an exposition dump. There is little action and imagery that fails to capture some of the magnitudes of the situation, and the charm of the narration just becomes annoying when you see who is saying those things. In a way, the Beyonder feels like an off-brand Q from Star Trek as written in the comic. He’s a being with near-cosmic power and a smarmy attitude to back it up, but it just comes off as dull. It also doesn’t help that this conversation happens in a boring, nondescript hallway. The machine that added an ominous feeling to the backgrounds of previous panels is replaced by the overbearing jet engines of The Beyonder’s jumpsuit. There’s just something about the visuals that feels uninspired after the high-octane opening. Even the fight with Tiamok, which is visually impressive, feels more like an attempt to keep the book engaging after multiple pages of less than exciting explosion. In a way, the latter half of the issue feels like an episode of a Marvel TV show instead of the premier of a finale starting mini-series.
In a way, that’s probably the biggest problem with “Avengers: Beyond” #1; even with an exciting start, it has to set up a chess board with pieces from across multiple books. After a while, it starts to feel like homework, remembering who the Beyonders are, where they’re from, and why someone might want to steal their power. While the buildup to ‘War of the Realms’ felt organic and fun, this buildup feels plodding and meandering. Even the arrival of the Black Order at the end feels more like a mandated hook than anything designed to advance the story in an exciting way. Maybe there is a more robust connection there than I realized, but I’m also not reading all of the Avengers titles coming out right now. If you have to do that level of homework for a premier issue to make sense, then it’s probably not doing that great of a job. Overall, it doesn’t set the hook and quickly overstays the charm of the first few pages of narration.
Final Verdict: 5.5 While “Avengers: Beyond” #1 starts off strong, too much exposition and uninspired settings make the series premier feel like a chore.
