“Avengers vs X-Men” #1 brings a lot of things (such as that first issue and the first foray into Infinite Comics), but the last big new thing that comes along with Marvel’s event here is the introduction of Marvel’s Augmented Reality app. We played with it briefly the other day when it was first released, but now that the issue is out there’s more to experience — and more to discuss.
Objectively, it’s a neat way to kick things off. Axel Alonso walks onto your page to tell you a bit about “AvX” with some nicely written buzz-lines, Bendis phones in for some commentary and you get to see the formation of a few pages. This phrase is getting tossed around a lot (by me) when discussing “AvX” and it’s add-ons, but it all very much does what it says on the box — and that is, for all intents and purposes, a good thing.
Subjectively, the methodology for unlocking the AR stuff is an eyesore. The AR logo sitting in the corner of the page is pretty awful, and while it is a good thing that it draws the eyes to it to make you aware it is there, it is also a bad thing that it draws the eyes away from the art to it to make you aware it is there. Subtlety seems key with something like this, and while I don’t have a better solution to how to make this work better (admittedly, the first thing I did was scan every page I came across until I noticed the logo), the logo is pretty glaring.
That and in some instances, the slightest nudge or twitch of the hand causes you to lose the AR experience entirely. It makes sense that when you move the camera from the image in question you should “lose” the extra material, but there is only so many times you can yell at your cat for head-butting your hand for affection before you start to feel like you’re being mean over something stupid.
Ultimately, the whole AR angle still feels like a great idea, but it’s clearly not a perfected one. That logo is fairly annoying to look at, but getting some light creative commentary on the issue as I look at it is a neat idea. In the long term, I imagine AR will give us some very cool extra content for the perception of added value to our books, but for now the entire experience can be summed up with, “Oh, that’s nice.”
