Matt Kindt pumps the breaks on another Hunger Games rip-off before it gets started.
Written by Matt Kindt
Illustrated by Steven Sanders• Hank Pym, Wolverine, and She-Hulk bring the students of the Marvel Universe together to announce a new CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS!
• This CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS pits the super students of schools all over the Marvel U (including some you’ve never seen before) against each other.
• However, the Contest is interrupted when Thanos’ forces descend on Earth. What do they have to do with the young heroes?
I know you probably usually skip it, but did you read the little bullet-pointed, italicized solicitation up above? No? Okay, hang on, I’ll wait for you to go back and do that.
Did you do it? Congratulations – you just got everything you needed out of “Infinity: The Hunt” #1, if you care about its existence as a potential tie-in to “Infinity.” Beyond that, what needs to be stressed is that “The Hunt” #1 is, above all else, a comedy book. Matt Kindt introduces a Hunger Games concept as an intentional afterthought to get all of the Marvel 616 kids in one place for the mayhem that “Infinity” has wrought. But the “Battle of the Network Stars” gets cut short when distress signals from Atlantis flash in during the contest’s introductory ceremony. So don’t expect to see “Avengers Arena 2: The Secret of the Ooze”, because what this 4-issue miniseries will ultimately be cannot be determined yet. That comes off as an unfortunate happenstance, considering 4 issues isn’t a lot of time to waste and “Infinity” has been such a good event thus far.
But if you enjoy jokes and want to see a humorous side of Matt Kindt that we rarely see, then there’s value here. By wrangling up all of the different teens from the Marvel Universe (the Jean Grey school, Avengers Academy, the FF, etc…), Kindt gets the opportunity to be more playful than usual. More than anything else, “The Hunt” #1 serves as a literal series of introductory pages to some key players in the Marvel youth movement. The “tributes” are presented to the crowd as follows: “This is where they come from. These are their names. This is what they can do.” and then select students react to the announcements. Usually it’s Quentin Quire saying some snarky thing. Quentin Quire or Junior Moloid fans should definitely pick this thing up, because there’s lot of good yuks to be had.
For everyone else, unfortunately, this tie-in is just too threadbare and tenuously tied for it to be considered worth your time. It’s certainly an example of how mainstream comic books can stand to get lighter in their subject matter, but it doesn’t actually tell a story – or even part of one, really.
Steven Sanders’ artist approach feels totally appropriate for the inconsequential and jokey nature of “The Hunt.” There aren’t any technical problems with it, but his simplistic cartoony approach speaks to the strange nature of the miniseries’ existence itself rather than any condemnation of the art itself. “Infinity” has gone for realistic, cinematic-type art to date – in an effort to match its gravely serious stakes. Since “The Hunt” feels entirely like the antithesis of that, the entire approach feels out place with Sanders caught in the middle of it. But while everything has “weird choice” written all over it, there’s a lot to pick out that’s great about Sanders’ art on a case-by-case basis.
Sanders would have been a terrific choice for “FF”, if Joe Quinones weren’t available to spell Mike Allred. His Moloid kids have the same sense of eccentric (but cute) wide-eyed wonder about the world. His comedic timing, too, is a good fit for this particular story, as he peppers the story with Quentin Quire smirks and other great reaction faces. There’s certainly a place for Sanders among the youth-oriented stories of the Marvel U. It just can’t be said yet whether there’s a place for this book among the “Infinity” titles.
It’s difficult to figure out what Marvel and Matt Kindt were going for with this one. Truthfully, it’s not a terrible comic – just a kind of inexplicable one. “The Hunt” #1 does two things, rendered in a playful art style: Marvel youth character summary pages and kids goofing off. If you are looking for anything other than those two things, you’re not getting it here.
Final Verdict: 5.5 – Browse for chuckles, pass for anything else.
