@thanosrules

Avengers Assemble #7

Recommendation: Yes! Yes! Yes!

I was very much looking forward to this issue. It was advertised in many marvel books, with my online namesake (read blog post here), as “Thanos Rules!”. I couldn’t have been more excited. lol.

The cover is a bit misleading, as if you have been reading this book, it is not about the Infinity Gauntlet, and more about a Cosmic Cube, of sorts. But hey, it catches the eye and gets you in the Thanos reading mood. FWIW, I also picked up the full size poster of this cover which came out this week. I have no where to put it, but I wanted it just the same. :)

On to the book - Art - Good. Consistent. As I have stated in each of my reviews for this series, it fits the book. I do like that it is different than the other Avengers books that I read on a monthly basis - it is always great to see the same characters represented in different ways. I love the “flowing” and non-standard panel structure. It works perfectly for a cosmic book - you need more full page art as the scope of the story grows. We are in space here, dealing with HUGE characters - a 9 panel page just isn’t going to cut it…

The story - It has been a little while since I read the last issue, so I was a little confused why Thor was out of commission… I realize they were all thrown out into space, but Thor doesn’t need “air”. Before I passed official judgement, I kept reading. It appears that he was just briefly knocked out. Wheew. In fact, the way they dealt with the space stranded humans was well done too. Nice job.

Lets back up - the story doesn’t actually start with the breathless Avengers. As the cover indicates, this book is Thanos-centric - and boy does it open with an amazing sequence! Before I turned to see page 3 of the story, I was expecting something completely different than what was delivered. Wow. They decided to go big. REAL BIG. Nice.

Take a breath.

Now, enter the Avengers, quickly fading into the vacuum of space. An interesting place to put an interlude - but hey, the title of the book does say “Avengers”… From here we get quite a few pages of wonderful battle and survival panels. The pure number of Badoon is astonishing - will they overrun both Earth’s Mightiest Heroes AND the Guardians of the Galaxy?

Okay, upon second glance, I have to give the art WAY MORE praise that I did above… These battle sequences and big COSMIC explosions are really impressive. You actually feel that this is a cosmic book. Bravo.

The issue ends on a major cliffhanger. It is reminiscent of past Thanos stories. It will be interesting where this goes. Very interested. Very. Very Interested.

Here is a little personal tribute to this issue:

Bowen Thanos Museum Statue (with Cosmic Cube)

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Remembering Casey Blick

I want to extend my condolences to the Blick family. It was a very heartfelt and personal story to share with everyone. I have to admit, it made me tear up. I wish all the best to the family in this difficult time.

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For my reviews of the entire series so far, click here!

Follow @thanosrules on Twitter for more thanosrules Quick Reviews (#trqr) and listen to Stacks of Comics (@stacksofcomics) for all (okay, some of) your Comic Podcast needs!

Avengers Assemble #6

Recommended!

This issue starts out much like the first, large group shots of nearly all of the current roster Avengers… you realize what a giant team the Avengers really is - over the years they have amassed quite a crew.

Attempting to control this crowd, Maria Hill is has called an assembly to brief all currently earth-bound Avengers on what is going on - but in true S.H.I.E.L.D form, she is leaving out all the “good parts”. Suddenly a live sub-space transmission is received from Tony, who immediately spills the beans. It was a perfect use of his brazen, rule breaking attitude, and really expressed the urgency of the matter at hand - a significant pending Cosmic Level Event.

It was good to see Reed and Sue Richards in the crowd with the Avengers, if there are cosmic threats afoot, they should be front and center. I don’t necessarily agree with how Tony is currently leveraging Reed, but this is an Avengers book after all…

The art is good, consistent and still a great fit for the tone and flow of the book. Some panels and characters look better than others, but the style is not distracting and overall nice to look at.

I “lol’d” multiple times throughout the issue, as it contains a decent amount of levity - especially where the Guardians of the Galaxy are concerned, more specifically Rocket Raccoon. His comment about “Egg McMuffins” gave me quite the chuckle.

Thanos’ plan is still unclear, but then again, when is it ever clear to the reader? If it was, it wouldn’t be his actual plan.

There were some really nice battle scenes between the Avengers and the Badoon. I will not spoil the surprise that Tony had in store for the climax of that battle, but suffice to say, it was clever and refreshingly unique.

We are left with an interesting cliffhanger for our heroes - we all know they will do just fine, but it will be interesting to see what trick Bendis pulls out of his marvel cosmic hat to bring the story back from the edge.

The last page of panels is dedicated to Thanos and his new “toy”. It was a nice tribute to the character and what he is all about - solitude and scheming.

Next Issue: THANOS RULES! (see ad here)

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Follow @thanosrules on Twitter for more thanosrules Quick Reviews (#trqr) and listen to Stacks of Comics (@stacksofcomics) for all (okay, some of) your Comic Podcast needs!

Thank You Marvel for putting advertisements in your main stream titles for “Thanos Rules”. :)

This image was the last page ad in X-Men Legacy #271. You can imagine my excitement when I saw it… a bit more excited than seeing the last page of X-Men Legacy. ;)

FWIW - X-Men Legacy #271 scores a 4.5 out of 5.0 as far as I am concerned. Great story, nicely written, great art. If it wasn’t for AVX, I would have completely missed these great Rogue stories! This story ends with a cliffhanger -which was what I wanted, because I would have been disappointed if it was wrapped in just one issue.

Anyway, I searched the internet for a bit to see if this image cropped up anywhere… much to my surprise, the only results I could find were of this same image, but without the lettering. Well, now there is one WITH the lettering. :)

Who knew, that nearly 20-years ago (abbreviated story here), I would have come up with something that would later be unwittingly used to promote a Marvel book… A book that I rather like, and will be reviewing tonight (Avengers Assemble #6).

So, in tribute to my online namesake, so say we all: Thanos Rules!

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Follow @thanosrules on Twitter for thanosrules Quick Reviews (#trqr) and listen to Stacks of Comics (@stacksofcomics) for all (okay, some of) your Comic Podcast needs!

Check out my Review of Bendis’, Bagley’s, Miki’s and Mounts’ Avengers Assemble #3!

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Check out my Review of Avengers Assemble #2! ( 3.3 / 5.0 )

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My Reviews for this series so far:

• Avengers Assemble #1: Disassembled Expectations ( 3.8 / 5.0 )
• Avengers Assemble #2: What’s In The Box? ( 3.3 / 5.0 )