Here we go. A straightforward massive space battle.
If there’s any knock on Jonathan Hickman’s high-minded writing, it’s that it can get a little inaccessible at times. He’s not big on spoon-feeding exposition or reminding you who’s who, things like that. So when a big chunk of an issue is devoted to a spaceship fighting, as is the case with Avengers #18, you can settle in a bit easier and get ready for when his story is going to shift gears again.
The big Marvel event Infinity kicked off last week, sending the Avengers off into deep space to deal with the looming threat of the rogue Builders, who have just destroyed the planet Galador and all of the Spaceknights with it, among many other places. Thankfully, and almost inexplicably, the Avengers have a few Builders on their side as well. The Avengers gather with representatives from all over the galaxy at – where else? – the Citadel of the Galactic Council in the neutral territory of Nomad. We see what’s happened with Kl’rt, the Super Skrull, who is now one of the warlords among the battling bands of Skrulls, who has had to humble himself in the search for outside help against the Builder threat. We see Ronan The Accuser and the Supreme Intelligence, Gladiator of the Shi’ar, Star-Lord’s dad J-Son of Spartax, the Brood Queen, even freakin’ Annihilus is on hand. Annihilus, who once wanted to wipe out all creation to exist in a void, is now joining together to stop the Builders – one imagines because the Builders destroy to rebuild, and Annihilus would just prefer the ‘destroy’ part.
The plan of action, knowing that a head-on confrontation is futile, is to try and trap the Builders and ambush them with the aforementioned massive space battle. So they do. And it works. Almost. Then not. Then disaster.
There’s a Star Wars Rebel Alliance sort of feel to the pre-battle proceedings, but with a darker tone – thanks in large part to the artwork of Leinil Francis Yu, the colors of Sunny Gho, and the heavy inks of Gerry Alanguilan which give us more gravitas than we know what to do with, especially with Kl’rt’s somber appearance to tell the council “Many Skrulls died to bring us this information.” The detail on Kl’rt’s face when he tersely relays the death of his honored friend is amazing. The downside to such a broody-looking style is that light-hearted moments, like Sunspot and Cannonball goofily waving to their friend Smasher in the Imperial Guard section, don’t do much to actually lighten anything up. That’s not too much of a problem, though, because this is a heavy ‘fate of the world’ kind of danger they’re in.
Avengers #18 somehow accomplishes the feat of amplifying the threat level the team is up against while simultaneously letting us breathe a little bit by seeing them get proactive and take the fight to the jerks, even if it doesn’t go so well for them. It’s only the first issue post-Infinity #1. We didn’t expect them to win.
