Avengers Vol 4: War of the Realms
Author: Aaron, McGuinness, Masters, Morales
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Publishing Date:
Pgs:
Dewey: YA 741.5973 AVE V.4
Disposition: Irving Public Library - South Campus - Irving, TX
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS

Summary:
Elves, Trolls, Giants...Malekith’s invasion of Earth-616 has begun. The Squadron Supreme defends America...just America. And the Avengers the rest of the world, including America. What could possibly go wrong.
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Genre:
Superhero
Graphic Novels
Marvel Comics
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Why this book:
Inertia.
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Favorite Character:
I love Ken Hale, the Gorilla Man.

Plot Holes/Out of Character:
Considering that Peter Gyrich exists in this universe, as I stated in one of my previous reviews of these TPBs, there wasn’t any need to character assassinate Phil Coulson like this. I mean, he is acting like Gyrich, right down the line.

The Squadron have always been sidelights but I've always liked them. This version is ringing false, just like the Phil Coulson on display here, but at least they're apparently something else instead of the original Squadron or the second Squadron or...how many of them have there been?

Favorite Scene:
Awesome splash of the Squadron when the Panther invades their headquarters.

Hmm Moments:
Ah, that guy is involved. Phil Coulson acting like this makes so much more sense now.

WTF Moments:
So the Squadron Supreme are either brainwashed or they're androids or something? Of course, they have a history of being brainwashed on the reg, so…

So, Johnny Blaze, Mephisto, and Dracula...how many more people are the avengers in thrall too? And, damn it, Coulson and Gorilla Man, y'all are killing me

Meh / PFFT Moments:
The problem with TPBs collecting comics is that they don’t have coherent storylines. All the soap opera bits that have impact 8 issues down the line aren’t in that TPB, they appear where they happened in continuity and those who read them out of order...like most of the TPB audience end up piecing it together after the fact. ...which I guess makes TPBing a series sort of like it used to be before LCS and the direct market.

I’m kinda meh on the Panther being used as a “be-all” in this series. I get that he’s got a lot of oars in the water with agents everywhere, but he’s almost a deus ex machina built into every story in this volume.

The Unexpected:
Vision is a sex freak in celebrity sex videos. Nice!
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Last Page Sound:
Should have either been longer and included more or shorter and included less. There are gaping holes in the Realms story and to get it you've got to read all of the other tie-ins for this to line-up like it should, storywise.

Editorial Assessment:
The TPB instead of being just reprinted should have been edited to be more coherent. Marvel seems to be more interested in the payday than in coherency.
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This is mostly a sloppy placeholder volume to get the Avengers title past the big War of the Realms event.

We check in with the super-patriotic Squadron Supreme of America group being manipulated by Mephisto and Phil Coulson, but a confrontation with the Avengers gets booted down the road for a future volume, sometime after all the frost giants have been kicked out of North America. Then Gorilla-Man (yawn) and the super-hulky She-Hulk (meh) get to narrate a couple nowhere chapters. Next, we get a passably amusing downtime issue of the Avengers lounging around in a giant hot spring.

Finally, we jump ahead in time to the Free Comic Book Day offering that shows what the Avengers will be dealing with in the coming year or so: fighting Namor and the Defenders of the Deep, infiltrating a giant space prison, and surviving in One Million B.C. I can only hope those volumes will be better than this one. ( )