Avengers Beyond #1 // Review
The snow is everywhere. Jennifer is angry. (You wouldn’t like her when she’s angry.) She beat the hell out of a man calling himself The Autocrat. So why is he smiling? She’s about to find out in Avengers Beyond #1. Writer Derek Landy picks up where he left off at the end of the All-Out Avengers series in an issue that is rendered for the page by Greg Land and Jay Leisten. Color comes to the pager courtesy of Frank D’Armata. The whole creative team behind All-Out Avengers shifts its focus to the new revelations in a way that feels deeply satisfying at the opening of a whole new series.
The Autocrat’s mind control works virally. Jen’s wise enough to know that although it hasn’t exactly infected HER yet, it will. She also knows that the virus in question needs The Autocrat alive to actually do anything. So, she’s thinking about killing him. As it turns out, he’s just a pawn for a massively powerful entity known as the Beyonder. He’s using The Autocrat to manipulate the Avengers. He has a bit of a problem that he needs their help with. The only question is: what’s so powerful that even a nearly omnipotent being like the Beyonder would need help with?
The cosmology of the Marvel multiverse is a total, irreversible mess. Landy takes a turn at making it even more of a mess in an issue that establishes a being who came before the multiverse and is, of course, more powerful than even the all-powerful Beyonder. So, naturally, he turns to the Avengers for help, even though there’s only one lesser god among them, and...well...it’s all very silly. Landy doesn’t really harness the full complexity of someone with the Beyonder’s power. (It’s okay: neither did the character’s creator Jim Shooter back in the 1980s.) The drama driving the story IS interesting, but the specifics of it are absurd.
The visual reality of the story hits the page vividly. Land and Leisten bring action to the page with a tight economy. Single panels stand in quite well for what might otherwise take another artist a whole page. The drama hits just the right amount of intensity on the page from cover to cover. D’Armata’s colors conjure a powerful sense of atmosphere, whether the team is in a snowy wasteland or ensconced in a high-tech Avengers facility. The radiance of power heats up some of the more explosive action scenes.
With the initial background of the story well and fully established, Landy can focus on what he seems to be best at: telling a solidly entertaining action story featuring some really powerful characters. All of the silliness of the cosmology of the Marvel Universe has been dealt with. Now, the mini-series can get down to the business of developing some serious and seriously witty action moments. Landy and the art team are at their best when everything is gliding smoothly forward.
