Marvel Comics is coming out with a new kind of Avengers team this week in Avengers Mech Strike and it’s everything you’d expect and more simply based on the cover. Imagine a story that required each Avenger to have their own mech to fight fire with fire and you get the gist. Sure, it seems a little over the top given each Avenger has some impressive powers to begin with, but if you’re thinking that way you’re probably forgetting comics are supposed to be fun! This first issue offers up a good opening salvo with a heavy movie feel casual fans of the movies should love.
Written by Jed MacKay with art by Carlos Magno, this issue opens with the Avengers suiting up to fight a giant techno-organic monster ravaging New York. This is a team with Spider-Man and Hulk, so it’s a slight difference from the main 616 Avengers, especially right now, and it’s also reminiscent of the films. In particular, Bruce Banner appears to be able to change into Hulk whenever he so desires. Aside from this dramatic shift from the usual way the Avengers function, Mackay and Magno have a great handle on these characters, though I’d say they are closer to their movie counterparts.
In many ways, this issue reads like Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Bagley’s Avengers Assemble as it seems to be rendering these characters similarly to the films — not only their personalities, but in the hyper-detailed rendering of each character. Magno draws each hero as if they are the focal point of the story regardless of the panel or place in the story. It makes them feel larger than life and by extension makes the story feel epic in nature. It almost makes me want Kevin Feige to take a chance and actually go all-in on mech Avengers.
Cool introduction of our heroes.
Credit: Marvel Comics
This book opens great and lays on the personality of each character with lots of action. It’s so heavy and so exciting the pace seems to stop dead in its tracks to gather the heroes together and to set up where we go from here about two thirds into the book. The momentum picks up with a double-page splash showing off each mech suit, though, and it ends well enough to get folks hyped for the next issue. Naysayers could argue there isn’t a lot of explanation behind these mechs being an option in Tony’s workshop, but the premise alone should sweep that way since this is over the top stuff.
Magno does a great job with the art, especially if your superheroes rendered in hyper detail. Backed up by colors from GURU-eFX, the book has a level of realism that puts it way past bubbly and colorful comics and into a more serious level. Given the premise of the book, it’s an interesting choice as it grounds the idea of giant mech Avengers. The first few pages of this book are near perfect in introducing each hero and then showing us how the techno-organic monster threat is huge and completely alien.
Avengers Mech Strike is kicked off with a fun, over-the-top action fest that seems to have roots in the Marvel movies more than the comics. Go in expecting big, loud, and youthful fun in a package that is Marvel movie fan friendly.
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