If Avengers #29 was the issue where the pieces of Jed MacKay’s master plan for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes started to fall into place, Avengers #30 is when MacKay slams his foot on the brakes. Now that the Avengers finally know where the Missing Moment is, they don’t waste any time going on the hunt for it. That hunt eventually leads them to Battleworld, the patchwork planet that Doctor Doom created in Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic’s Secret Wars. But it turns out that they aren’t the only ones on the planet: it’s infested with zombie versions of different heroes!
Marvel’s recent comics have often been scrutinized for the dreaded curse of “synergy”, where certain characters or storylines will be pushed to promote one of Marvel Studios’ upcoming movies or TV shows. Sometimes this works (Darcy Lewis has been one of the best parts of Steve Orlando’s Scarlet Witch saga), and sometimes it falls flat (I don’t think I need to relitigate why the push to make the Inhumans the next big thing didn’t pan out). Here, it’s somewhat coincidental; while Hickman and Ribic’s Secret Wars is probably going to be a huge influence on Avengers: Secret Wars, having actual Marvel Zombies right as the Marvel Zombies trailer dropped this week is probably a coincidence – and a happy one at that.
Regardless of synergy, MacKay’s gift for character work shines through. He shows that the Avengers are a team in so many ways, whether it’s backing Captain Marvel up even as she lays out the dangers of their mission, or combining their powers to push past an event horizon. Continuing his trend of building upon past issues, MacKay also has the Avengers reach out to the X-Men to protect the world in their stead, and I hope that an upcoming issue of Avengers touches on this, especially since MacKay’s X-Men is about to enter the Age of Revelation storyline.
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Farid Karami also deserves massive props for the work he’s putting on the page here. The Avengers tumbling through space is equal parts mesmerizing, as Scarlet Witch uses her powers to carry them in a shimmering red sheath, and utterly terrifying as he illustrates the massive black hole that dwarfs them all. Federico Blee’s colors also give weight to the art, as the shining gold layout of the Impossible City gives way to the cracked, decaying remains of Battleworld.
I would be remiss if I didn’t describe Karami’s work on the Marvel Zombies, and they look appropriately terrifying. The Thing Zombie is a hulking mass of rock, his teeth having long fallen out and replaced with stony protrusions, and when the Cyclops Zombie gets his head cut off, he literally takes it and uses it as a weapon. It’s not the only surprise that Karami and MacKay have in store; a character from past issues comes in to help the Avengers, and Myrddin reveals himself…though in the grand scheme of things, this reveal has a little less omph than expected.
Avengers #30 builds its story upon the remnants of not one, but two classic Marvel storylines and continues to feel like a truly epic superhero book. MacKay is showing that all of the work he put into this book is paying off, and it feels like it’s worth the wait.
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