The Heroic Age: The Avengers #1
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Penciler: John Romita Jr
Inker: Klaus Janson
Colorist: Dean White
Letterer: Cory Petit
Price: $3.99
Marvel Comics
Release date: May 19. 2010

After the last few years worth of Avengers stories where they are constantly on the run or fighting a lot of street level villains, Avengers #1 gets us back to the old school, “Let’s take on a classic threat” story. The action gets moving quickly, and I’m glad to see that writer Brian Michael Bendis wastes no time setting up the team and getting straight into the story.

Kang has come back with a line straight out of Back to The Future. It’s your kids, mighty Avengers, you have to come to the future to stop your kids! It seems this issue is adapting the story from the Next Avengers animated movie from a few years ago. They have certainly taken the character designs for the kids from that movie and used them in this issue. It’s an odd choice for me, and I don’t know if seeing the movie will spoil the last page of this issue (I’ve never seen the Next Avengers movie), but this is the kind of story I think I would like to see out of an Avengers book.

The good thing about Marvel putting out so many Avengers titles is that each one can have its own identity, and it looks like this is the book where the big colorful Avengers take on massive threats, kind of what Mighty Avengers was supposed to be. If this is how the stories go, I think I will enjoy this new series.

It doesn’t hurt that the issue is drawn by one of my favorite artists. Objectivity tends to go out the door with me when it comes to John Romita Jr. Is this his best effort ever? Eh, I don’t think so. There are a lot of good pages. The first page when Kang shows up is great and there are lots of great storytelling moments, but I’m not a big fan of the way he draws Spider-Woman, and the first panel with Maria Hill is not the best ever. That said, there’s more good here than bad, and I’ll keep buying the series as long as Romita Jr. is drawing it.

This is a good start for the series. The art is great, the story is set up well and I’m interested to see where it goes from here. This issue may also have some of the best back matter ever, with a faux oral history of the Avengers that was really well written. This is exactly what I was hoping for from the issues and this issue gets a 5 out of 5 from me.