Customer Reviews

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

That basically sums up this book: brilliant characterizations. The book goes through the first year or so of the original Avengers run, but instead of rewriting history with a new story or jsut retelling the same thing, this book goes behind the scenes. As other reviewers said, this book skips around, but I do not find this to be a problem. The book does not detail the big fights that happened. It only includes them if they help flesh out teh characters. Joe Casey makes each of the original Avengers feel like real people with real problems. This is perhaps the best characterizations of the team I have ever seen. I did not read the original run. I was not extremely familiar with the original plots. I knew enough history that I had some idea what the general progression of things would be (i. e. members leaving the team and such). This being said I had no problem with the jumps. I may not have known why the lava people invaded but I didnt care. I wa smroe concerned with how Iron Man was going to handle Thor temporarily takign charge. I actually cared about these characters. I knew they woudl win the fights. I didn't really care about the fights, but it definitely made me love the characters. It also has a g reat Captain America story too. For a barometer on my tastes, I like Watchmen, Sandman, Invincible, Strangers in Paradise, and early Savage Dragon among others. So I am into the Superhero action and the character driven stuff. This book is a melding of that.

This is a great book if you already know Avengers history. It fills in the gaps and fleshes out the characters. You get a close up look at the personality conflicts and politics that went on as this grand team went through its early growing pains.

This should not be the first Avengers book you read but if you become an Avengers fan and get familiar with their early history, you will probably enjoy this book enormously. It is a bit of a recon, so if you are a purist you may want to avoid it but you will be missing a treat.

Joe Casey does a fantastic job of revisiting old Avengers stories and updating them to a modern setting. The main focus of this miniseries is not on the fighting and adventure - rather, it delves deeper into the characters of the Avengers. There are several subplots that all mesh together in the last few issues to form an engaging new take on the early days of Earth's Mightiest Heroes. It works with an ensemble cast, giving almost everyone a moment to shine. Joe Casey absolutely nails the personalities.

The main subplots are:
-Captain America attempting to adapt to modern society, with the help of Rick Jones, and dealing with his World War II archenemy Baron Zemo once and for all
-Iron Man lobbying the government for a high-priority security clearance for the team
-Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver reforming their criminal ways and joining the Avengers, whilst the others depart for various reasons

The book is also interspersed with action scenes to keep the reader interested. As another reviewer noted, very little background is given on the battles, which can be troublesome for new readers. However, I had only a very basic understanding of early Avengers history and I found the book to be just as enjoyable regardless.

The artwork suits the comic perfectly. Slightly cartoony at times, but clean and detailed. One of my personal highlights was the Hulk throwing a train at Giant-Man in the first issue.

I would definitely recommend this book for any Avengers fan (also check out Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes II, and Avengers: The Origin, told in a similar style). If you love Marvel Comics but do not own this, you are missing out on a lot!

reading these eight issues collected in a hardcover edition is a very good idea, because the subplots have abrupt breaks and are (fortunately) followed up well throughout the book and the binding is more durable.

Iron Man, Thor and Captain America, the core, three original Avengers, are all present and accounted for, and writer Joe Casey gives a very accurate, shorthand slice of The Avengers' essential personalities; easy to do when you're a good writer and have 42 years to research their history...

The Avengers always had an interesting turnover of characters from their shaky beginnings, and this particular series re-tells (what Casey and Kollins considered to be) events that were most significant to The Avengers that took place between their origin in Avengers #1 (Sept. 1963) to their second lineup in #16 (May 1965).

the towering significance of The Avengers as a superhero team stems from the fact that each of the heroes were all A-list, the heaviest hitters of The Marvel Universe, but were always struggling to get along with one another; the Justice League almost always got along, the Fantastic Four, Teen Titans and the Doom Patrol were like families, but they were never quite as disjointed or alienated as The Avengers.

Casey and Kollins smooth out some of the original quirkiness by Lee and Kirby, and they intentionally play up undercurrent themes present in the stories they based their material on; Casey and Kollins also built on the early importance of Jarvis the (usually silent) butler and Rick Jones, teenaged fan-boy and intermediary, for example.

the story, art and character development in this book all make these superheroes very accessible and entertaining to the reader.

This book revisits the early days of the Avengers (roughly through the period of "Mighty Avengers" #s 1-16) giving the characters the depth they lacked back in the good old days, and filling in some of the blanks regarding how they worked with the blessing of the government... It's not a grand, cosmic story, but it's fun and entertaining, a nice lighthearted update of sme classic old stories. I liked it. (Joe Sixpack, Slipcue.com)

I'm a sucker for these "Year One" type books. All I knew about this book was that it was a re-telling of the Avengers' early days. I love the Avengers, so I thought, "How can I go wrong?" I wish I had read some reviews before I ordered this!

First, what's good:
The artwork by Scott Kolins is decent. He has a clean style that suits the story and characters well. It's not too cartoon-y and it's not bogged down with over-the-top detail. It's fun to see the different versions of the heroes costumes, especially Iron Man's. He goes from his old clunky getup to sleeker designs. The Wasp's costume goes through some funky changes too.

What's bad:
This book tries to jam too much into what was an eight comic run. There were times when I thought I had skipped a page, or maybe one was missing. It felt like a badly edited movie. The writer, Joe Casey, often drops the reader into the middle of some big crisis with villains like Kang or the Masters of Evil, with virtually no explanation. It's a lot of snapshots of Avengers' history that don't fit together as a single story. You'll be asking yourself questions like, "Why are they in outer space all of a sudden?" or "Who the hell is Rick Jones?"

The biggest flaw of the book is that it "revisits" the time when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby told these stories, but the book shows cell phones, cable TV, and computers. If Joe Casey is re-telling old stories, why does he set them in the present? This makes no sense at all. At least he could have left the time period ambiguous, but he hits you over the head with the whole "present-day" concept.

There is an attempt to tie the chapters together with Captain America's quest to kill Baron Zemo to avenge the death of his sidekick Bucky. This almost holds things together, but not quite. There are too many side stories squeezed in here. Maybe an editor told Casey "OK, you've got eight issues to cover these 50 events, good luck."

Skip this book and check out "The New Avengers" and "The Ultimates." Learn from this comic fan's mistake!