Advance Review: The Initiative #7

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Advance Review

Avengers: The Initiative #7

Writer: Dan Slott

Artist: Stefano Caselli

The Initiative continues the story left off by Civil War. Several top officials (who happen to be fairly well known to Marvel fans) train and use Superheroes essentially as police. In a world with supervillains, this makes sense, yet the people in charge seem entirely untrustworthy and the main plot running through the book seems to be “Can those in charge be trusted to use their great power with great responsibility?”

This, of course, is a play on Spider-Man’s “with great power comes great responsibility” motto. That’s perfect because the government has given three unknown men Iron-Spider suits with all accompanying powers. When during a chase they reveal themselves to the public and the real Spidey, all hell breaks loose, including a very interesting development for the unmasking.

Naturally while this is going on, various higher ups, each with shady agendas, bicker about the day’s occurrences. Some real heroes who trusted the government begin to question this and one goes rogue. All of this comes together fairly well, with the main issue being why anyone would trust the government officials in this case, since they come off so badly. This isn’t a problem only here, over in Thunderbolts, Tony Stark, director of SHEILD has displayed similarly appalling tastes in choosing who to trust. The book suffers for it, but this is hardly the author’s fault.

The Scarlet Spiders are an interesting set of characters, as is the big reveal about them this issue. With that said, this feels rather exploitative, almost as if Marvel are just trying to get some Spider-Man into everything to boost sales. Still, Slott’s a talented writer and while they don’t have proper characterizations, their personas are developing and there is a reason for their being generic at this point. This is quite important for Spider-fans, so if you are one, this is recommended.

The art here is crisp, which is especially important for a big chase scene. Those often come off flat in comics, but with some useful and not out-of-place exposition, everything comes together well. Government bases, as usual, look a bit ridiculously barren and oddly colored, but that’s comics convention.

This is a good and important issue in the series. It’s good to see something done with a major event, unlike House of M, even one as poorly conceived as Civil War turned out to be. Marvel made a good decision in giving Slott this book, since he gives it a voice of its own, rather than feeling like just another editorial mandate book for continuity.

Glazer is a former senior editor at Pulse Wrestling and editor and reviewer at The Comics Nexus.