Advance Review
House of M: Avengers #1
Writer: Christos Gage
Artist: Michael Perkins
In the mid-90s Marvel had a great crossover called Age of Apocalypse, where, in what amounts to an alternate timeline, Apocalypse took over and altered history. This was wildly successful and followed up with several less successful Tales of the Age of Apocalypse. Recently, Marvel ran a mediocre crossover called House of M in which mutants were the dominant species in the world and thus history was altered. The story lacked the basic fundamental structure necessary, but was a nice “What if†even so, is being followed up by what amounts to “Tales of House of M.†Luckily, they have breakout writer Christos Gage (Stormwatch PHD) to helm the ship, so this has a chance to be more successful than the aforementioned Tales of AoA. Would it fulfill the promise Gage has shown elsewhere? Read on and find out.
Well, calling this an Avengers book is a bit of a misnomer to start. The first half of the book is entirely taking up with Luke Cage setting himself up as a crime lord (this spoils nothing; it’s in the opening excerpt). The entire story is narration of Cage’s life from his own perspective, so naturally he comes off as quite sympathetic and likable. This is pimp era Cage, so that he comes off well is fairly impressive; lesser writers might try and make him more like his stereotype and less the well-rounded character he has currently been established as. He’s likable enough to set up the book, which is good, because centrally, all we get is back story. The back story is good. The established history of Cage is played up and off of well, while the character is being placed in an interesting dynamic and situation. The end of the book promises the beginning of a wider plot, which is also a major plus, as you can only get away with one issue of this type of background information.
One must question who the target audience of this book is. Nominally, one would assume the target reader is a House of M fan. If that’s the case, however, why spend the entire issue on set up? That would just bore the reader who is familiar with all of this and make them less likely to buy the book. If you aren’t a HoM fan, the question is why you would bother starting now? Unless you are following Gage, a far smaller audience than reads a major Marvel crossover, there is no hook to make you pick up this book if you didn’t HoM. It’s good anyway, but would have benefited from a clearer sense of its audience. Most of the relevant information was covered in the intro anyway. Jumping right in with the story would have made more sense.
The art here is gorgeous. The characters look perfect in every seen, the backgrounds are perfect. This is hugely impressive art. One would assume Marvel considers this a high profile assignment mainly due to the power of the art and the high profile young artist. If that’s the case, then Marvel chose well. For a book that was almost certainly editorial mandate, this has a great voice and even better art.
