Review
Marvel Adventures: Avengers #18
Writer: Ty Templeton
Pencils: Cafu
Inker: Terry Pallot
Marvel Adventures titles are the all-ages titles of the Marvel Universe. This book chooses a strange cast of Avengers to deal with issues that one hero alone couldn’t handle. The team is the strange collection of Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, Storm, Wolverine, the Hulk, and Giant Girl. That’s a lot of the major names of the Marvel Universe… and Giant Girl… what gives?
Well, this issue amounts to a single episode of a cartoon series. The Avengers are called in to deal with Cerebrus, who had been trapped under ground for thousands of years. That’s the basic gist and despite introducing a new take on an old character later in the issue, everything is handled in a straightforward manner.
The characterization here is anything but subtle. These are static, iconic representations of most of the characters. Cap is the strong, do-it-all leader, Wolverine the pessimist loner, Spidey the motor mouth, and Hulk the fighting giant. There is nothing more to any of them, but for a quick cartoon romp, that’s fine. Annoyingly, however, Giant Girl, Storm, and Iron Man all lack any distinguishing characteristics. This leaves that entire portion of the team flat – save for their powers. The highlight of the issue is dumb Hulk, who gets numerous fun lines in and is a perfect fit for this book which only requires him smashing away.
The art is perfect to tone here. It’s got a cartoony and fluid quality. While this won’t win any awards, it’s exactly what the book demands and tells the story effectively.
A lot of the plot is contrived and anyone who’s ever seen a cartoon will figure out how the issue will go from the first page or two, but this is still a fun, light romp that I’d have no problem handing to a younger reader. If you’re looking to get a kid into appropriate comics, this is a good place to start.
