I really didn’t plan on reading any of the initiative titles beyond Initiative #1 (which is an introduction in to several tie-ins)… but the guys at the comic shop misunderstood my request and ended up pulling each and every Initiative comic. I had fully planned on canceling these and complaining, but I got lazy and just bought them anyone, hoping that they’d be good.
I really thought the Initiative wasn’t going to be worth my time. I bought in to the over-hyped Civil War and was very disappointed. It was dull and felt like it ended without a point. The Initiative that came from it (trained super heroes with the goal of assigning a super hero team to each of the 50 states) is shaping up to be really fun.
I really enjoy every Initiative title (except for the Mighty Avengers and Black Panther) and one of my absolute favorites is Avengers. Now this can can get a bit confusing because there are three Avengers titles:
- Avengers
- More information below
- Mighty Avengers
- This follows the newly formed avengers team lead by Mrs. Marvel. The writing is rather lame and features way too many thought balloons.
- New Avengers
- This is a comic that’s been going on for a while and consists of underground heroes, including Spider-Man. Not half bad, I enjoy it… but not as much as Avengers.
Avengers follows the story of some new recruits that are being trained by the Gauntlet to be well rounded, registered super heroes. The kids are sloppy amateurs and are labeled by him as New Warriors. This is, of course, derogatory because the new Warriors are now considered a joke of a super hero team and are blamed as being the cause of the Stamford disaster…. baby killers.
In Issue #1 the trainees consist of Cloud 9 (a jumpy girl who has the power of flight), Hardball, Komodo (a half-lizard half-girl that looks mostly-lizard), Trauma, Armory, and M.V.P. (the grandson of Abraham Erskine, the man who created the Super Soldier Serum that was used on Captain America).
In Issue #2 this team no longer has Armory or M.V.P… I won’t spoil the reason why the roster was cut down (you find out at the end of issue #1) as it’s pretty shocking. Trauma has one of the most interesting powers on the team. When a person is fearful, he actually take on the shape of their fear, such as a giant spider or a dead loved one.
Avengers has a Runaways feel to it and managed to sustain my interest throughout. I was actually very surprised by this comic and highly recommend reading it from the beginning.