"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Tuesday, December 3, 2019

The War of the Realms: New Agents of Atlas (2019)


The last time I reviewed a Hulk title, I mentioned that The Totally Awesome Hulk seemed to be done but that Amadeus Cho was going to be featured in a different title by Greg Pak. Well, here it is! If Big Apple Showdown was the AAPI comics version of The Avengers or Crisis on Earth-X (yes, I’m aware that comics regularly do big crossover events, but my experience is more with movies and TV,) New Agents of Atlas is their Infinity War or Crisis on Infinite Earths (I’m guessing on the latter, since it hasn’t come out yet, but the casting announcements are certainly, “Holy smorgasbord of superheroes, Batman!”)

A new alien threat is in town, by which I mean planet Earth. The queen of cinders is wreaking international havoc with the aid of her army of fire demons, and in order to stop her, Jimmy Woo has to assemble his largest, most pan-Asian collection of heroes yet. The disparate group deals with a number of growing pains, but if they’re going to stop the queen of cinders, they’re going to have to band together.

All the mainstays are here: Amadeus Cho (now somewhat less powered than full-on Hulk,) Ms. Marvel, Silk, Shang-Chi, etc., but there are also a bunch of newer faces. Brand-new to me, but I understand that they’ve been making appearances in comics recently. Highlights include a K-pop star who’s also a superhero, a child martial arts prodigy and the giant astral bear she controls, and Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of the volcano. Hey, hey, the gang’s all here!

As with previous crossover events featuring this core group, I enjoy the interpersonal dynamics, both the larger conflicts of heroes from a bunch of different countries disagreeing over which region of the world to protect first, as well as the little things, like Asians from anywhere in the world bonding over spam. And even though this has left the bounds of a Totally Awesome Hulk story, Amadeus Cho still gets major focus in terms of character development. Here, he faces up to what it means to truly be a leader, and he and Jimmy Woo clash over strategy. Ms. Marvel is mostly just used as a heavy hitter, but Silk and Shang-Chi both get key moments in which to shine.

In all honesty, though, it gets to be a bit much for me. I’m sure it would help if I had more familiarity with the newer heroes, but it was tough for me to keep track of everybody and it feels like about a third of the story is just all the various heroes introducing themselves to each other. To use another TV analogy, it reminded me a bit of watching DC’s “Invasion!” crossover when, at the time, Supergirl was the only show I watched regularly and I was still getting caught up on The Flash. Even having had a little exposure to some of the Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow characters, it came across to me like a juggling act. I think New Agents of Atlas will be an ongoing title now, and it would be nice to get with arcs with various subsets within the whole big group before they’re tackled collectively again. Because here, despite enjoying a lot of the individual parts, it doesn’t quite add up to a satisfying whole for me.

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