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.
No comments:
Post a Comment