Avengers #9

Review Ratings:

Story:
Art:
Characters & Development:
Originalality & Continuty:
Overall:

Book Information:

Cover Date: Oct 1964

Characters & Groups

Avengers
Special Guest:
- Wonder Man
Villains:
- Enchantress
- Executioner
- Zemo
Recurring Guest:
- Teen Brigade
- Rick Jones

Locations:

For this comic book review I read Avengers #9, the story in this volume is titled “The Coming Of the … Wonder Man!”. In this tale we have Baron Zemo, The Enchantress, and The Executioner returning from their banishment that occured in Avengers #7. Like most typical villains, their mind is single focused n gaining revenge, seeking to thort and destroy the avengers whom wronged them. To do this, they seek out another wronged -in a way- by the avengers. In this case Simon Williams is found, and turned into Wonder Man by the genius of Zemo. Wonder Man with a wondrous array of powers, the strength, speed, and skill to rival the avengers – kept in check by Zemo only by the need to continuously retrieve an antidote for the method that caused his super-powers or otherwise die – is then sent to infiltrate the avengers, to help Zemo destroy them from within.

Story

While the plot sounds like it has market, the story is kind of lackluster. The avengers distrust, changed to trust by magic; the action leading to the avengers defeat all feels lacking. Then the ending twist, by an otherwise flat feeling Wonder Man almost feels anticlimactic. In the end, this story is one that, I can’t help but feel could have been done much better with just a little bit of loving care. But in the end, I just find it bland and lacking.

Artwork

While I found the story lacking, I found the work of Don Heck and Dick Ayers to be superb in this issue; from the book, the emotion, to the use of shadows, the work was exceptional. The detail in the action was as well done as it was in the support scenes. Picking just a few things to show often proves hard. One key panel I have to share shows the Avengers holding Captain America back, take note of Giant-man’s hand and the shadow from it over the Captains leg. This time to do something different, below instead of offering just one image and thought though, I offer an assortment with my thoughts as captions as a gallery. Let me know what you think.

: Look at the detail from the look of range of Captain America’s face to the shadow of Giant-Man’s hand on the captains leg.

: The soft lines, closed eyes, hand.. the details in panel are capable of drawing the reader right into the emotion felt by Capt. America

: I found the way each of these four panel separate the avengers, from letting Happy and Pepper be a failed out ‘gray’ version behind Iron Man, to the mind and thoughts of bucky. In the story, it helped remind us the team is not aways together, but the art adds to that, by the style seeming to be a bit different in each panel.