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Title changes do absolutely nothing for me, good or bad, unless they come with creative changes-or unless the new title is just plain heinous. Dark Avengers may strike you Watch The Avengers Online as no less silly than Justice League Dark, but it’s no more silly either (and actually, it’s quite a bit less). And since we have the exact same creative team as when the series was still Thunderbolts, what do I care if they change their name to Dark Avengers or The Kinda Evil, Kinda Not Squad?
Watch The Avengers Online Yes, that last one is a joke, but it does get to the essence of the team, no? Only originally, it referred to the general, moral character of the members. With the exception of Luke Cage, Songbird, and Mach-V (the fully reformed), the rest of the T-bolts all come with a funky mix of criminal tendencies and heroic aspirations. This issue introduces a new set of ‘Bolts-and they are still called as such, so you have to question the point of renaming the book at all-and it turns out most of them are simply just plain villains.
Frankly, my first instinct should be to roll my eyes at evil doppelganger plotlines. Inevitably, they each devolve into showdowns between respective lookalikes, plus the originals almost invariably win. The doppelgangers here already had that beatdown, and we can set that tired formula away. But that doesn’t modify the inherent goofiness of seeing these obviously disturbed individuals attempting halfassedly to resemble their heroic counterparts, merely to reveal themselves as clearly weak-sauce versions. Come on, man, you can’t imagine Luke the ability to tackle the important Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, and Thor while doing so, right?
Not the most significant Marvel buff on this planet, I did little information about many of the newbloods (excluding Ragnarok, the Thor robot from Civil War), and you can glean enough on the story-and a nutritious dose of Wikipedia-to guess where Luke’s rage derives from at seeing them. And until now, they newbies are simply a little too fresh and unremarkable to worry an excessive amount on them. It doesn’t help which the almost all their dialogue is oddly lame (leading you to wonder if Paul Levitz was ghostwriter within this issue): “This is really what we can easily have performed to your account if Osborne we will cut loose.” “Yes! Osborn held us back! We can have triumphed!” “We aren’t just ‘Dark’ Avengers. We undoubtedly are a force…of devast-” Just to tell you, Ai Apaec gets block on that last corny line when Luke thankfully bashes him with a backlash. With a boulder. Bliss.
Considering these rookies already have gotten beaten down once because of the Avengers, and nearly lose again just to Luke, Songbird, and Mach-V, you may only see F.A.C.T.’s number of newbies as horribly flawed if they would like a team to fight “the most robust opposition.” Not to bring up they are much less trustworthy and reliable versus the old gang, forcing F.A.C.T. try using a Suicide Squad-esque shutdown mechanism to be a control measure. I can’t otherwise this could happen particular roster are going to be desire the earth, especially in the event the time-traveling ‘Bolts return.
With every story arc, I am somewhat more impressed with how Shalvey’s agile lines can get used to essentially any genre and check credible. Until now, he’s done a comprehensively fantastical fantasy arc, an abundance of sci-fi ridiculousness, and from now on he dips his hand into thriller and pulls it wonderfully. Without exaggerating nonverbal communication or facial expression, he conveys a transparent a sense of intrigue and suspicion simply through setting: shadowed conversations in dark, tight, enclosed spaces.
