Review: ‘Avengers’ #11 Slows Down A Little

Even the Avengers need a day off. But a slow day for the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes still will involve super villains trying to murder them.

Jed MacKay, Ivan Fiorelli, Federico Blee and Cory Petit bring Jarvis to the Impossible City.

The Avengers take advantage of some time between crises and are trying to sort through everything that’s going on in the world. Luckily Jarvis has some time to come aboard the Impossible City and teach its AI to cook. Unfortunately, the Mad Thinker has stowed away and is about to cause trouble for everyone.

After the heavy stories of the series’ first two arcs, taking a moment to slow down before getting into the Fall of X and Blood Hunt is greatly needed. MacKay takes the time to establish relationships, check in on the characters and generally have a little fun. We get the different Avengers’ favorite foods, a little bit about the Impossible City, and some set-up for stories to come.

Really the only downside to this issue was the heavy-handed reference to Fall of X. Frankly though, as heavy-handed as it was, I’m glad MacKay did it. It not only makes their entry into the X-Men storyline next month less surprising, but it also adds enough continuity to the series to remind us all that it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, that there is a shared Marvel universe. It is clunky, but I didn’t hate it.

Fiorelli’s work is a little bit more cartoony than I think I normally would have liked on this title. Here in a lighter, slightly more humorous story, it was fun though. He also has a great sense of action, and his layouts were always engaging. Blee fills the pages with brighter colors than he uses with Villa, which works to amplify the sillier tone of the story, but he still uses a lot of the same color palettes to tie the book together.

I also dig how Petit captures the patter of the dialogue between characters. He doesn’t go overboard or flashy, keeping it clean and readable.

Avengers #11 is available now from Marvel Comics.