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Tuesday 18 November 2014

Avengers Assemble: The Forgeries of Jealousy Review (Kelly Sue DeConnick, Warren Ellis)


Who is Anya Corazon aka Spider-Girl? No clue, but she’s the hero of this story as she teams up with the Avengers to rescue one of her schoolteachers!

Following the events of Infinity where Black Bolt detonated the Terrigen Bomb, new Inhumans (or NuHumans) are springing up everywhere as humans with latent Kree DNA begin changing and develop superpowers. Mad scientist June Covington aka Toxic Doxie wants to get her hands on a Terrigen cocoon – the form a human transforming into an Inhuman takes – to absorb their powers herself. Anya’s schoolteacher is one of these cocoons.

The Forgeries of Jealousy (a very lofty title for a such a breezy book!) is a lot like Kelly Sue DeConnick’s Avengers Assemble: Science Bros, the style of which is a very light approach to superhero comics. It’s a quality that’s both positive and negative. Positive in that you get to read some fun exchanges between the characters, like my favourite scene at the end where the Avengers go looking for the Terrigen cocoon:

Hawkeye: Fifty bucks says it's here.
Black Widow: It's here.
Hawkeye: Then fifty bucks says I find it first.
Wolverine: Pfft. A 12-pack says you don't have fifty bucks, Barton.
Hawkeye: I have fifty bucks. I have lots of bucks.

Very cute and silly!

And negative because it’s mostly forgettable, disposable stuff. I don’t know or really care about Spider-Girl, ditto Toxic Doxie, and the story is as straightforward a Marvel tale as there is: villain takes something, heroes retrieve it, punish villain. 

The individual team-ups Spider-Girl has are quite fun like when the Spider Ladies (Spider-Girl, Spider-Woman and Black Widow) storm AIM (who now have diplomatic immunity for some reason!), and when she partners up with Logan.

This book was co-written by Warren Ellis and, at this point, I have read nearly everything Ellis has ever written, and it’s a lot! Wolverine’s dialogue felt like Ellis’ main contribution to the book – Logan is grumpy, rude, and funny, and it sounds exactly like Ellis’ voice all the way, which I loved!

The little things dotted about here and there keep things from getting too monotonous but generally it’s not that great a story. I like that Spider-Woman has the best phone on the Avengers and that Cap has an Avengers song recorded, but I couldn’t say I was all that impressed with the book for the most part - it’s just too fluffy and I like my books to be a bit more substantial.

Avengers Assemble: The Forgeries of Jealousy

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