Review: Avengers Vol. 4- Infinity

Quick Summary

Pros: The beginning of the book is full of excitement and intrigue. The scale of the adventures shown here is impressive. The artwork is beautiful and helps emphasize some of the collection’s best attributes.

Cons: The final few chapters are less exciting. Reading only this volume leaves out some of the larger story’s best moments.

Overall: This is a solid story whose only problems are derived from the way in which this volume is collected. The majority of the book is exciting and features epic battles in space and great moments from a number of Marvel’s greatest heroes. However, portions of the event are not shown here and are simply summarized in each chapter’s opening, which takes away from the overall narrative. Fans of the Avengers will likely enjoy this book but are likely to enjoy it more if they read the entire event.

Story

Avengers Vol. 4: Infinity, by Jonathan Hickman, does a solid job in detailing the Avenger’s adventures throughout the Infinity (Review) event but is not the optimal way in which to approach this storyline. The story collected here shows an epic war spanning across the Marvel Universe. This war contains a number of fantastic moments that show heroic exploits and exciting battles. However, the collection is also missing a number of stories that are crucial to this event, causing the book’s conclusion to suffer and making the opening chapters less entertaining than they could have been. This is still an exciting story all on its own but is much better when read in full, the way it is presented in Infinity (Review).

(spoilers start here)

Hickman starts out Avengers: Infinity by flipping the script on the Scrulls. For decades, these aliens have been villains and have generated chaos and destruction for heroes throughout the Marvel Universe. Yet, within this book’s first few pages, they are turned into a sympatric group of near-refugees who are willing to support the heroes. By subverting expectations in this way, Hickman opens the door for the cosmic odyssey upon which the Avengers embark.

This trip through space is exciting and is full of high-stakes action and adventure. It features giant battles between spaceships, hand to hand battles between alien races, and even well-written moments of subterfuge from both sides. All of this plays out in a war that seems impossible for the heroes to win, creating a constant feeling of suspense and tension. This makes the Avenger’s ultimate victory more meaningful and exciting, as it truly feels as if they have triumphed against the odds.

Their return home features a similar dynamic but is a bit less entertaining. Instead of starting a grand adventure through the cosmos, they are tossed into a story that is already in its final act. There are still some solid moments of action and entertainment but they are diluted by the lack of appropriate context.

Most of these flaws come from the way in which this particular volume is collected. Avengers: Infinity is only a small part of the Infinity (Review) event, so it really only tells a portion of a much larger story. This is what dilutes the volume’s final few chapters, as they are very entertaining when viewed with the proper setup.

This manner of collecting also takes away some moments from the volume’s beginning as well. A number of the Infinity (Review) event’s best moments are not shown here and are just summarized at the beginning of each chapter. These summaries are good at delivering information but are not as good at delivering the impact felt in each of the missing chapters. For this reason, this story reads much better when viewed in full, through the Infinity (Review) storyline, rather than the way it is viewed here.

(spoilers end here)

Art

Leinil Francis Yu does a fantastic job in emphasizing the two main attributes that are found throughout Avengers: Infinity, war and space.  Yu’s intense linework presents the Avengers in a gruff fashion that makes them seem gritty and hardened. In this way, the entire team seems more ready for war than they ever were before. In addition, his detailed depictions of space have a wonderful mix of dazzling beauty and horrible chaos. This can been seen through the graceful structure of battleships before a skirmish and the dismal carnage left after a skirmish. In this way, Yu’s artwork works perfectly here and really helps improve this volume as a whole.

Continuity

Avengers Vol. 4: Infinity is part of the Infinity (Review) crossover event. This event continues story elements from Avengers Vol. 3: Prelude to Infinity (Review) and the beginning of New Avengers Vol. 2: Infinity.

In addition, there are a number of other comic series that tie-in to this event and explain what happens in between various chapters. These tie-in issues are explained in our “Infinity Reading Order” (coming soon).

The story here continues in Avengers Vol. 5: Adapt or Die and New Avengers Vol. 3: Other Worlds.

This volume also makes a reference to other comic books, detailed below:

• The end of Iron Man Vol. 1: Believe (Review) explains Iron Man’s new armor.
• The heroes are reluctant to trust Annihilus because of the events of Annihilation.
• The heroes are reluctant to trust the Skrulls because of the events of Secret Invasion.