Review: Avatar- The Last Airbender: North and South

July 22, 2020 ComicBookWire

Quick Summary

Pros: The book’s main theme, an examination into nostalgia, is interesting, especially from Katara’s standpoint. The book’s conclusion is pretty compelling. The artwork looks nice and suits the comic.

Cons: The comic’s villain is not that great, which leads to less excitement in the main narrative. The comic’s secondary theme is underexplored.

Overall: This storyline is mostly positive but has more negatives to it than the majority of the Avatar comics. The main narrative explores an interesting topic and works well in looking at Katara’s character development. However, it isn’t that captivating for most of the read and one of its themes goes relatively unexplored. This volume is for hardcover Avatar fans, not those looking to see the best of the comic series.

Story

Avatar: The Last Airbender- North and South, by Michael Dante DiMartino, Bryan Konietzko, and Gene Luen Yang, is a decent comic but ends up being one of the weaker entries in the Avatar: The Last Airbender series. The storyline here looks at growth and change within the Southern Water Tribe and shows how members of Team Avatar, specifically Katara, react to it. This leads to a thematic exploration into the “can’t go home again” idiom. Unfortunately, the book’s other main theme, a look at the interplay between nations of differing levels of development, ends up being very weak and the main source of conflict, a threat from a group of rebels, doesn’t become exciting until the final third of the narrative. There is still something here for hardcore Avatar fans but not as much as one would hope.

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The main narrative in North and South centers around Katara and Sokka’s return to the Southern Water Tribe. There they discover their home has changed dramatically and their father is now dating again. These changes do not sit well with Katara, whose identity has always been heavily reliant on an idealized version of her past. This leads to an examination into nostalgia and if it is worth preserving over the sake of progress. It also looks at nostalgia’s ability to corrupt memory, as Katara’s “perfect” vision of the Southern Water Tribe was one where their progress was constantly kept in check by raids from the Fire Nation. The topic is interesting and the way it directly relates to Katara makes it even more interesting.

Unfortunately, the volume’s other theme is not as developed. The Northern Water Tribe’s attempt to colonize the Southern Water Tribe and the Earth Kingdom’s insistence that the Southern Water Tribe is not “civilized” bring up some great points about the way nations interact with one another in the real world. However, none of these points are elaborated upon enough and the Earth Kingdom’s qualms are, specifically, brushed away without much issue.

Outside of themes, the story has some additional problems. Other Avatar comics feature intense threats from powerful villains, the intervention of mysterious spirits, or even internal fractures within Team Avatar. However, this comic’s villain is not nearly as memorable or exciting. Until this comic’s final chapter, it never really feels like the villain poses a real threat and, even there, it is clear he will not win. Near the end, it almost seems like the perseverance of his ideology will make changes where his actions could not, which could have been an interesting twist, yet this is never expanded upon. Instead, the main narrative simply ends up being average when it comes to excitement.

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Art

The artwork in North and South, by Gurihiru, mostly retains the quality of the series as a whole and reflects the art style seen in the TV show. At first, I was a little disappointed, as the visuals mostly just consisted of the main characters standing in front of fields of ice, which is expected, given the story’s setting but was still disappointing nonetheless. However, as the read progressed, I was happy to see some creatively designed towns, building interiors, and even a brief glimpse of the Southern Water Tribe at its most jubilant. The imagination of the Avatar world still exists within North and South, which is a treat at any point in time. Overall, the visuals here as positive and add to the appeal of the work as a whole.