Avengers Arena #9 Review
Avengers Arena #9 Review
Overview:
The history of Apex is revealed and someone dies.
The Good:
The story was average. Dennis Hopeless has had the tendency to write the original characters, such as Apex, much better than the existing ones but for whatever reason Apex routinely falls flat. This story gets into her (his?) backstory and honestly it is boring. The only good part was whne they were deciding whether to kill Apex or not and their decision comes back to bite them in the ass, who would have guessed.
Dennis hopeless was completely average here.
The art by Kev Walker was once again the best part of the issue. The art really flowed well with the colors by Jean-Francois Beaulieu and set an appropriately dreary and dark mood.
The Bad:
I don’t know what it is but I cannot bring myself to care about Apex in the slightest. This issue expands on his/her/its backstory and it doesn’t really get the sympathy rolling. There is the idea of making an unsympathetic villain (i.e. Red Skull) and up until now Apex could have had that going for him/her/it (whatever) but this issue really kicks that idea in the teeth. She-Apex is a total bitch and completely manipulative and wants to kill everyone but He-Apex doesn’t and He-Apex doesn’t even try to do anything about it when he has the chance, he just throws a pity party and everyone falls for it. Making a character with split personalities where one is sympathetic and the other is not is very difficult and unfortunately Hopeless gets it wrong.
I think the part that made me not like the issue was the sheer stupidity of everyone that isn’t Juston, Chase, and Nara. They want to kill Apex but everyone else out votes them and then bad things happen. Anyone with eyes could have seen Apex’s escape and killing of a certain character coming. The series up until now has been realistic from the point of the tension and what the groups do but this was just so obvious it is ridiculous.
Verdict:
This issue was flat; something about it just didn’t click the way that the previous issues about the original characters have. The writing was average and the art was great but the story just didn’t have any emotional punch to it. (Unless you are a big fan of Juston.)
2 (2.5) out of 5
2 Comments