Dark Avengers #186

Average fare again from Dark Avengers (aka The Actual Thunderbolts) by Jeff Parker and this week two artists.

Remember how the last two issues have been focusing pretty much just on the territory war of this alternate universe and not on the team featured at all? It's the same thing this time. Countless pages of alt Iron Man, alt Mr Fantastic, alt Doctor Strange, alt Thing... and very few pages of the titular characters.

The cool bit in this issue is the final few pages when Walker just puts his Avenger hat on and starts bossing the folks about. It's actually pretty good to see Walker portrayed as a capable leader again (he's lead the real Avengers twice before, but Marvel would like you to forget that anyone other than Iron Man ever led the Avengers) and I'm just glad he hasn't been reverted back to the awful Chuck Austen "I'M CAPTAIN AMERICA" gibberish. My appreciation for this small scene was ruined when he put on his mask only for him to have a god ugly PATRIOTIC STAR on his forehead where Cap's A would be.

The other cool bit is Trickshot's dream with Lord Demonpimp and Hawkeye. It's funny and is the first actual thing Trickshot has had to do since he joined this book 12 issues ago. Shame it's kinda just a generic "woe is me, my brother is cooler than me" character thing but it's actually a pretty funny sequence and hey it's great to see it only took 12 issues for them to finally decide to write Trickshot.

A lot of the problems with the series remain. This isn't a team book, it's just an exploration of an alternate universe we will never see again and personally I find to be rather pointless since, as I said, the whole territorial war thing was done literally the story before with Boss Cage. Other than Walker and a page of Trickshot, the rest of the team don't get any meaningful face time. Ragnarok is unconscious the whole issue...which is weird since he's on the cover...Moonstone is embarrassingly in that godawful Captain Marvel costume...Skaar is written as your generic Hulk. Dumb Spider-God is shrunken down for unexplained reasons (SCIENCE AMORA shrunk him down between issues and can't be bothered to change him back...great writing).

The thing is all problems aside, this is still head and shoulders above every other Marvel book like Pretentious Shit, Worthless Crap, Offensive Perversions, New Pretentious Shit, Dated In-Your-Face GRRRL Power and Juvenile Mess. This book has a few ok things going for it, this just isn't a good opening story. This is a good mid-story for a team, not a good introduction... which is a enormous problem considering the first 9 issues of this series weren't introductions and instead closure to the team before it. I'd say as a whole, this series just skirts on potential but barely reaches it.