Avengers World #12 set Euroforce against Morgan Le Fay and the Cities of the Dead that definitely requires you to have been reading along.
AVENGERS WORLD #12
Writer: Nick Spencer
Artist: Marco Checchetto
Colourist: Andres Mossa
Letterer: VC’s Joe Caramagna
Editor: Wil Moss
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
LET’S MEET THE TEAM
Morning Glories scribe Nick Spencer delivers a great story in Avengers World #12. He takes on the difficult task of explaining exactly what Euroforce is (essentially Europe’s answer to the Avengers), with an action sequence that spans the majority of the issue. The focal characters are the Black Knight and Hawkeye, which strikes a nice balance between characters that readers are new to and very familiar with, but I can’t help feeling that the leading lady of Euroforce – Spider Woman – was somewhat left out all the important stuff, save making a snide remark about the younger team members (notably Swordswoman, who is really cool and deserves more attention), here and there.
Avengers World #12 does a good job at having no callbacks to New York and Spencer feels no need to check in with any of the events or characters that are going on in tandem across the pond in New York City. He struggled with introducing a lot of characters that new readers or people dipping in and out of the series might not be immediately familiar with. That being said, setting Morgan Le Fay up as the big baddie feels like a smart move. Even if readers have never seen Marvel Comic’s version of Morgan Le Fay we all know her with Arthurian Legend being as prominent in Western popular culture as it is.
The A-storyline of Avengers World #12 focuses on the aforementioned action scene (with Euroforce embroiled in a battle with Morgan’s minions – including a Shelob-esque giant spider), and really could have used a lot more heart and a lot less name drops. The seemingly C-storyline of the issue plays to Spencer’s strength that readers of Morning Glories will be familiar with – in a moment of high stakes we get an emotional flashback to a character’s past and learn something about them.
Remember when I mentioned Swordswoman a couple paragraphs back? In this case, Spencer takes readers to her childhood growing up in France and we get the barest peek at her broken childhood (she is a superheroine, after all), before sadly being ripped back to the present and the battle at hand.
I commend Spencer for his introduction of various Marvel UK characters, but I wish he’d taken the majority of the pages to spend on these flashbacks, rather than on the fight. It’s a personal preference in storytelling that I felt could have taken Avengers World #12 from a good issue to a truly great one.
CLEAN HOUSE STYLE
Marco Checchetto fits the Marvel house style well. He is all clean lines throughout Avengers World #12, though it stands out for the kinetic poses he chooses for bother the male and female characters that oftentimes feel like they will shoot detritus off the page.
Avengers World #12 is big action sequence and they look amazing in the splash pages/two page spreads and prove that Checchetto absolutely knows how to lay out a page. His sense of scale is startling with the reveal on the final page of the issue and makes this one of the most impactful moments in 22 pages.
It’s a good looking comic book, if not executed in the most unique style.
IF YOU ARE READING ALONG
… and know the playing ground than Avengers World #12 is a fun, action-packed issue. That being said, it presupposes a knowledge of the Marvel universe beyond the New York cast of heroes and is not to most accessible story to new readers.
