Mighty Avengers #21

Ah, Dan Slott. You win again. I loved the book, from the recap to the roster to the villain to the surprise reveal. All fantastic stuff. The recap page talked about how the New Avengers were never quite the actual Avengers, which was a nice little nod to the big nerds like me out there. I really enjoyed the interaction between the core team of Jarvis, Jocasta, Hank Pym, Hercules, and Amadeus Cho. I loved the casual confidence of Hank Pym (can't bring myself to call him Wasp yet either) but man, his interactions with the others were so much fun. Pym knows he's awesome, but at the same time he's so easy for Herc and Amadeus to shoot down, the dynamic is going to be a fascinating one. I loved the insight on the early relationship of the Avengers, with Pym's crisis of confidence coming from a little retcon that only enriches the history of the Avengers.

As for the villain, Modred the Mystic is a neat guy visually, and he's always bounced around between good and evil, so I have no problem with him being used like this. I'm much more interested in who he chooses to host his boss. It is interesting that Slott is choosing to follow up on that old Wundagore story rather than any of the other threads in Avengers history, but that stuff has never really been followed up on that much, so it is a good choice.

Scarlet Witch shows up as a plot device to wrangle in the Hulk, US Agent, Stature, and the Vision. While I like those characters and look forward to them joining the team, there was not as much time spent on them, so they are mostly just bonus right now. Iron Man gets more cool moments as the world goes to hell. Tony calmly assesses that either he's the last hero or "no one is taking his calls" either way, it is up to him. Iron Man is on the case. There is SO much potential with this group, and with Pym in a new role as leader, and his lab as the HQ, we could be seeing a great mix of old and new Avengers ideas. This one just misses Excellent. The Pym development is good enough to get that rank, but the villain and threat aren't quite up to that level yet.

This issue we got good Khoi Pham. I've mentioned before how he can be overly sketchy sometimes, but it seems he had time to do a solid job on this one. The team looked good, with Jocasta and Scarlet Witch sticking out as looking good. His last page cliffhanger was well-drawn too.

Good