Avengers by Jason Aaron vol. 1: The Final Host

Aaron has been working within the Marvel Universe for long enough that seeing him finally get the chance to write the “Avengers” feels right.  The good news is that his willingness to embrace the casual craziness of this particular universe serves this opening story well. What does it involve?  Nothing less than the extermination of the Earth by a pissed-off host of Celestials. You see, a million years ago a group of superpowered individuals — consisting of Odin, Phoenix, Agamotto, and a Hulked-out Starbrand just to name a few — killed a Celestial themselves in what they believed to be self-defense.  Now its descendants are here to finish the job with a little help from the guy who, among other things, loves to bring Avengers teams together.

This leads to a first issue that has Celestials dropping out of the sky, Doctor Strange and Black Panther confronting a horde of mysterious eggs underneath the Earth, and Ghost Rider fighting the spawn of said eggs even before the Final Host show up in the last few pages.  It’s certainly an attention-getting opening and one that largely works because of Aaron’s solid grasp of the characters (save one) and his indulgence in spectacle. Said spectacle works because Ed McGuinness fully embrace the “go big or go home” challenge of the story he’s been asked to draw.  His work is glorious action-heavy spectacle throughout these issues and ably backed up by Paco Diaz’s equally energetic contributions from issue #3 onward.

Where the story falters is in its climax, which is essentially one of those “all those heroes come together as one to blast the bad guys with their powers of specialness” deals.  It also doesn’t give the impression that Aaron has any grand plans to his run beyond some next-to-last-page musings by Odin about the Avengers never finding out the rest of his team’s secrets.  Then there’s the new characterization of Jennifer Walters as more Hulk than lawyer, which was likely started in her solo title, that just rubs me the wrong way even though I realize the writer is just playing the hand that he’s been dealt.  Not a perfectly enthralling start to this new age of “Avengers,” but one that should improve now that Aaron has worked the attention-getting stuff out of his system and settles down to show us what his real plans are for this run.