Avengers by Jason Aaron vol. 8: Enter the Phoenix

At the beginning of this volume we get the story of the Phoenix of 1,000,000 B.C., with some impressively burly art from Dale Keown.  At the end of this volume we see Blade transition out of the Avengers into a job he was born to do with some less-impressive, but still nice art from Luca Maresca.  In between, we get five full issues of superheroes, and a couple super-villains duking it out to see who will become the next host of the Phoenix.  The all-powerful cosmic entity has been summoned to Earth by Namor, who fully intends to make the most of her power.  Except that the Phoenix isn’t about to hand over her might just because a sea-king came knocking.  No, she wants a full-on tournament to decide who’s the most worthy of wielding her power.  That’s not the only reason she’s dropped by Earth, however.  She also wanted to say “Hi” to her son after all these years as well.

This is a difficult volume to review since I was spoiled for its key revelations prior to reading it.  I imagine that the mystery of who will be the next Phoenix will be a lot more interesting to those who don’t already know who the winner is.  (Ditto for the stuff about the Phoenix’s scion.)  The good news is that there’s still a decent amount of entertainment to be had from watching the fights play out on their own terms.  From Captain America’s efforts to try (and fail) to find a way to lose while subverting the Phoenix’s plans, to the Black Panther’s schemes and dirty fighting to make sure that this power doesn’t fall into the right hands, there’s more going on here than just some cosmic-level fisticuffs.  The impressively detailed and kinetic art from Javier Garron (with a pitch-in issue from Maresca) also helps sell the drama and action quite well.  All this leaves vol. 8 coming off better than its predecessor as its main arc entertains while it and the issues around it move Aaron’s main story forward.