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brenticus's review
adventurous
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.0
This was... effort. It's a big event, with a gigantic scale and a gigantic mess of storylines all trying to go on at once even though most of them are barely related to each other.
Now, maybe part of the problem is that this is towards the end of a whole pile of events. A little while after reading this I found a timeline that had a big pile of books leading up to this one, and this wasn't even the end. But you know what? If I'm reading a god damn 600+ page graphic novel covering the entire Infinity serial and a few related serials along with it, I want it to either stand on its own or have a list of books on the inside cover or something.
But no, you pretty much get dropped in at the start of the Builders invasion. Who I had never heard of, and are quickly explained as some sort of forerunner seed race for the galaxy, and seem to be annihilating everything on the path to their target for basically no reason, and seem to get defeated for basically no reason. Like, Hickman spends a ton of time building up the Builders as this massive, basically unstoppable force, even stopping the annihilation wave, then... I dunno. Thor pulls off a cool stunt, then after that he sort of fast-forwards through the Avengers saving the universe and liberating a ton of planets. There are a lot of cool space fights, plus Thor's stunt is seriously fucking cool, but this storyline is just so poorly written it hurts to read.
On top of that, the Inhumans are doing... something. Even after the terrigen mist thing happens, it really doesn't make sense. I've actually read more stuff between reading Infinity and writing this review that you would think would provide more context, but it actually ended up making less sense. But it got me to read more about the Inhumans, so I guess I don't regret the inclusion of this side plot too much.
Plus the Illuminati are making some sort of planet busters. Which is sort of treated as a big deal, but mostly swept under the rug and not really explained. That one seemed to be missing a lot of context in this hardcover.
Plus Thanos is trying to kill his kids. Which is also kind of random - both Thanos having his own offspring and wanting to hunt them across the universe, and especially that one of them is a random inhuman in Greenland - but at least results in Thanos beating the everliving shit out of a few Avengers, so that's always fun. While this storyline wasn't exactly well written, I will always cheer for Thanos knocking Captain Marvel out with one punch. God damn brilliant.
If it isn't clear yet, I didn't really like this volume. There's too much going on, and most of it is not well written. But it's got some quality violence, so I'm not too upset on the whole. I do like me some violence.
Now, maybe part of the problem is that this is towards the end of a whole pile of events. A little while after reading this I found a timeline that had a big pile of books leading up to this one, and this wasn't even the end. But you know what? If I'm reading a god damn 600+ page graphic novel covering the entire Infinity serial and a few related serials along with it, I want it to either stand on its own or have a list of books on the inside cover or something.
But no, you pretty much get dropped in at the start of the Builders invasion. Who I had never heard of, and are quickly explained as some sort of forerunner seed race for the galaxy, and seem to be annihilating everything on the path to their target for basically no reason, and seem to get defeated for basically no reason. Like, Hickman spends a ton of time building up the Builders as this massive, basically unstoppable force, even stopping the annihilation wave, then... I dunno. Thor pulls off a cool stunt, then after that he sort of fast-forwards through the Avengers saving the universe and liberating a ton of planets. There are a lot of cool space fights, plus Thor's stunt is seriously fucking cool, but this storyline is just so poorly written it hurts to read.
On top of that, the Inhumans are doing... something. Even after the terrigen mist thing happens, it really doesn't make sense. I've actually read more stuff between reading Infinity and writing this review that you would think would provide more context, but it actually ended up making less sense. But it got me to read more about the Inhumans, so I guess I don't regret the inclusion of this side plot too much.
Plus the Illuminati are making some sort of planet busters. Which is sort of treated as a big deal, but mostly swept under the rug and not really explained. That one seemed to be missing a lot of context in this hardcover.
Plus Thanos is trying to kill his kids. Which is also kind of random - both Thanos having his own offspring and wanting to hunt them across the universe, and especially that one of them is a random inhuman in Greenland - but at least results in Thanos beating the everliving shit out of a few Avengers, so that's always fun. While this storyline wasn't exactly well written, I will always cheer for Thanos knocking Captain Marvel out with one punch. God damn brilliant.
If it isn't clear yet, I didn't really like this volume. There's too much going on, and most of it is not well written. But it's got some quality violence, so I'm not too upset on the whole. I do like me some violence.
will_sargent's review
3.0
The narration attempts to make this a lot more memorable than it actually is.
nigellicus's review
5.0
Stuff blows up a lot. Like, a lot. I mean, this is pretty good as these things go, but I'm really hung up on the whole release of the terrigen mists at the end. How come Black Bolt never got brought up for crimes against humanity for that one? It's like and act of global chemical warfare which, at its most benign (and lots of people die from the effects or get kidnapped for evil experiments, or accidentally kill people when their power manifests, and I believe it later turns out to be deadly to Mutants), ignores completely the consent of everyone it effects. This annoys me more than it should, not that he did it, but that he doesn't get put in some sort of prison for it, or treated as a villain. Grumble.