A review by mschlat
Avengers World, Vol. 1: A.I.M.pire by Nick Spencer, Jonathan Hickman
3.0
I keep on reading Hickman and not being impressed. There's high concept galore here --- three different threats of different types --- but little to ground the work. It's as if you took the concepts from Ellis's Authority or Morrison's JLA and crammed them into one work, but removed much of the reason to care. A prime example is what happens to the island nation of Madripoor --- it (spoiler alert) rises out of the water, revealing that it rests upon the head of a dragon. So, A+ for gaga visuals and strangeness, but after the initial impact, what happens? You just see more visuals of a city on top of a flying dragon. No resolution (at least in this volume); not even much consideration of the problem.
There's some nice characterization here; we have Cannonball and Sunspot filling in the junior-male-joking-duo role to good effect (think Blue Beetle and Booster Gold from a JLA reboot). And who ever is responsible for Bruce Banner's dialogue (Hickman or Spencer) does the best job I've seen in a long while of showing the character's scientific mania. But then you switch scenes to another sterile crisis and the whole book stalls.
There's some nice characterization here; we have Cannonball and Sunspot filling in the junior-male-joking-duo role to good effect (think Blue Beetle and Booster Gold from a JLA reboot). And who ever is responsible for Bruce Banner's dialogue (Hickman or Spencer) does the best job I've seen in a long while of showing the character's scientific mania. But then you switch scenes to another sterile crisis and the whole book stalls.