'The Avengers Volume 4: War of the Realms' – Aaron, McGuiness, Masters, Morales (Marvel)



Long before I started blogging again, one of my reading resolutions was to find a Marvel comic book series and stick with it for a while, see where the journey took me and all that. With the Marvel Cinematic Universe being in particularly good health (what, you hadn't noticed...?) the decision more or less made itself, I'd give 'The Avengers' a shot and see what the comics were like.
Well, I won't go too much into how I've found the series so far; lets just say that, well... I'm still here aren't I? It's got to be doing something right considering work is pretty stressful right now and I don't need much of an excuse to drop a book, or series, halfway through and try something else instead. Not perfect then but plenty to keep this reader occupied and there's always the promise of more to come in the future.
Which leads us rather neatly to Volume 4, 'War of the Realms' and a book that encapsulates everything that I love and hate about Marvel comics...

The war is over. And Earth's Mightiest Heroes are looking to celebrate. That's right - there's a party at Avengers Mountain] But who invited the Squadron Supreme of America? The Challenge of The Ghost Riders] Robbie Reyes wants rid of the flame-headed monster inside him. So it's time to do the common-sense thing: perform an exorcism on his car. Only problem is, Johnny Blaze, the King of Hell, has some plans of his own for the newest Ghost Rider and his Avengers friends. Collecting: Avengers 21-25

One thing I've never particularly enjoyed about Marvel titles is the constant referring to other events that you can only read about if you pick up issue x of what ever title Marvel want you to read. I mean, I get it. Each title s just a small part of a much larger tale that encompasses the whole Marvel universe; there's going to be crossovers between titles and people will want to read everything in order to get the whole picture. But not everything needs to be linked together though. Sometimes a whole story can be told without it even needing to reference another title. The fact that Marvel seem to shy away from this approach (at least from what I've seen) suggests that someone is looking to fleece the likes of you and I, and I don't like that.
And that is what a large chunk of this volume is set up to do, to get the readers wallets out to fill in the 'War of the Realms' gaps in their reading. That's all well and good but what a reader like me is left with, in the meantime, are just chunks of disjointed story that look cool but don't do an awful lot else because they can't, not without the rest of the story (which I'm probably going to end up buying now, I can't believe I just wrote that...)

This is a real shame as there's also a lot going on, in quite the slim volume, that suggests cool stuff will be arriving imminently. I'm definitely there for Agent Coulson, and the Squadron Supreme of America, and for a character that I've never really got into, I'm really interested to see where She-Hulk's arc takes her next. And as much as I love the fights etc, I really like seeing the Avengers taking a break from it all, that's when you get a real insight into what makes these heroes keep going against all the odds. There's a lot of that here as well as a traitor that I wasn't expecting...

It's all of that which means I will definitely be around for volume 5 and I've only got a month to wait for that which is pretty cool. I'm hoping for some actual storytelling though instead of filler designed to get you out buying more comics to fill the gaps. I know Jason Aaron can tell a good story, he's done it elsewhere as well as here; I want to see more of that please.

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