Annihilators: Earthfall #3 - The Earth and space heroes have set aside their differences to lock up the 30 Magi children while they debate what to do with them. Ronan, unsurprisingly, advocates killing all the children and taking care of the Magus that way. Captain America, equally unsurprisingly, is not in favor of this plan. The situation changes, if only by degrees, when the Magus uses the belief font within the church to amplify his power. He does this so he can place his consciousness within 30% of the U.S. population. Which to Ronan, just means they have to kill a lot more Earthlings. The Church of Truth templeships show up and most of the heroes step outside to smash them, while a few stay inside for the "cobble together a techno solution to the problem" portion of our story. In the back-up, Mojo sends our heroes through several different environments, for two purposes. One, as an excuse to create variants for the toy line, and to have an excuse to unleash a giant, evil Groot to menace the good guys.The Annihilators part felt padded out, like this and the fighting between the good guys last issue could all have been handled in issue 2. I like the back and forth between Cap and Ronan, but beyond that. . . Part of it is Tan Eng Huat is not cut out for these big action pieces where all the heroes are fighting waves of Church zealots, with spaceships all around. The action looks stiff and awkward, which means I'm not enjoying the fight scenes, which makes them seem that much more like filler. The back-up isn't really making huge plot progress either, but for one thing, it's only five pages, and for another, it's not taking itself as seriously, so I'm more inclined to enjoy the silliness. And I like Tom Green's art a lot more than Huat's. That helps.
Avengers Academy #21 - Mettle's looking a little Red Skullish there on the cover. Oh crap, the Skull learned the Ovoid mind transfer trick from Dr. Doom! Someone call Captain America, there's Nazi-punching to be done!Oh wait, he's already in this issue. Everyone's trying to settle in at the new Academy location, but some of the original cadets aren't happy about all the newbies, and figure they're being cycled out. Which makes tempers shorts, which leads to Striker mouthing off to Captain America, which leads to a big misunderstanding battle Jocasta has to break up. The kids try to calm down and reassess, and so do the adults. It really is a bad sign when Hawkeye was the most mature acting adult present. Apologies are handed around, Hawkeye joins the staff, and Jocasta's dead. Oh, and Reptil's having a bad day. Should have known the Korvac arc was going to come back to cause problems.
The fight seemed tacked on. Not the cadets wondering about their place in the new situation, or Striker running his mouth, or Mettle clearly still struggling with what he had to do during Fear Itself. Cap being so tone deaf about it was odd. He had to deal with Hawkeye when Clint was at his most loud-mouthed and hot-headed. I'd think Cap would be better at defusing a situation like that by now. Gage has quite a few subplots running, between the reveal at the end, and Jocasta's death, and the various problems the students are dealing with, Hazmat's resentment of Lightspeed, and such. We'll have to keep our eyes on Pym, since Veil's defection may cause him to make poor choices, as he sometimes does when suffering setbacks.
Avengers Solo #2 - I know that's supposed to be glue from Paste-Pot Pete Hawkeye's stuck in, but it just makes me think there'll be a Spider-Man appearance. There wasn't.Hawkeye escapes from Paste - sorry, Trapster in a fashion I'd consider insulting to the villain if we weren't talking about the Trapster here. He really does make it look insanely easy for being pasted to a wall. After that, Hawkeye keeps his appointment to meet with these people who were part of the mysterious study, just as said people are being attacked by armed, masked merc types. He buys them time to escape, but one - Emi - sticks with him while they track down the overly aggressive armored person who'd been protecting them before Hawkeye came along. Armored person - Trace - has a grudge against the Avengers, something to do with Captain America. I'm not seeing how all this ties together yet. In the back-up, Hank, Striker, and Finesse make it into Dr. Maclain's lab and find robot versions of the original West Coast Avengers. Kind of disappointed they didn't that hideous Christmas colors costume Wonder Man had for awhile. Because I enjoy laughing at that doofus, you see.
Back on the main story, Roger Robinson's art is hit or miss. Some of that might be the coloring, where everything is sort murky and grainy, but there were certain sequences I thought weren't laid out in a logical fashion. In one case, I think flipping one panel so the character faces the other way would have made a big difference. I may have to take a picture, and do a larger post about that. We'll see.
Tomorrow, the end of Darkwing, Grifter tries to hold my attention, and monsters on motorcycles!
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