Comic Review. Avengers: The Initiative, Volume 1

The cover for Avenger: The Initiative, Volume 1

Written by Dan Slott

Art by Stefano Caselli

Published by Marvel

As we’ve covered here before, I skip most comic Events.  First off, they always strike me as a money-grab, and on top of that, I find it endlessly annoying when they interrupt the storylines in my favorite books.  Plus, many big company comic Events are billed as “world-changing,” only to be undone by editorial at the end of the current story-arc, so that it’s often hard to see in retrospect what the point of the event was in the first place—besides driving sales. 

With that in mind, I was more than a little dubious when I saw Avengers: The Initiative (Volume 1) at my local library over the weekend.  But as we discussed last week, I’m reading up a bit on The Avengers in anticipation of the movie this summer, and more to the point, now that Marvel’s big Civil War event is dead and buried, I find myself a little curious to see what, if anything, all the fuss was about.  And then too, I noticed that Dan Slott wrote The Initiative, and I figured, What the Hell.  He sure is kicking ass on Amazing Spider-Man.

The story here—and it seems in Civil War, as well—is a political allegory based in large part on the policies of the Bush Administration post-9/11.  The 9/11 stand-in event is a superhero battle that destroyed the city of Stamford, CT, killing some six hundred civilian bystanders and a small collection of no-name heroes operating under the banner of the New Warriors.  Soon, the U.S. Government passes a law requiring all super-humans to register their powers with the federal government and report for official training, after which they will be inducted into The Avengers Initiative, now operating as a branch of the U.S. Army.  Super-humans who refuse to serve are de-powered in one of a variety of ways, and voila!  We have a human rights story set in the midst of the Marvel Universe.

All of this is set in backstory in the inside cover of the Volume 1 trade.  The story itself starts with the forcible recruitment of some teenaged and early-twenties-aged super-humans, and it proceeds through their initial training and their first few deployments with The Initiative.  And a lot of it is standard-issue basic-training stuff, but it’s cleverly executed, and it gives us a chance to get to know some folks who’re either completely new Marvel characters or who are, for the most part, utter nobodies.  It’s a mark of the quality of the writing on this book that it got me totally interested in the lives of Hank Pym (as Yellowjacket, no less), James Rhodes (aka War Machine, but without Tony Stark to carry his characterization), and a couple of Peter Parker’s clones!  At certain points of the day today, I’ve found myself reading for backstory on Wikipedia, trying to figure out how we went from the “outed” Peter Parker of this story to the one in Slott’s current Amazing Spider-Man (ASM) run along with, well, when the Hell did Hank Pym start sleeping with Tigra?!

Which brings us back to the Event comics, of course.  Because although The Initiative seems to have been its own title, it spun out of Civil War—and seems to have been undone in large part in the Brand New Day event in ASM.

Still, taken as a single piece of work, this first volume of The Initiative was outstanding.  The story is full of quasi-military anti-governmental paranoia, mixed liberally with coming-of-age anxiety, and seasoned with a dash of bureaucratic in-fighting, all of which keeps it hopping without making it either confusing or overly-busy.  I mean, all these characters are screwed from the get-go, and even the ones who’re supposed to be in charge really don’t know what the Hell they’re doing.  Just as in real life, The Initiative’s leaders spend as much time covering their own asses as they do actually working, and it’s always their personal goals and agendas that drive their actions.  I loved it, really, because sadly, that’s the way life is a lot of the time.  Yeah, folks want to do the right thing, but it always seems like the truly successful people are at least as concerned about how it’s going to look as they are with how it’s actually going to work.  And with lives on the line in this book, it doesn’t take long before that pervasive attitude of professional selfishness takes its oh-so-delightful toll.

The art here is strong.  Expressive, wide-screen stuff that effectively highlights the action.  My one critique is that Caselli has a tendency to draw lined, pouty faces with outsized puckering lips, but that’s more than forgivable, especially since he spares us all the gratuitous tits-in-chainmail-bikinis that have become the norm in so many comics these days.  Indeed, most of the girls here are wearing tee-shirts and baggy camouflage fatigue pants, and in fact, even when Hank Pym and Tigra are talking about getting it on, the artwork stays tasteful.  All things considered, that’s probably the most amazing thing in this entire book.

So.  Volume 1 of The Initiative was terrific.  I liked it, and I recommend it strongly to folks who like comic superheroes but who could use something that’s a little stronger than the standard good-vs.-evil that’s at the heart of most superhero tales.  This one’s kind of an Avengers-meets-Full Metal Jacket, with a side of Orson Wells’ 1984 thrown in for good measure.  I dug it the most and am really looking forward to reading Volume 2 on the train ride home tonight.