All-New Invaders #1
Marvel Comics
Written by James Robinson
Art by Steve Pugh
After years and years of exclusivity with the Distinguished Competition, James Robinson has finally arrived at Marvel Comics. Alongside his Fantastic Four relaunch– which we’ll get next month– we have what could possibly be the strangest book Marvel publishes this year: All New Invaders.
The concept is simple: your grandfather’s favorite superheroes (the Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, Captain America, Namor the Submariner, and most interestingly, the original Human Torch) get back together after sixty years to face a villainess of the Kree empire. It’s a pretty solid concept for a team book, and it’s one we can’t get anywhere else thanks to the eradication of the Justice Society of America. It’s a surprise, really, that it’s taken this long for Marvel to bring us something like this, even if it’s from one of the men who revitalized the Society so many years ago.
The problem with the first issue, however, is a problem long formed superhero comics like this one generally face. Credit to James Robinson here for introducing us to the characters we might not know, the Android Human Torch (first), but it’s not until halfway through the issue that we see anybody else or get an idea of the threat at hand. Hell, we did not get to see the team work together in real life– only in a dreamlike sequence.
For a comic in 2014, that’s just not enough for me. Decompression in storylines has been a plague on this industry since the rise of graphic novels and the infamous decompressor Brian Michael Bendis, but at least his number ones give us some sort of hook. I left All-New Invaders #1 anticipating the rest of the story– because I am a person who reads serialized stories all the time– but disappointed that there wasn’t a hook for me here.
At the very least, the book looks sharp. Another DC refugee, Animal Man‘s Steve Pugh, makes his return to Marvel here with a book that really pops. No real complaints there, and there’s not really much to point out.
There is a load of potential here. All New Invaders has room to grow, to be the home of older Marvel stuff the way the Society was- maybe even room for newer characters. I’m interested to see where this one goes, desperate, perhaps, for the book to soar above expectations. It’s just not there yet.
