He doesn’t ruin the book by any means, but between Dustin Weaver and Stefano Caselli, Deodato doing the majority of the collection ends up feeling underwhelming. He doesn’t do the whole thing, but his style feels reminiscent of early 2000s 3D computer animation, and in all the bad ways.

Where I think this collection begins to really suffer, though, is the art, specifically Mike Deodato Jr’s art. I love this a lot - issue titles are some of my favorite things in comics, and Hickman is one of the best at titling stories. Instead of covers to separate different issues, there’s a stylish title page followed by the cast page for the next issue. The actual collection itself is just as great as the first one. And with hindsight it’s clear they’re leading to something, but the connective tissue that a lot of readers have come to expect from Hickman is bare bones - he’s intentionally keeping it loose for the payoff to feel that much more satisfying. Because of this, this stretch of Avengers is considered the weakest of the run as a whole, because for a while it just feels like a bunch of one-shot stories that aren’t really connected or leading to anything. Most people would agree that this was the stronger book during the first collection, but it just didn’t come out for a while midway through the run, because Hickman wanted to focus on the setup taking place in Avengers. There’s only one issue of New Avengers in this collection - issue #7. Listen to the latest episode of our weekly comics podcast!

Avengers by jonathan hickman vol 1