Avengers Arena #4, by Dennis Hopeless (writer), Alessandro Vitti (artist), Frank martin (colorist), Joe Caramagna (letterer) - That is a completely inaccurate cover. Shocking, I know.As there are only two Runaways thrown into this mess (Nico and Chase) they're finding it a little hard to handle things alone. It's difficult to sleep when only one person can at a time, and one of them has an extremely twitchy trigger finger. Fortunately, Nico magicked up a special fruit tree, and offers it to the Avengers Academy kids as a show of good faith. Things are going well, Chase and Reptil are talking. Chase wanders off, someone nearly incinerates Reptil. Hmm, Chase's gauntlets can do that. OK, alliance over. No Hazmat, don't kill the magic fruit tree! Awww, what did the magic fruit tree ever do to you? Nico seems to seriously doubt Chase (not without reason given his past history of crap decisions), and then someone drops the Darkhawk amulet into Chase's hands. Swell, give the idiot more power.
I like that page of the Academy kids celebrating having the fruit tree while Nico and Chase sleep. It's so happy, and they're acting like such kids, it makes the disintegration of the team-up hurt even worse. Plus, Reptil toasting X-23 with fruit while wearing a pteranodon head on his human body is kind of funny. It's a silent page, so credit to Alessandro Vitti's artwork for selling it. It's an important reminder these are kids, super-powers or no, past experience battling the forces of evil or not. They're under a lot of stress, they handle it in different ways - attitude, determination, pushing people away, trying to bring them closer - and they aren't always going to make intelligent decisions. I mean, as readers, we can be reasonably sure Chase didn't roast Reptil, but the way things play out, it's easy to see why Hazmat, X-23, and even Nico could believe he would.
Vitti's artwork feels like a combination of Kev Walker and David LaFuente, leaning more towards LaFuente. It's sketchy when the view is a long shot, character faces aren't as distinct or defined, but up close, the detail is there. Frank Martin's colors help. During the talking scenes, the lighting is ambient, the moon, or whatever is passing itself off as the moon. It's blue lighting, there are shadows, but they aren't deep or terribly distinct from the lit areas. Everything is sort of tranquil and out on the surface. That way, when things go haywire and kids start throwing around blasty powers, it's a contrast. Bright purples, greens, oranges, makes things stark, harsh, sharply divided.
Fearless Defenders #1, by Cullen Bunn (writer), Will Sliney (artist), Veronica Gandini (colorist), Clayton Cowles (letterer) - About Brooks' cover. I want to think Valkyrie and Misty are up on the balls of their feet because that's a proper fighting thing. Not standing flat-footed. You think that's it, or is this like a Deodato thing, where he can't help drawing women like they're wearing invisible heels regardless of whether it's appropriate? Like I said, I'd prefer to assume the former, but who knows.Misty Knight tries to shut down a smuggling operation. Then a helicopter full of goons working for a LeFay show up and destroy the ship. Misty escapes with a single artifact, which she brings to her client, a Dr. Riggs. Who activates some trigger in the artifact, causing the dead to rise. Which is when Valkyrie shows up and she and Misty shut them down, then opt to return to Asgard for answers about some "Doommaidens".
The Valkyrie/Riggs kiss felt forced. Maybe if we had more time to get to know Dr. Riggs, or see her interact with Val, it might have worked better. As it was, it didn't make much of an impression. That sums up this issue pretty well. It didn't make much of an impression. I found myself focusing on things like why Misty wasn't wearing any shoes during the fight on the boat. Is that going to give her better traction in the rain, or had she been wearing fins and ditched them after getting onboard? The writing is passable, but there wasn't anything that jumped out. No snappy bit of dialogue, for example. Sliney's art was largely OK, but again, nothing much jumps out. The full-page splash of Valkyrie on Aragorn behind Misty looked nice. Pretty dramatic. The fight scenes are solid, though the action looks a bit awkward at times. It's annoying, because there's nothing about the book that merits ripping, but also nothing I want to sing to the heavens about.
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