Avengers 19, Mighty Avengers 1

Avengers 19
Hickman (w) and Yu (a) and Gho (c)

Little clerical note: not sure about this creative team. It's definitely Hickman and Yu and Gho but the cover mentions Gerry Alanguilan and the inside does not. I have to err with the inside here and think that the cover is a hold-over creative team list from Avengers 18. Still, hate when something that potentially easy gets messy, as it has very often with Marvel recently. On to the comic. Captain Marvel, who put up a pretty good fight against the Builders as Binary but was ultimately subdued, and her team of Avengers have been captured and are now being questioned by the Builders, who are curious to learn how Starbrand, Nightmask, Captain Universe, and the last Abyss in existence came to be in their possession. Meanwhile, Cap and Thor are trying to help the Galactic Council plan against what they now know to be a near endless army. Unbeknownst to them all, though, J-Son of Spartax is attempting to betray them by sending a secret message to the Builders promising them whatever they want in exchange for the end of this war. They reveal that they want Earth but don't need J-Son to get it; in fact, they can trace J-Son from the poorly hidden broadcast and quickly send one of the defeated ships hurtling at the Galactic Council at impossible speeds. The Builders have found their hidden enemies.

It's another solid issue of Infinity that still manages to keep the stakes raised and, perhaps, raise them further. The troubling questions that the Builders ask Captain Marvel about how they came into possession of their big (and familiar to the Builders) weapons are intriguing and the idea that there are still tons of Ex Nihilos and Ex Nihilas (we meet one of each in this issue) and just the one Abyss remaining in the Universe is especially fascinating. The mythos of the Builders and this whole event are clearly front and center here and it's, so far, a well-constructed one. It's well-constructed and, in truth, it has no right to be. If you had told me that we'd have another version of the Celestials, maybe more powerful even, in the more serious days of comics (the Celestials were created in the '70s by Jack Kirby when Jack Kirby was allowed to do grand and epic things, even if he wasn't necessarily allowed to finish them), I'd have said that there's no way a story could define them in any real light. I think that struggle isn't yet over but Hickman has done an impressive job building them up (ha, building). My biggest complaint, and it's fairly big because it did make me cringe and did pull me out of this comic a few times, was the male gaze aspect of this issue. There's a lot of focus on female characters' butts and even a weirdly pornographic moment with Ex Nihila and Captain Marvel. All of it feels like it's very much meant to appeal to men which have long been the largest audience of comic book readers. I think, though, it's particularly in bad taste (it's pretty always in bad taste but here especially) when it's focused on Captain Marvel, who Kelly Sue DeConnick has gone to great lengths to establish as a very strong female character. You put her on the cover of this issue (which is a great cover) and it's hopefully going to drive even more women to buy the comic (and even if it doesn't, such heavy male gaze is pretty inexcusable) so putting such a focus on the image of women is especially jarring. Like I said, it's a good issue and pretty well drawn overall but the male gaze stuff is really overdone.

Mighty Avengers 1
Ewing (w) and Land and Leisten (a) and D'Armata (c)

Luke Cage has reassembled, at least temporarily, the Heroes for Hire but, instead of Iron Fist or Misty Knight or Colleen Wing leading the charge, he has scooped up the new Power Man, Victor Alvarez, and the new White Tiger, Ava Ayala. They find themselves matched against Spider-Man when they're hired by Horizon Labs to stop petty costumed thieves. Spider-Man rails against them as mercenaries and the like, striking a chord with White Tiger, who decides that he's right and abruptly quits the team-up. Cage and Power Man wrap up and go to talk things over and Power Man is disillusioned by how defeatist he thinks Cage has become (Cage cares about a paycheck because he has a family now, seems to be the gist) and he also leaves, claiming that Cage has quit, not him. Meanwhile, Monica Rambeau, former Captain Marvel and current hero Spectrum, is getting back in the superhero game and has decided she needs a new costume. While at the costume store, she runs into an old acquaintance who needs a favor (we never see the acquaintance). As they're talking, Thanos' Black Order strikes Earth and Proxima Midnight, with her job done on Atlantis, strikes New York. Monica insists she won't help her acquaintance unless he helps them now so he dons an off-brand Spider-Man costume to conceal his identity (he's not supposed to be in the country, apparently) and the pair of them meet up with Cage and Spider-Man, who have both come out to fight Proxima Midnight.

There's a lot here and a lot to build on, which is good. I didn't feel a huge connection to many of the characters (though I'd say there's obviously love in the writing of Spectrum, who comes out best in all of this) but it's still only issue one and we have to establish who everyone is before we can really talk about them on a deeper level. There's a story already here for Ewing to work with, which isn't a bad place to jump into this book, and it requires a lot of attention and a lot of power. The Black Order are very impressive but they're not unbeatable. We saw Wakanda stave off the first attack against it (though presumably not the last, THANKS NAMOR) and there are fewer superheroes there than the four in front of us (possibly six of White Tiger and Power Man double back) though more warriors. Tricky business. Also, the identity of the Splendiferous Spider Hero (as he's so dubbed) is a nice little mystery for readers who know only that he has a connection to Monica, he's not supposed to be in the country, and he uses nunchucks. I'm not going to really speculate on who it could be because I like to find these things out in time. I was likely wrong in my pre-game at a guess that maybe we had a Miles Morales in the 616 but let's not act like that was so impossible, hm? Anyway, off to a pretty good start here.