Aaron (w) and Deodato (a) and F. Martin (c) and Eliopolous (l)
Story
This is a tough one to judge story on if just because we've known the general plot of ORIGINAL SIN for months now but Aaron and company still need to address it. It's no easy chore to write a story where just about everyone reading already knows the first act (thanks again SOLICITS, and also press interviews but WHO KNOWS much of this would have come out already if the solicits didn't exist) and Aaron does a commendable job getting it out of the way here. Still, more questions will have to be answered before we can actually call this a worthy story. Of course, it's not the job of the first issue to answer every question a story can have. Look, what I'm saying is that it's hard to judge the story on this one. 4/5
Character
Events are particularly hard to judge character (I'm just going to make excuses the whole way through, apparently) because events are driven by plot. To a point, those plots can be driven by the characters involved, i.e., Civil War (driven very much by who Cap is, who Tony is, etc.), but by and large the focus is on a big and sweeping story. As such, it's incredibly difficult to insert too many meaningful character beats because there isn't enough time and, typically, there are just too many characters. There's a little development for the Fury's pals club as they reminisce and a little development for Black Panther as he reacts to information from the mystery figure but everyone else is incredibly bare bones, presumably out of space concerns. Still, hard not to look at the team I listed in the summary and not read it as simply a line-wide advertisement. Is it an intriguing team? Sure. But each one, very randomly pulled together with particular outsiders Moon Knight (possibly crazy), Winter Soldier (thought dead by most), and Gamora (unknown by just about everyone on the planet), seems hand-picked not for their stealth or mercenary or brutal ways (though, sure, they share that) but for representation of seemingly every single book out there right now. Thing and Spider-Man even get a nod because I guess we hadn't swept in the Fantastic Four or the Spider-Man universe yet. I'm not saying that the team is bad or that they're uninteresting or a bad fit for the job, but it's hard not to view this as simply a huge push for tie-ins and advertising and that stings pretty bad. 2/5
Writing
Aaron has a lot of ground to cover here in explaining a tiny bit about the Watcher for those who didn't pick up ORIGINAL SIN 0 or who don't know him well anyway and then killing him off and getting all his pieces moved into place in this roughly double sized issue (full of double page spreads). He does the job well enough and, though I think we're maybe keeping a few too many cards close to the chest (I've grown to rather hate the "someone is talking to a shadowy figure and that someone knows who the shadowy figure is but the audience CAN'T" trope because I simply don't understand it. I understand its purpose but I can't accept the logistics of it). 4/5
Art
Deodato's art is ever Deodato's art. It's clean, skillful, and tends to make up for its lack of emotion with strength of action. Sadly, there's not a lot of action here, bar the fight between Thing and the Mindless One, and plenty of room for emotion. Deodato is an incredibly talented artist but I remember seeing interviews that were talking about how he was picked particularly because of his ability to draw just about anyone identifiably and to work fast, a necessity to keep up the pacing of the event. I think Deodato's a strong choice for artist on an event but it's getting a little hard not to read that as "time constraints were more important in this situation than finding the best fit." That's probably not fair but it's also not something I'd have considered if not for the points I brought up in the character section and for the price tag on this first issue, which I'll talk about more in just a sec. 4/5
Miscellaneous
This book, first of the eight-issue double-shipping four-month event, retails for 4.99 and, although it's another extra-size book, it's hard not to look at this with the same cynical eyes as, say, the recent AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 1. ASM was a huge book, probably worth the 5.99 price tag it held, but I mentioned in my review of that book that I think a show of good faith sort of move, keeping the book at 3.99, would have allowed more people to buy it and get involved while also garnering praise for releasing so much without a price hike despite the recent move to bump all books to 3.99. I think this is the same situation: the onus should be on Marvel to get us to buy into their event and physically buy their event, not on us to need to keep up with the Marvel Universe for whatever price they may put the lynchpins at. We're off to a rocky start so far and it's nothing to do with the story behind ORIGINAL SIN just yet. Right now, it's hard not to look at this new event and see it as everything people complain about when they complain about events: money-grubbing and devoid of substance.
Total score: an extremely wary 3/5
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