Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Avengers: Solo #1

Ah, this should be interesting... When I was first getting back into Marvel after taking a few years away from comic books I started hunting for cheap back issues. Naturally I went to eBay, and I was able to purchase the entire Solo Avengers run for an insanely low price(I think I paid something like 40 cents an issue). After reading that run I had become a HUGE Hawkeye fan, and began to ravenously buy tons of Avengers comics, both old and new. So when I heard Marvel was doing an Avengers Solo series, AND it was going to star Hawkeye, I was psyched! And now the first issue is finally out. Needless to say, this comic was thisclose to being my Pick of the week, so here's hoping it's good...

Avengers: Solo #1(of 5):

Summary: Just like the old Solo Avengers books, we've got two stories here. A Hawkeye one and an Avengers Academy one, thus proving that Marvel does indeed love me! Obviously I'll start with the first story... While on patrol Hawkeye runs across a guy in armor warning a guy in a suit not to involve himself in something. Hawkeye, being Hawkeye, goes after the guy in the armor(Trace) but ends up losing him in a blinding flash. As for the other guy(Tuli), at first he is reluctant to receive aid from Hawkeye, but ultimately hands Hawkeye a file containing information on the disappearance of his sister(Marcia Guzman), before asking Hawkeye to meet him in a hotel later on where he'd be able to tell him more. Needless to say, Hawkeye arrives at the hotel room and discovers Tuli dead. After meeting with the cops to tell them everything he knew, Hawkeye leaves the building via his sky-cycle and is jumped by Chance, some wacky assassin with a gambling obsession. While Hawkeye is battling Chance, Trace arrives on the scene and goes after Chance for presumably killing the Tuli. Hawkeye goes after Trace, since he wasn't sure what his role in this was, but Trace manages to ditch Hawkeye again. Hawkeye winds up taking Chance down, but can't get any good information out of the assassin. After studying the files given to him by the late Tuli, Hawkeye heads to a modeling agency and winds up learning about some sort of weird experiment that Marcia was involved in. The head of the agency gives Hawkeye a name and location, and he meets a woman who knows Marcia. The woman tells Hawkeye that her and Marcia were hiding from somebody, but that she didn't want to tell him too much more in public. With that, she tells Hawkeye to meet up with her later(again?), after she cleared meeting with him with her friends, including Trace. That night, Hawkeye begins to head to the location he was directed to go and is jumped by the Trapster(!). And now the second story... Having learned of the disappearance of a scientist he used to work with, Pym and two of his Academy students(Striker and Finesse), head to the scientist's last known location. As they closed in, Pym could see 6 armed guards on the premises, as well as the fact that the underground portion of the scientist's lab had been expanded. Pym goes to put the plane in stealth mode, but some kind of interference occurs and the plane crashes, ending this one.

Thoughts: The Hawkeye story was a bit on the confusing side, but it starred Hawkeye and much like those old Avengers Solo comics, had him facing off against uber-lame villains like the Trapster(Pot Paste Pete!!!) and Chance. So while the story wasn't fantastic, the Hawkeye fan in me was pleased. The second story, while shorter, was much better. I love the Avengers Academy characters, and the story here made sense. So for a back-up tale, I couldn't ask for much more. For a score, I'll give the Hawkeye story a 7 1/2, and add an extra 1 for the great Academy story, bringing this issue's final score to a...

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.Hawkeye vs frigging Pot Paste Pete!?! Yes, please!

10 comments:

  1. Hey dont give up to Action Comics, look this

    http://dcu.blog.dccomics.com/2011/10/27/everybody%E2%80%99s-talkin%E2%80%99-about-action-comics-thursday-morning-et-edition/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Meh. I already dropped it from my pull list. If this series was $2.99, I MIGHT have stuck it out. But I am not paying $3.99 for the "privilege" of reading about Bat-Superman. Plus it bugs me that DC has already broken that stupid, "We hold the line at $2.99!!!!" pledge. If they were going to start bumping their prices back up they shouldn't have said that. So no matter how good it may look, I def won't be buying it.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yeah I understand, in the future they would be adding a Captain Marvel Backissue for the extra buck but I dont know how much you care for the Big Red Cheese.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gah! That wouldn't interest me in the least! I was never a fan of the Billy Batson version of CM, I liked the Freddy Freeman version, but I'm sure his run as CM has been wiped from existance on account of me liking it... :/

    ReplyDelete
  5. Sorry Y was wrong the Shazam stuff is in the Justice League, and will be write by your boy Geof Jhons And I hope that he dont bring us the Flaspoint version, (Five separate kids each one with an diferent god atribute transform int Cap)

    I dont remember what are they doing in Action Comics

    ReplyDelete
  6. Well, either way I won't be reading it, so I'm fine with that! :P

    ReplyDelete
  7. You know, I just saw the Mile High Comics 50 percent off back-issues sale, and thought, "Huh, I wonder if I need anything." I just recently finished buying up the "Spider-Man 2099" and I'm planning on starting on making my way through the "New Mutants" soon. But, maybe I need to add the old-school "Avengers Solo" to my list...

    (I always love the random villains. Part of the reason I love the late 200s/early 300s run of "Amazing Spider-Man" is that the villains were just fun. The Prowler? Styx and Stone? Chance? Fun stuff.)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Oh man, if you like obscure villains, NOTHING is like the Solo Avengers/Avengers Spotlight series, JW! The Porcupine, Plant Man, the Orb, the Death Throws, Crossfire, Trickshot!? Clint faced them all! Sometimes several at a time! Once on a desert island with nothing more than his bow, a quiver and a pair of boxers! That series was both awesome and hilarious!

    I've ALWAYS wanted to get that Spider-Man 2099 run... If I'm not mistaken, PAD did most, if not all of that series, right? I have all of the various New Mutant series(I'm missing some of the middle portions of the current run, but the characterizations were so bad I don't mind not having them), my favorite was the short-lived New Mutants series from the early/mid 2000's.

    Oh, and before you put any money down at Mile High, it might be worth looking at a few other shops... I've brought a lot of back issues online and they usually jack the prices way up, and then say they're having a BIG sale, which basically amounts to them putting the prices back to about where they should be in the first place. If you don't mind me making a few recommendations, http://www.mycomicshop.com/ is one of the better shops, and they have a weekly password that gives real savings to certain comics, plus free shipping at $50 isn't a bad deal. http://www.comiccollectorlive.com/ if you're looking for a more obscure book, this site is pretty good, the only problem is it's a bunch of different shops. Different shops have different shipping rates, so that's another consideration. But yeah, when I first got back into comics about 6 years back or so, I first went to Mile High, brought a mess of books and then realized there were many cheaper alternatives... Whatever you decide though, happy shopping!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I've been using mycomicshop a lot, lately. I find Mile High is good for the "I'm buying an entire run" orders, usually because it's just easier shipping-wise. But, mycomicshop definitely just always seems to have the one issue I'm missing, no matter how obscure.

    I'm intrigued by comiccollectorlive, though. I downloaded the trial software, but I haven't done anything with it. It's the one with the barcode scanner, right? Do you use it to manage your comics? Right now, I have everything in a Google spreadsheet, mainly so I can access it if I'm in a random city and want to check out the back issues at the local shops. But, I'd love to know what you think about it.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Yeah, Mycomicshop is GREAT for finding that back issue you couldn't find anywhere else. eBay is actually my favorite place to pick up full runs... There are many times when you can find a collector who needs to get rid of their books and will put them out there way cheaper than they should.

    As for www.comiccollectorlive.com/ that's not the comic filing site, it's actually a group of smaller comic shops that got together to try to deal with the larger comic shops. THAT place is a great place to find obscure back issues as well. It's like a bunch of neighborhood shops on a single site. For keeping up with my comics I use http://comicbookrealm.com/ because it's free! :P But I'm actually intrigued by using a google spreadsheet to do it... How does that work out for you? I know I'm MONTHS behind with putting my comics on comicbookrealm.com, when you buy so many comics a month, it's tough to keep up!

    I remember checking out the site with the barcode scanner, which is an AWESOME idea, but I thought was a charge site, which puts it out of my price range.

    ReplyDelete