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Spoilers? I don't think so, but you're warned.
Bought Annual 1 today. I don't think I've actually read an "annual" issue in a long time.
Boring. I think, in retrospect, I shouldn't have spent the money and it pretty much cements that I'll be dropping the book. It demonstrates the thing that bugs me about this title; while I really enjoy unsympathetic characters and they can be done really well, I don't like it when there are so many main cast members who ARE ALL unsympathetic but no one actually gets enough screen time to be developed. I just don't care. The reason I liked the Defenders issue was that it was a spotlight issue - we finally got some development for Hank.
Hawkeye and his family were all cyphers right up until the scene where BAD THINGS HAPPENED.
Anyway, back to the annual. Wow, the Reserves are a bunch of characters I don't care about who are essentially knockoffs of existing Ultimates, so they aren't even interesting on a ZAP-BANG level. None of them are given enough screen time to care about, including the Four Seasons ("Uh-oh! Scarlet Witch is down! We'd better send in that weird, post-human Hotel Chain to mop up the mess!"), where only one member is named and that's at the expense of a "This costume makes me look gay" joke that fell flat.
Flat is how I'd describe the art, by Steve Dillon; it might have been the inking and colouring's fault, but everything looked dull and bland, with several panels a bit off as far as perspective or body movement. The characters looked stiff.
Meanwhile, Fury's a bad ass. Wow, didn't know that before, and I certainly didn't guess the significant plot twist as soon as that plotline was introduced.
So, I think I'll skip out on this book after this. I miss Thor. |
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