For quite a while, Jason Aaron has been guiding the Avengers, building to a a big even we’re now seeing roll out. Mephisto has been building an army and attempting to unravel the Avengers’ history through time. A multiversal Avengers have been dealing with the treat of the Multiversal Masters of Evil who have been conquering universes. All of that is coming together in Avengers Assemble Alpha #1 which kicks off the event that’ll have the Avengers of 616 and Avengers Forever dealing with a universal threat.

Unfortunately, Avengers Assemble Alpha #1 is a mess of an event one-shot that falls into silly tropes, features muddled art, and delivers hokey dialogue. The story takes place mostly in the past as the modern Avengers have travelled back in time to the era of the Avengers of 1,000,000 BC. They fight. Because of course they fight. Why do they fight? It makes absolutely no sense as the Avengers of the past think the Avengers of the future attacked them? It makes absolutely no sense but gives an excuse for the teams to duke it out.

Then there’s who shows up. Avenger Prime, a new character who’s the greatest Avenger of all, heads to the time and… stands around and chats with Mephisto while they both watch the battle. Why? Again, not quite sure other than to set up the end of the comic. Then the Multiversal Masters of Evil show up to battle which just gets a rather lackluster single page reveal at the end and then dropped.

The narrative of the comic is a mess of an event kick-off with a choppy delivery that had me wondering if pages were out of order and panel order that too was confusing as to why it was done that way. Aaron’s writing doesn’t help with dialogue that’s a bit goofy at time and feels like the typical grand statements from villains and heroes we’ve seen over and over. When Doom asks his competition if they know how many people he’s killed, Doom’s response after no answer is “Neither do I”, a statement meant to show off how powerful/a threat he is but falls rather flat.

The art by Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, and Alex Sinclair doesn’t help. Hitch’s art for me is very hit and miss and this falls into the miss category. Characters don’t always look consistent, there’s a lack of really exciting and memorable visual moments, and panels spotlighting characters just look off. Faces are almost comical at times, the splash pages feel like they’re missing something, and details look like they lack depth. What should be holy crap moments as the two teams battle just bounces around in a mush of visuals and at times the panels themselves feel out of order.

Avengers Assemble Alpha #1 has a lot going on. And that might be the issue. There’s three different stories going on and none of them are given enough room to really breathe and become interesting. The cuts between them don’t help making the comic feel unfocused disjointed at times. As far as the start of an event, it does its job of catching up readers as to what’s happening. It just feels like that’s about all it does. We’ve seen so much of the plot before, it’s almost comical at this point how the hero vs. hero over a mistake is still being used. This could have been so much more but the end result lands with a thud.

Story: Jason Aaron Art: Bryan Hitch, Andrew Currie, Alex Sinclair Letterer: Cory Petit
Story: 5.0 Art: 5.0 Overall: 5.0 Recommendation: Pass

Marvel provided Graphic Policy with a FREE copy for review

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Purchase: TFAW – Zeus Comics – comiXology/Kindle