Avengers (Vol. 4) #31

Background

The Avengers are no longer versus the X-Men. Instead they now face “End Times”, which sounds fairly ominous!

Story Details

In scenes very inspired by Star Wars, a red haired masked lady is fleeing from some alien jets on a speeder bike. She takes out three jets before her bike is damaged. An alien charges at her with a spear but she disarms him and finishes him off with his own weapon before heading to a nearby city.

In Avengers tower the Avengers are all sleeping, recuperating from their last ordeal. Except for Captain America who is watching several news feeds commenting on the destruction, potential conspiracies and just lack of information following AvX. Wonder Man appears and wants to apologise as he has been a jerk towards the Avengers for pretty much the entire run of this volume! He is about to ask for help in dealing with his issues when Red Hulk jumps him. Simon tries to get Hulk to back off but to no avail, so knocks him out using a Million Dollar Dream sleeper hold! (One for classic WWF fans there!) Simon leaves, knowing apologies won’t cut it and he needs to earn his way back.

Back on the alien world, the red head has found civilisation and needs help making a transmission. She needs to transmit a signal and pulls out an Avengers ID card! On Earth, Tony Stark picks up the signal. Other Avengers are in the kitchen, gathering notes on the recent Red Hulk vs. Wonder Man fight, when Tony interrupts. He’s discovered the Avengers emergency signal, not from outer space but from inner space…

General Comments

Hooray, a story that has nothing to do with another comic! Although I did like the acknowledgement that AvX was over with the Avengers finally getting a chance to rest up. I also liked the way the media were portrayed here. It fits in with the previous Norman Osborn arc and a lot of the things they say are true. It seems the Avengers need a decent PR person to field questions that the media/population of Earth have over recent events. Getting the crowd behind you has worked for Norman Osborn and Simon Williams, time for the Avengers to follow suit perhaps.

Talking of Wonder Man, it appears this issue is the start of his redemption – a pity no one told Red Hulk that! It led to a nice comical moment between Hawkeye and Spider-Man (who else) about running a “Who’s stronger then Hulk?” website – a debate that has been long running amongst comic fans.

As for the mysterious red head and where she is, who knows? (What's inner space apart from a classic Dennis Quaid movie?!) She looks a bit like Hope Summers to me (albeit it with blue eyes instead of green), but after several months of AvX maybe that’s to be expected! I liked the art, although I would say it has borrowed from the original Star Wars trilogy a little during the alien world scenes. Not necessarily a bad thing but not very original.

Overall Rating

Nice set up issue that acknowledged the last arc, let’s see what happens next.