Firstly, you’ve all seen the interlinked covers for Avengers #1-3 on the main site already, right? Good. Now we can begin.

The first thing that I noticed about Dustin Weaver’s cover for the first three issues was the weirdness of the perspective of the whole thing; I get that Weaver’s trying to wrap everything around, somewhat fish-eye-lenslike, but even so; if Thor and Black Widow are at such an angle on #2 and Iron Man, Hawkeye and Spider-Woman even moreso on #3, I feel as if everyone on the #1 cover should be slightly more angled…? But then again, by making them so even-keeled, it offers the possibility for additional linked covers for #4-5, adding to the image on the left instead of the right.

The second thing I noticed was Thor’s missing leg. I mean, sure; it’s actually behind the Black Widow, but I can’t imagine what position Thor’s in in order to make that work properly. Is he doing squats? I do kind of like the idea of Thor: God of Stretches, but I’m not sure it’s going to sell so well.

It’s not all bad, of course; I’m glad to see Cannonball and, I’m guessing, Sunspot be promoted to the big leagues, and hope that some of the other New Mutants follow suit (Dani Moonstar deserves a place there, says the former New Mutants fan in me. Even if she doesn’t have powers anymore, there’s always technological ways around that issue, right?). It’s nice to see that the three female characters displayed aren’t overly sexualized, and are actually exposing less skin than either Wolverine or the Falcon, too (It would’ve been nice to have seen more than three women in the first fourteen characters revealed for the team, but, hey: Comics).

I like the new logo, bringing out the central identifier of the logo from the last, what, 15 years, now and simplifying the look considerably in the process, while also playing up the title’s connection to AvX (I wonder if we’ll see a new X book at some point, to match?). Given the amount of visual clutter on each of those covers, doing anything to simplify things is a great idea; the red strip along the bottom of the cover, which I’m guessing is the new Marvel trade dress, remains ridiculously cluttered, bringing the number of logos on each cover to a staggering five – The Marvel NOW! logo, the Marvel AR logo, the “Join The Re-Evolution” logo, the “Free Digital Copy” logo and the individual title logo, respectively – even before you get to the barcode or issue number; I really hope that as the relaunch goes on, at least two of those logos can be dropped or reduced in some way.

What I’m entirely missing from this cover, though – And this is actually true of all of the Marvel NOW! covers released to date, with the exception of FF – is any sense of “new.” Or, to be honest, even “exciting.” Some of the costume details may be slightly changed, but when I look at this image, I think “Yeah, that’s the Avengers, okay” instead of having any feeling of “What an exciting new beginning!” Am I missing something, or just expecting too much from Avengers and Marvel NOW! in general?

(Oh, and also, Marvel? Assuming that he’s coloring it, can you add Dean White’s name to the first issue, please? It’s driving my inner OCD crazy.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2012 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Internet, Marvel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.