We all know Marvel rule the superhero box office at the moment this year Iron Man 3 did really well and Thor 2 looks like it'll be another hit for the studio, while their TV series, Agents of SHIELD, had a huge number of viewers tuning in when the pilot episode aired recently. And while Marvel are also the biggest comics publisher in the world, the difference between Marvel comics readers and Marvel movie/TV viewers is sizeable to say the least. So how to nab some of the fans of the movies and get them into their printed product, who don't want to mess around with the monthly single issues? Marvel Original Graphic Novels seem to be the answer self-contained, book-length stories that are written for this format rather than monthly issues, that don't require an extensive knowledge of comics continuity and star the familiar movie characters. The first of these is Avengers: Endless Wartime which blends in all of the characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe - Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Thor, Hawkeye, Black Widow as well as Wolverine, who's currently the movie property of Fox, and the new Captain Marvel, Carol Danvers, who has yet to feature in any screen adaptation. The setting is the fictional European country of Slorenia where two soldiers shoot down what appears to be a dragon wearing a tech suit(!). This news prompts a memory from Captain America's time in World War 2 where he led a covert mission to another fictional location, the Norwegian island of Skrekklandet, to fight Nazi scientists developing tech that could turn the course of the war. After another flashback sequence, this time with Thor, we see where the dragons came from and guess at how the dragons and the tech fused, re-emerging, this time under the control of SHIELD no less. As it's supposed to be, the book is easily accessible for people not au fait with the current comics Marvel Universe, and the characterisations of Cap, Thor, Iron Man, are in sync with the movies: Cap is the man out of time, uncomfortable in the future and more alive in the past than the present, while Tony Stark is a roguish figure reconciling his past as an arms dealer and even has the reactor in his chest which he doesn't have in other comics (and of course not in the movies either now). The story stands by itself with any high concepts like Yggdrasil the World Tree explained in full, and even follows a similar pattern to the Avengers movie where the characters have scenes where they sit around bantering with one another with Whedon-esque dialogue and Hulk appears in the big finale to do his thing.
Warren Ellis brings some interesting ideas to the book about modern warfare and drone attacks, as well as including some distinctly Ellis story elements like archaeology, artefacts from the past affecting the present (best seen in other books like Planetary and Ultimate Galactus, both of which I recommend), and his usual sarcastic quips. The problem is that these ideas are delivered through some painfully dull exposition scenes that you have to wade through, which is unusual for Ellis who usually excels at electric character dialogue. And while the plot does contain ideas, it feels constrained by its done-in-one format, having to cram in all of the info into this one book and comes off quite convoluted. Mike McKone's art isn't bad but I wasn't too impressed with it. The book is done in the usual traditional, flat wide panel approach with little style or inspiration to the presentation and the characters seem to possess a single bland expression most of the time. The designs for the dragons with tech suits are particularly bad as they're barely distinguishable as dragons and look more like amorphous purple things covered with what look like light bulb buttons. There's also no sense of perspective when looking at the giant dragon at the end which looks like an ordinary dragon on close up in the panel.
The best art, and the best scene, in the book is in Cap's WW2 flashback where he takes out a German plane attacking them, leaping from his plane with his shield and a piece of rope, blasting a hole in the windshield and throwing in a belt of grenades before swinging back to his plane - it's an awesomely cinematic sequence. That said, while the book contains a number of action sequences, as you'd expect, this one is perhaps the only successful scene that captures any energy and excitement. Even the scene at the end when Hulk shows up is barely interesting I don't chalk that up to McKone entirely, but is indicative of the book as a whole being rather uninspired and uninteresting. Maybe non-regular comics readers or first-time comics readers will find this book to be enjoyable but as someone who reads the monthly comics and has been reading Marvel comics and Warren Ellis comics for years, I found Avengers: Endless Wartime to be a very dull and disappointing read from a writer who usually produces far superior work than what's on offer here.
Published by Marvel Comics, Avengers: Endless Wartime by Warren Ellis and Mike McKone is out now