Business picks up in Avengers #677 (No Surrender Part 3)

Avengers #677 - No Surrender Part 3

Written by: Mark Waid, Al Ewing, and Jim Zub
Art by: Pepe Larraz
Colored by: David Curiel
Lettered by: VC’s Cory Petiit
Cover by: Mark Brooks

Published by: Marvel
Cover Price: $3.99

Warning! This review contains quite a few spoilers!

Summary: Before the Black Order could blow up the mansion, Quicksilver could feel the attack coming.  Voyager teleports everyone out to an Avengers Auxiliary HQ that Iron Man had built years ago.  Quicksilver wants to immediately strike back against the Black Order, but Voyager is exhausted, and the team leaders want to have a plan in place before striking recklessly.

We find out that Grandmaster is behind all of this, playing a game against an unseen opponent.  They each pick an element.  Grandmaster chooses earth while his opponent chooses fire.

Back at the hospital, Beast says that Jarvis’s “brain is fighting itself.”  

The Avengers are alerted to two battles, one in Rome (presumingly earth), one in Peru (fire).  The Avengers split into two teams to deal with these threats.  Quicksilver isn’t assigned to a team because Rogue considers him unreliable.

Thor, Rogue, Hercules, Lightning, and Cannonball head to Rome. Falcon, Human Torch, Red Hulk, Synapse, and Wonder Man head to Peru. At both sites, members of the Lethal Legion and Black Order are fighting to claim pieces of an artifact called the Pyramoid.  The Avengers are considered “obstacles” to make the battle more difficult.

Back at the Auxiliary HQ, Scarlet Witch and Brother Voodoo are working to fix the Avengers who are stuck in stasis.  Scarlet Witch tries to talk to Quicksilver, but he brushes her off and heads to Rome.  By the time he gets there, the Avengers are down except for Cannonball.  Quicksilver manages to recover the Pyramoid point.  At the same time, Wanda is able to use her magic to revive Vision.  When that happens, Quicksilver ends up in stasis instead.  The Lethal Legion brutally attack the frozen Quicksilver.

Review: The plot of this sort of reminded me of JLA/Avengers.  Two groups fighting to recover artifacts while powerful godlike entities pull the strings.  While Marvel has done this kind of story many times before, I do think it was a neat twist that the villains are the players this time, instead of two groups of heroes being forced to go against their natural instincts.  Using the heroes as obstacles was really inspired.  

I like that each issue is using a specific character as a focal point.  This time, it is Quicksilver, who has long been one of my favorite characters.  I actually cringed at the last panel where the Lethal Legion unloaded on him.  And that Mark Brooks' Quicksilver cover for the issue was pretty great.

The action really started to pick up in this issue.  By releasing the series weekly, I think it goes a long way towards ensuring the story feels well-paced.  Marvel has had similar success with PHOENIX RESURRECTION.  I am not saying I want to buy lots of weekly series, because I buy enough comics, but doing a few events this way works well for me.

I did like the end of the issue where the action was flipping rapid fire between the battle in Peru, Scarlet Witch and Voodoo back at HQ, and Quicksilver rushing in to try and save the day.  It really helped sell how crazy everything was.  Admittingly at times, it may have been too chaotic.  I had no idea all the Avengers were down until Quicksilver pointed it out.   

My biggest issue with this series right now is still the villains.  The writers should have taken a little more time to develop the Lethal Legion and Black Order before getting right to them fighting.  At the moment, they just all feel like interchangeable cardboard cutouts to me.  When I was first looking at the scene with the two teams fighting, I genuinely wasn’t sure which team was which.

This issue had a lot of action with the Avengers stuck between a worldwide battle between The Lethal Legion and the Black Order.  The characterization of the heroes continues to be spot on, but at this point, the villains all kind of feel like they are just there.  That said, I did like the twist on the typical event story of two groups being forced to fight by powerful beings with both groups being villains this time.