Avengers Academy 33
This is the second of two issues where phoenix powered Emma Frost is attacking the academy, and the fifth AVX tie-in for the series overall. How can the students possibly stand up to a cosmic force? Is this comic worth touching?
The reason Emma Frost is at the academy is because of Juston’s “pet” sentinel. Emma is on a quest to destroy all sentinels on the planet. Juston’s sentinel is unique however. While it still has its mutant hunting directive, it’s buried under a bunch of contradicting directives to ensure it never does that. Juston considers his sentinel a good friend, and this issue suggests that the robot has become sentient and considers Juston a friend as well.
This issue handles the AI debate very well, to the point where people are still debating it on the comicbookresources forums. It also does a great job at exploring the friendship that Juston and his sentinel have. That’s the main focus of this issue.
Beyond that, the issue-long fight scene is good, the dialogue is great, and the art isn’t too bad either. Sure, X-23’s eye colour is still wrong (after 10 issues you’d think the artists would figure it out), but otherwise this is the best art I’ve seen in this series. My personal favorite moment in this issue is when X-23 threatened to kill Emma Frost if they ever crossed paths again (they’ve had a long and uneasy history).
My only real complaint about this issue is that there’s very little focus on the original academy kids. Sure, Giant Man says quite a bit, and Tigra has a good amount of dialogue as well, but if I counted right, the original kids had 3 or 4 lines between them at the most. I’m sure the next issue will focus more on the original kids, but it’s been a while since we’ve had that focus.
This issue is still an easy recommendation. It’s a great story that’s told well, and it’s the best AVX related book I read this week. Everything you need to know is explained in the issue itself – you won’t even need the recap page.
Nightwing 11
This issue continues the storyline where Nightwing is investigating a murder that he was framed for. As far as he knows, he’s being framed by a cop (Nie) that once tried to frame Batman as well. Is that really who’s trying to frame him though, and is this comic any good.
This is a great issue. The action is entertaining, the mystery is intense and the artwork is great. The mysterious costumed villain is menacing and deadly with his electrified whips (or whatever those are). Motivations are explained for multiple characters in this issue. There’s also a great small moment between Nightwing and Robin – yes, this does reference Robin’s current quest to beat up all the former Robins.
This issue does have a glaring problem though. There’s a grammar mistake on page 3 with the sentence “We’re both trying to solve who killed the your friends.” Even Microsoft Word catches that grammar mistake, so how did the editor miss that. Otherwise, I have no complaints about this issue.
This is an easy recommendation if you’ve been paying attention to Nightwing so far, or if you want to check it out. I do recommend that you also find Nightwing 10 though, as that’s the issue where this storyline started.
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