Written by: Jason Aaron
Art by: Ed McGuinness
Colors by: Justin Ponsor & Erick Arciniega
Letters by: VC’s Cory Petit
Cover Price: $3.99
Release Date: May 22, 2019

It’s time for another round of War of the Realms tie-ins and each time I jump into one, I wonder which we will get…a book that is hijacked by the event that will piss regular readers off, a book that only has a tiny WOR connection that will piss those just getting it for the event or a nice combination of both. Of course, how you judge these will be based on what you are looking for and so I am going to tell you all that right about now. Let’s get on with it…

I have read this entire Avengers run and either reviewed or talked about each issue on this site or our podcast. One of my only real complaints about it has been the lack of a steady focus with Jason Aaron setting up multiple teams and stories and then shoving them to the backburner while he cooks up yet another one. Things are starting to pile up, so an issue that features a Winter Guard development, some Dracula stuff and the Agents of Wakanda is really something I’ve been waiting for and here it is! However, that isn’t exactly a recipe for a great War of the Realms issue.

Sure, we get War of the Realms stuff, but it’s nothing really new here if you’ve been following the event. Even worse, though, is if you are following it, most of what we get here ends up really being a flashback because it’s stuff we’ve not only seen before, but we’ve seen way past it as well. When we see that Tony Stark is doing something, we know what that something is and when we see Odin in the Infirmary, we can just shake our heads knowing what’s going to happen to him next. It’s a timing issue, but it really is unfortunate and it really has become prevalent in most of these tie-ins.

For Avengers fans, though, there is some things to enjoy…like the Agents of Wakanda! While I was so sad not to see Fat Kobra, we do get Gorilla-Man as our narrator and the story runs through him throughout. It starts with an intriguing meeting with Ursa Major of the Winter Guard and jets off the Avengers Mountain where he is tasked with protecting the displaced citizens from Manhatten.

Again, in a scene we’ve seen already, Shuri is able to power up the Celestial to thwart the Ice Giant attack, but we continue with Gorilla-Man seemingly haven spoken to god. It’s a cool twist that at first seems just to force feed us the location of Roxxon, but it ends up being so much more by the end. The issue ends with a cliffhanger that ties in the Vampire Civil War storyline back into the grand scheme of this book and it’s a little bit heartbreaking and very, very exciting!

Jason Aaron uses the War of the Realms to catch his Avengers book up to itself. It’s a smart idea…while the Avengers are occupied with the War, he can get a bunch of these loose ends tied up and ready to hit on all cylinders by the end of the summer. So, I enjoyed this more as a tie-up than a tie-in and your mileage may vary accordingly.

The art is great throughout this entire issue and while the splash pages of the different Avengers teams fighting the war may feel like filler, they don’t look like it! A special shoutout to Justin Ponsor on colors…he will surely be missed!

Final Thoughts:

If you are only here for the War of the Realms, you may be disappointed and confused. However, if you are a regular reader of this book, Jason Aaron is putting a lot of cool pieces together in very interesting ways. I went into this for more of the later so I left with a smile on my face.

8.0/10