A premier edition hardback collecting a pair of crossovers starring the Agents of A.T.L.A.S..
A little background information first- The Agents of ATLAS are a group of superheroes who first operated in the 1950s. (Originally, they were a Roy Thomas and Donald Glut concept floated around in the pages of What If... #9 (June, 1978). The group of heroes became official members of the Marvel universe after Marvel editor Mark Paniccia stumbled across the classic issue and inspired Jeff Parker to bring the group into the present day.
After the events of the first Secret Invasion, the dastardly Norman Osborn negotiated his way into becoming the head of Earth's intelligence community. Not trusting the sometime Green Goblin, super spy Jimmy Woo took the place of the Chinese crime lord Yellow Claw's criminal underworld. With the help of the simian Gorilla Man, telepathic Marvel Boy, Atlantean Namora and the super-powerful robot M-11, Jimmy Woo keeps tabs on Osborn while transforming the criminal elements he's inherited into a force of good.
X-Men Vs. Agents of ATLAS opens with teammate Venus being kidnapped by a centaur. With the X-Men having just fled their San Francisco area base, thanks to Osborn declaring the mutant enemies of humanity (once again), Woo hopes to borrow the X-Men's Cerebra device to find the missing agent. The unauthorized use of Cerebra sets off a warning alarm and the X-Men return to their abandoned base to investigate.
In typical Marvel fashion, when the two teams meet, it's a battle royale. Nobody talks. They always start with fisticuffs. Only, there is a slight twist to this battle as members of both teams seem to have a history of fighting each other previously. Yet nobody can actually recall having done so before.
Then in Avengers Vs. Atlas, the agents respond to a time anomaly in the heart of New York City. Jimmy Woo's team discovers Earth's Mightiest Heroes in the midst of an epic battle with a gigantic entity that seems to be about 1 second out of sync with time. Thanks to Wolverine being a member of the Avengers and having been in the previous story, Logan prevents a typical first meeting melee. That is until the temporal entity engulfs the modern day Avengers and replaces them with the original line-up!
Now it's Jimmy Woo's Agents of ATLAS against Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Giant Man and the Wasp. And now the battle begins before a chance of introductions. Remember that the Hulk was one of the original Avengers? Hopefully, he won't show up, right?
I absolutely hated the X-Men story. It had too many characters. There was too much back story that one needed to know in order to enjoy the plot. And while I enjoyed the elements of the original X-Men and their first encounter of the Agents, things got really confusing. And honestly, it didn't feel like some of those feelings of deja vu ever truly got resolved. Plus, this story was a two-parter and it felt like writer Jeff Parker was trying to shove an extra large helping of stuffing into a medium sized turkey. And the opening segment was a giant sized Thanksgiving feast of disappointment.
At least the artwork was exquisite. Carlo Pagulayan illustrated the modern story and his depictions especially of the female characters was alluring. The flashback segments were by Chris Samnee. Those segments evoked the nostalgic feel of the late, great Darwyn Cooke.
The Avengers story was a 4-parter. I loved the first 3 issues. I had a better understanding of the story. I'll admit that reading the X-Men crossover helped a lot with that. The element of time travel and having lots of surprises pop up was great. The ending was really meta. There's a lot of quantum physics involved. And while I understand that the characters got to point B from point A, I have no idea how the Avengers arrive at that point. And I read that segment at least thrice!
The Avengers tale almost salvaged this entire edition. I was just about ready to keep this book as part of my collection. Yet that complex ending was just way too over my head. I'd rather my limited shelf space be devoted to something else. So I'll trade this in hopes of purchasing some else more permanent for my collection.
Oh! And isn't that like the worst cover to a book that you've ever seen in your life? There were so many other great regular and variant covers used in these comics. Why did they choose that monstrosity from Humberto Ramos? It looks like they dislocated Cap's jaw or something!
Rating: 4 out of 10 stars.
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