Avengers: Twilight

 

Avengers : Twilight

 

What am I Reading?

Avengers: Twilight (Issues 1-6), written by Chip Zdarsky, illustrated by Daniel Acuña.

 

What’s it about?

I think a snippet from the blurb covers the concept best:

“In the gleaming new world of prosperity, Captain America is no more. But Steve Rogers still exists, floating through an America where freedom is an illusion, The Avengers are strangers and his friends are long dead. But is the Dream itself dead?”

 What’s good about it?

Life has been a whirlwind lately. It’s been months since I properly sat down and read something. I’ve been too tired, too busy or just too damn apathetic to expend the additional brain space. I had the trade paperback of this in my work bag and during lunch I thought “I should really read this… Oh yeah! I’ve got a blog for just this occasion!”.

 How fitting for the book's theme. America is fat and lazy. Blinded by a constant barrage of distractions and personalised good news content. The populous lives in blissful ignorance and bends to the new government's totalitarian rulings (typical dystopian scenario number 2). The aged Steve Rogers is a dinosaur among battery farm hens. A few other fossils still haunt the Neo-fied New York City: Steve goes for coffee with crippled Luke Cage and a white hair Matt Murdock, grumbling about the state of the world. Steve is stirred into action when a revisionist history docuseries about the Red Skull is televised. Things spiral from there.

 This book was just what I needed. It does everything you want: politics as subtle as a brick to the teeth, adaptations of familiar heroes and villains in new and interesting ways, gorgeous art and witty words. It really buoyed me back into comics.

 I really mean it about the lack of subtly. You can feel Zdarsky’s frustration for the aimless direction real life America is wandering into (or perhaps a warning as I believe he’s Canadian). You can’t read this and not see the parallels to the continuing rise of the right wing in America. The cult of celebrity and media control leading to the stealthy return of society's greatest threats. I’ve loved a lot of Zdarsky’s Marvel output but this is the most obvious message to the reader. That being said, we live in a world where people missed the messages in Star Ship Troopers and Robocop… so maybe there’s not much hope for us.

 What did I struggle with?

 

Maybe its just in the zeitgeist for recent years, but I felt the decorative trappings of the dystopia to chockfull of tropes. Acuña’s art is gorgeous but I’m tired of seeing the citizen’s of the future plastered in meaningless circuitry tattoos and bombarded with neon bright holographic advertisements. Its short hand for the dangers of apathetic progression, but its not original.

 

I also found some of the key players don’t get enough panel time. Luke Cage is the worst: Power Man is critical for Steve’s journey in this, and even gets a bad ass page in the finale, but we never see him do anything besides join the fight… Luke doesn’t even throw a punch. Also Black Widow: it's shown through flashback that she survives the event known as “H-Day” (the point where the American people turn their back on superheroes), but unless I missed it she's never mentioned again. I guess it wouldn’t work for today’s audience for a story about misinformation to have a Russian on the good side. I would have swapped her for Black Panther or Namor or someone who has a legitimate reason not to be in America at this point in time. She could have just died of old age, but it would have been nice to see that at some point.

I would have placed a plaque in this panel stating “In Loving Memory of Natasha Romanoff.”. It would be fitting for Matt to be sitting at his old love’s bench.

 There’s a couple of few voids in this story for me, and I think it's an issue in trying to set this story in the Marvel Universe. I understand that this is an Avenger’s story But…

-        Where is the Fantastic Four? It’s feasible that they were killed in H-Day, or off world.

-        Where are the X-Men? This is an America wide problem, the mutants wouldn’t be spared. Also there is a beat where Cap regains his youthful strength through a new character who can randomly reproduce the original super soldier serum, that really comes out of nowhere. I would have done it so Steve’s old ally Wolverine has to sacrifice his healing factor to bring Steve back into the fight.

-        Where are the villains? We see that Spidey rogue’s gallery are being experimented on in the raft, but what happened to all the low level foes? I would have liked to see them join in the battle for America’s future.

Would I recommend it?

I did really enjoy this, but this isn’t Zdarsky’s best work in an alternative Marvel Timeline. That’s definitely Spider-Man Life Story. If you want sad old superheroes battling dystopian regimes in the near future, I would recommend Catwoman Lonely City over this. It's more thoughtful, more character driven, and answers the question of what villains do in the new world order.