Avengers: The Initiative #11 Review

AVENGERS: THE INIATIVE #11
Written by Dan Slott & Christos Gage
Art by Stefano Caselli

This storyline took a rather different route than I expected. I had some issues with it, but it was still another great issue of this series.

Last issue, we ended with Cloud 9, Komodo and Hardball running into the old New Warriors, made up of Justice and several ex-NW Initiative members. This led me to believe we'd see the old team in action again and this is where some of my disappointment came from with regards to this issue. What we ended up getting was one page of Justice getting owned in one hit, another with Slapstick reduced to a blob of goo (he gets better) and then the Mighty Avengers come out of nowhere to take over for the D-listers. Or, at least, that's how they came off based on this development.

There was an interesting scene with Warmachine as they showed how Cloud 9 and company and KIA made it to MVP's home. While passing through the Negative Zone portals to other Initiative bases, Cloud 9 has a funny "explanation scene" with Warmachine before he opts to stay behind and delay KIA. We only see the aftermath of this battle as the Scarlet Spider's pursue KIA, but it shows Rhodey with his helmet off and half his face was cybernetic. Anyone know when did this happen? Was it during his time with ONE? I never heard of anything like that happening to him, so this was a bit of a shock to me.

Back to KIA, as I said he owns the old New Warriors, not to be confused with the new New Warriors made up of ex-X-Men (holy messed up adjectives Batman), the Mighty Avengers step up to bat and pretty much hold their own against KIA. They aren't exactly super effective, but they aren't one shot'd like every other character that's gone up against him.

This buys Cloud 9 time to use her womanly wiles on KIA, who is a clone of MVP, who, while only having seen Cloud 9 once before dying, somehow has feelings for her and this distracts the killing machine from not killing her on the spot as she gives him the kiss of death with a toxic cloud kiss. Momentarily stunned, KIA gets held down by the Scarlet Spiders weird robot leg arm things as the other clone of MVP (ARGH CLONES!) sticks the mind wipe device on KIA's head, effectively making him brain dead and stopping him.

Mutant Zero was in this with Gyrich for a panel or so and we find out she goes back to a "zero room" and she literally had to leave Gyrich when she started feeling weak and head right back there. This is an old mutant we've all seen before and I have no idea who she is or could be.

Overall, the KIA arc has been a fun, action packed romp that had lots of character building moments, specifically with Cloud 9, Hardball and Komodo, three of my favourite characters in this book. Hopefully we get to deal with some aftermaths of this arc before getting sucked into all that Skrull madness.

Verdict - Must Read. It's confusing talking about a book when I have to differentiate old and new versions of teams with the same name or deal with four characters that are all clones of another character, so this review might come off a tad negative in connotation, but I really enjoyed this arc. All that remains is to deal with the aftermath and hopefully find out Slott didn't kill off half the characters in the book.

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