Avengers Arena 9 One Page... Plus Tribute

[goggle_kid]

We lost another one...

There's some actual good stuff in this issue about Katy/Tim's backstory and the ethics of dooming an innocent person to stop a monster but... this is just too damn much for me.



With a cast of 16 characters and finite number of issues we all knew someone was going to get shafted but I actually think Juston got off worse than Mettle. At least Ken died defending someone he loved. Poor Juston went through a string of loss and sacrifice just to hype how evil Katy is. Worse still we're never given time to reflect on his flesh and blood friends and family. If you came into this book having never read Sentinel (or Juston's few appearances in Avengers Academy) you'd think his only loved one was the Sentinel. (Which was Tom Skylark's M.O.)

Anyway here's a few pages from the final issue of Sentinel vol. 2 by Sean McKeever and Joe Vriens.







I prefer to remember Juston not as how he died but how he lived. A kid in a bad situation who made some mistakes when he found some power and spent the rest of his life trying to do the right thing. He didn't always do it the right way but his heart was in the right place. Which is something I think Hopeless never got about the character.

Comments

[wake_the_dragon]

Juston, no!

Besides my sadness about Juston dying, what is actually up with Katy and Tim? Are they split personalities, or are they siblings who share a body?

[goggle_kid]

Siblings who share a body... apparently Tim spent his whole life trying to put out the fires that Katy starts until she grew more powerful and spent the last six years suppressing him.

[icon_uk]

A finite number of issues? I thought the weird thing about this series (well, one of them) was that it was an ongoing rather than a limited run.

[kevinroc]

They announced awhile back that we would see an end to the current "season" of this title. So they're clearly hinting at some kind of relaunch.

I would ask how they plan on continuing this concept in such a manner without it getting stale but this is the company that ran "Marvel Zombies" into the ground.

[goggle_kid]

Apparently as it's headed towards it's "season finale" the new official line at Marvel is that the Murderworld storyline was intended to only go 2-3 arcs.

[theflames]

Loved this issue! I thought Juston would be safe buuutttt, boom Katy is ruthless.

Wait...

[silverzeo]

Leave to Marvel to make the child of Bart and Milhouse a reality...

[majingojira]

It is slated to end it's "first season" with #18.

Given it's current downward spiral in sales (and no pick up to it), it may end shortly there after.

[majingojira]

The Katy story was . . . interesting, but pretty bland.

But this kill cemented the idea that Dennis Hopeless has no idea how to use death as a dramatic device. Not only is this death extremely repetitive (second neck snap, third overall neck injury, quick-and-shallow-shock-value, same Red background/black foreground shadowing effect, third immediate use of life bar), it is once again used to build up the killer rather than mourn the deceased (Kid Briton for Anachronism, Mettle for Arcade). That's not how one should use a death at all.

As far as I'm concerned, there's only three ways to kill a name/lead/supporting character: Like a badass, like an opera tenor, like Uncle Bem/Gwen Stacy.

The first two focus on the character and make the reader care. The later makes the reader care vicariously through continued effects on the emotional states of the survivors.

Worse, there's no one really there to mourn Juston properly, as with Red Raven. And Mettle's occurred off screen.

Speaking of, last issues described harrowing journey that Juston took to build himself a set of mech-legs from the (also dead) remains of his sentinel buddy was far more interesting than Katy's story.

And that second to last panel has Juston's eyes look very, very googly, robbing it of pathos for me.

And judging by the upcoming previews, Nico or Chase is up next (they make it look like Nico, but it could be a fake out for Chase). Either turns my stomach. They were my intro to comics, and Hopeless cannot give them a death that they deserve.

That any of these kids deserve.

[goggle_kid]

The sad thing is Juston's survival in the desert while crippled was probably the most badass heroic thing we've seen in this book and.... IT ALL HAPPENED OFF CAMERA!

[majingojira]

That was one of my complaints from my review of it. Back then it was "reasons for the stresses: from starvation and lack of sleep to harassment", "Nico's Magic Tree construction" and so on.

But this one is beyond any that came before it. An entire issue could have been dedicated to this and it would have been amazing.

[northstarfan]

I noticed Arena had started double-shipping pretty consistently, though it had been on a (mostly) monthly schedule to start. That's usually a sign that they're trying to put a brake on sales attrition long enough to get a book to a good point for a wrap (story and collections-wise).

[beyondthefringe]

Whenever a character who actually headlined a series gets killed off, I mourn for them. Because no matter how stupid or silly or ill-thought-out or unpopular they were, no matter how much of a joke they might be now...once upon a time, they actually did have that series. They were the hero of their story, the focal point of their tale, and the center of their universe. Readers got to know them...

and then they get canceled and sometimes they get used in a good way, and sometimes they get killed off to serve another purpose. Poor Juston. He was a kid with a giant robot, and he had some adventures, and made some mistakes, and when his series ended he vanished until they brought him back in Avengers Academy where he had some good moments, and then...this.

You could populate a football stadium with former series headliners who've come to bad ends. Sometimes, it's like the best thing we can wish for these characters is that once their series is done, they vanish into the sunset, never to be seen again. Because sooner or later, someone's going to figure that hey, they need cannon fodder.

I can't say I'm terribly attached to some of the Avengers Arena cast, but for some reason I really had a soft spot for Juston and his loyal murder robot. Especially after the storyline they got in Avengers Academy, it feels so wasteful to kill them in such a fashion. (I liked the prediction one person had where Juston and the Sentinel would merge into a technorganic being, with the Sentinel reiterating "This unit will never leave Juston, ever." Sigh.)

My only consolation is that comic book death is only as permanent as the current writer. And even then, not always.

[goggle_kid]

Got a link to your review?

[mrstatham]

So hey, any bets that Hopeless is blatantly hoping that this series will lead into a Braddock Academy series for him? Given, you know, he's pretty much murdering and shitting over everyone but his own characters, by and large?

Man, fuck this book. I can't say that enough. It's so terrible compared to parts of Marvel's other output right now, you'd think it was a DC book.

[northstarfan]

Lots of luck there. The Academy X kids had a book that finished at 50K (if we count the last three issues, which had massive sales bumps from the Messiah Complex event, it was at 70K+), and they can't get a book no matter how many times fans keep asking for it. Arena is already well below that number and it had three different fandom pools to draw from.

[mrstatham]

Yeah, but they wrapped New X-Men blatantly hoping that Young X-Men (which they presumably named so to capture some of the sales from Young Avengers) would have some of the readership carry over, from what I can tell.

Also, it's the Big Two; Just because we aren't asking for something, doesn't mean they aren't going to give it to us. I mean, I don't remember asking for Arena, or any title specifically devoted to murdering the young teenagers of the MU and yet.. Here it is.

[northstarfan]

To an extent, it did -- the book had a good debut. But they launched it during a line shuffle, gave it nothing to do and nothing to say, didn't bring over any of the really popular characters from the previous series, and new characters were pretty bland. So the numbers went downhill fast.

I also don't see Braddock Academy happening because we've already got Xavier's School, the JG School, and the Hellfire Academy. Marvel will happily milk an idea until everyone's sick of it, but WTX isn't exactly setting the charts on fire either these days so I don't know that they'll dip into the superpowered school well again when this wraps.

[mrstatham]

I think part of the problem with WATXM is that Bendis' two books have basically stolen it's thunder, these days. WATXM was basically the other core book for the X-Men stuff alongside Uncanny X-Men immediately after Schism, and now it's basically just drifted off to do it's own little thing and isn't really involved with the bigger story.

[flint_marko]

This is from #9.

[goggle_kid]

Oops... fixed.

[kamino_neko]

what is actually up with Katy and Tim? Are they split personalities, or are they siblings who share a body?

Not reading this book, so this question got me interested, and I looked them up... I had to laugh...

From their Marvel Wiki entry:

Mr. and Mrs. Bashir paid England's finest geneticist to engineer a superhuman baby for them.

SOMEONE is a Star Trek fan....

[majingojira]

It's in three parts, covering the entirety of the gladiatorial games genre from it's original history, to modernizations and then concluding with the review of the first 6 issues of Arena.

There all found under this label:
http://www.forcesofgeek.com/search/label/Gladiator%20Games

The first one is the review. You can just read that, but having a background in the genre can help a lot.

[majingojira]

Honestly, given the blatant favoritism he's been showing his original creations, I think that we're well into "Backdoor Pilot" territory.

But it might be smothered over the bronze age nostalgia he's hoping on Arcade (while robbing him of any entertainment value as his dynamism and visual distinctiveness are long gone).

[kaileighblue]

This is one of the first books I've actually made a point of pirating (technically just reading in storytimes on /co/ because I'm even too apathetic to download it.) The sad this is I really have pretty much enjoyed the art and coloring. But hate everything else. I hope this doesn't tarnish those guys reputations.

I'm really only reading to see what happens to Chase and Nico but I'm not paying to see it happen. Real or simulation this kinda of thing would have a lasting effect on any character invovled.