Broken Frontier

In many ways January was the month of Dan Slott. He managed not only to put out three solid Amazing Spider-Man issues after the whole One More Day debacle but also released the director’s cut of Spider-Man: Swing Shift and penned yet another top notch issue of Avengers: The Initiative. The story picks up from last month with Killed in Action wreaking havoc in Camp Hammond, and just like Slott promised in our interview back in December, the death count flies sky high.

One of the strengths of Initiative is its ability to make nearly any of its sprawling cast of characters interesting. Case in point, the meager page count devoted to the Taskmaster beating up on the latest batch of superhero trainees. Taskmaster is a relatively C-list villain who was just introduced in the pages of The Initiative last month. However, he really has a chance to shine during his time in the spotlight here. In fact, co-writers Dan Slott and Christos Gage seem to have a solid grasp on nearly every character in the Marvel Universe. Everyone from the Beast to Hank Pym to Dani Moonstar acts the way you’d expect them to. And the long list of guest stars is just one of The Initiative’s major attractions: nearly anyone can show up at anytime.

Stefano Caselli’s artwork is still a major contributing factor to the high quality of the book, as his stylized pencils really help at enhancing the mood of a tale that’s a bit grimmer than what we’ve been exposed to so far within the pages of The Initiative. Any artist should be commended for managing to draw such polar opposite characters like the Gauntlet and Slapstick in one comic, but Caselli makes the myriad of characters here gel and seem to fit together in this shared world.

As revealed in The Initiative Annual two months back, there is a Skrull conspiracy brewing at Camp Hammond that will surely ramp up as the road to Secret Invasion continues. However, Slott and Gage do a great job of telling the story they want to tell. While there is a Skrull presence within these pages it never overwhelms the story or feels particularly tacked on. What does appear here seems to have grown organically out of the characters and plot, a rarity for summer crossover tie-in titles.

Now that Killed in Action has acquired the Tactigon, the most powerful weapon in the galaxy, one Initiative mainstay who’s long been missing in action returns to the forefront to wield the alien’s sister weapon that was discovered during the Annual, promising a stellar cap to what has so far been one of the sleeper hits of 2008. However, with cancellation rumors looming after the unceremonious axe dropping on The Order, the future looks muddled for one of Marvel’s best titles. Before that can happen you owe it to yourself to check out Avengers: The Initiative and see what all the critical hype’s about.