This should have been awesome. I was greatly looking forward to liking Avengers A.I.. Hank Pym leading a team of robot-based Avengers to deal with robot-based threats? I love robots! I love Hank Pym! This should be great! Sadly, this was not to be. Avengers A.I. #1 completely took the wind out of my sails with iffy characterization, unfortunate artwork and forced comedy.
We open with SHIELD Agent – er, Division Chief Monica Chang (who actually has subordinates referring to her as Division Chief Chang, which is an uneasy mouthful) having apparently black-bagged founding Avenger Hank Pym, cuffing him to a chair with a hood over his head because a SHIELD drone fleet has been hijacked by a rogue A.I. called “Dimitrios.” Pym responds by being a cocky jagoff. Chang tells him that his anti-Ultron virus used to end his evil creation in Age of Ultron is now rapidly evolving itself and has spawned this Dimitrios, and Pym seems happy about it, all pleased as punch that he created a self-evolving A.I. that’s going to war with the world (which he already did with Ultron and it turned out to be a goddamned nightmare), and when he realizes Chang is trying to pin this on him, instead of explaining himself like any rational Avenger would, he tries to escape, which fails, and then Chang decks her defeated prisoner for no reason. It takes Captain America showing up on his behalf to get him going.
Already, this doesn’t make any sense. Hank Pym is one of the most maddeningly inconsistently-written characters in the Marvel Universe, and writer Sam Humphries seems to be going full-on Yellowjacket with him – the flighty, erratic jackhole version of him, which doesn’t even jive with the introspective, penitent version of him we saw just a week ago in Mark Waid’s Age of Ultron A.I. and certainly not with the level-headed guy we’d seen in much-missed Avengers Academy. This is all likely rationalized this by citing Pym’s various costume changes and nervous breakdowns as reason enough for every Pym appearance becoming a random lottery as to how he’ll behave, but there used to be some rhyme and reason, and there ain’t no more.
So, anyway, Pym starts putting a team together to deal with this Dimitrios. It seems the Vision is being driven by “Ultron Imperative Programming” to start the process of self-evolving into a new form, so I’m sure we’ll get some radically redesigned version of Vision in the next few issues. Maybe he’ll become a tentacle monster, since they seem to be growing out of his back here. Then we’ve got another Ultron descendant, ex-Runaway Victor Mancha, who provides the book’s only amusement by trying to figure out a codename for himself, going through options like Wolf Swag and Devil Slayer, which do not meet with approval.
Then, there’s Doombot, whose presence on the team mandates that you buy the fact that Hank Pym, whose life, conscience and legacy has been defined by the fact that he created a robot that, among many other horrifying things, murdered an entire nation of people, would STILL be ridiculously cavalier about trying to control and manipulate evil A.I. like this. In Avengers A.I. #1, he is absolutely that cavalier about it. That is made more frustrating by the fact that Doombot is obviously only on this team for comic relief, because of course it’s so hilarious that he constantly says supervillainous things while being forced to be a hero under threat of destruction by a “micro black hole” in his chest – which also doesn’t make sense, given that in the word balloon immediately preceding that revelation, Pym implies that he’d feel guilty treating an A.I. like a prisoner. Apparently, indentured servitude is much more humane.
Humphries’ take on Pym makes you want to smack him, which isn’t a great feeling to have for the central protagonist of the book. The whole Doombot thing COULD have worked if Pym wasn’t so “isn’t this great? What could go wrong?” about it, which makes him seem like a moron. The art from Andre Lima Araujo isn’t all bad, but it’s that kind of thing where shading tends to look like dirt or facial scarring, and when it’s around the eyes, it makes everyone seem like they’re wearing raccoon masks. Not a big fan of his faces.
Avengers A.I. #1 is a big letdown – disappointing to read and not all that great visually. Most of what was wrong with it could have been fine and functional if Hank Pym was written like Hank Pym, but instead, he’s written like a schmuck, and I suppose he will continue to be for the rest of the year. Joy.
