Open Mike Night - Great Lakes Avengers (2016) #1

Great Lakes Avengers #1

Written by: Zac Gorman
Art by: Will Robson
Colored by: Tamra Bonvillain
Lettered by:VC’s Joe Caramagna

Published by: Marvel
Cover Price:  $3.99

Mike Weaver: Great Lakes Avengers has always been a team that’s focused on humor, but sprinkles in a dose of something resembling straight up superheroing. When we start the issue, we find out that due to crazy legal shenanigans, Flatman ends up with the trademark to the Avengers name, since Stark’s holding company that controlled the copyright seems to have disintegrated post-Civil War II.  Lawyers working for the Avengers contact Flatman, now living off residuals from his biography, and attempt to repurchase the rights.  After a frustrating negotiation for the lawyers, it is finally determined that the price for selling the rights is to be quasi-bankrolled as an official arm of the Avengers.  He contacts the old team, and gets Big Bertha and Doorman to join him on a trip to the new headquarters in Detroit.

There’s a confusing interstitial featuring other powered individuals in Detroit, including a female werewolf and a fork-pun-obsessed villain, then we get to the new headquarters: an old Stark facility on the edge of the “bad” part of town.  They’re met there by Pansy, a girl with Gothy overtones and the holder of Mr. Immortal’s old cell number who came due to the texts intended for Immortal.  Mr. Immortal, meanwhile, is buried underground of his own volition, an action he currently regrets.

The majority of this issue flowed really well for me, but the section in the middle that doesn’t involve the main GLA felt very random and disjointed.  Well, other than the Squirrel Girl part, that was golden.

Mike Maillaro: Yeah, you hit it totally on the head. I really enjoyed this book...until we got to the section with “Good Boy” a girl who apparently turns into a male werewolf.  I actually liked the design for the villains she was facing, but since they never really tied it back to the main story, it just felt weird.  

Great Lakes Avengers has always been a real quirky team, and they did a great job with that here.  Flat Man, Door Man, and Big Bertha make one hell of a bizarre dynamic.  I laughed several times during this issue.  Door Man’s annoyance at the good part of town being right across from the bad part of town was just hilarious to me.  And Big Bertha’s grudge against Mr Immortal was also ripe for some funny moments.

I wonder what happened to the rest of the team...hopefully they will pop up.  I always liked Dinah Soar in particular…

Weaver: I feel like Dinah Soar died in some random issue of something else, but we know how well that lasts in the Marvel Universe.  Obviously, they’re expanding the team, I assume Pansy will have some role, and the cover for next issue features Good Boy, so at least there’s some point to including that origin story.  

This issue was funny.  The part with Doorman and the good side of town/bad side of town is so totally how Detroit is set up right now.  It’s revitalizing basically a neighborhood at a time, but there’s a stark boundary between the revitalized area and across the street from revitalized area.  It’s apparent that the creative team has some familiarity with Detroit, given also that the cover features a Coney Island, which I guess are pretty much a Michigan thing, bizarrely enough.  I always enjoy when a comic is someplace that’s not New York or imaginary (like Gotham, Metropolis, etc), but only if it actually seems true to that place.  This seemed true to Detroit.

Maillaro: I actually meant to ask you should about that.  I had never heard of a Coney Island Detroit.  At first I was thinking thinking it was a joke I wasn't getting.  

Weaver: A Coney Island restaurant is basically a diner.  They specialize in “Coney Island dogs” which have nothing to do with Actual Coney Island...it’s a hot dog with chili, raw onion, mustard, and sometimes shredded cheddar cheese.  They serve other food, but that’s the focus.  Basically, any business that would be called “diner” anywhere else in America is called a Coney Island here.

Maillaro: Thank you!   That was definitely something they did very well here, establishing that this was not your normal “big time, New York superhero team.” They managed to hit the perfect tone here to make GLA feel like they could have some purpose, but don’t expect to see them fighting Thanos for the fate of the universe any time soon.

One thing that was really odd about this book is that it’s not a vanity project.  Zac Gorman and Will Robson are both newcomers to Marvel, and Marvel had approached them about doing this book.  I often think that the only way you get a book like this is if it is a per project for the creators, but Zac said he had basically never even heard about the GLA before Marvel asked him to do this book.  I thought he did an excellent job even without that background.

Weaver: Very clearly, Zac Gorman does his homework.  There’s a lot of references back to the glory days of the GLA, plus all the characters read pretty authentically. Plus, as stated, he got Detroit right.  But it does make me wonder...why exactly would Marvel feel they need a GLA book?  Is it because there’s been a dearth of good Marvel humor books?

Maillaro: Marvel seems determined to try and bring back (or launch) a lot of relatively unknown properties with a humor spin.  I guess because of the relative success of Gwenpool, Spider-Woman, Howard the Duck, Patsy Walker, Ant-Man, and Squirrel Girl?   To be honest, Marvel might have TOO MANY quirky books right now.  And that’s not even counting Spider-Gwen and Silver Surfer.  On top of that, in the coming weeks, we also get Prowler, Solo, Slapstick, and Foolkiller.   Marvel’s approach seems to be “fire everything at the wall and hope something sticks.”

For scores...other than some awkwardness in the middle (this comic probably could have used a few more pages to flesh that out), I thought this was a solid first issue. And not a lot of reliance on “things that haven’t happened yet.”  It wasn’t all that flashy, but a solid performer.  3.5 for the writing, 4 for the art.  For the art, I especially loved how Robson draws Flat Man.

Weaver: I want to bump the story up to 4...I know that the disjointed middle was problematic, but this just did so many things right...heck, I’ll do it.  4 on story, 4 on art.

Summary: A fun first issue.  Reintroduces the GLA effectively, and the art style fits perfectly.  At times the issue does feel a bit disjointed, but on a whole it's still a real solid relaunch for the GLA.

Final Scores

Maillaro: Got two suggestions for next week.  Infamous Iron Man...which is about the new “warmer cuddlier” post-Secret Wars Victor Von Doom taking up the Iron Man mantle because of whatever happens to Tony Stark at the end of Civil War II.  And Spell on Wheels...a new Dark Horse series “Three young witches are robbed of their magical items, and they’ll have to hit the road to track down the mysterious thief before he does any damage to—or with—their possessions. Supernatural meets Buffy and The Craft!“

Personally, I prefer saying Charmed meets Thelma and Louise, but that’s just me.

Weaver: I hate how everything wants to be this meets that.  We’ve gotten to such a point of meta pop culture that we can only define new pop culture in comparison to old pop culture.  Jarmok, on the ocean.

Anyways, Spell on Wheels sounds like a winner, and gets us out of mainstream books for a week.

Maillaro: The sad part is that I have seen several books on writing that basically tell writers “when selling your book be prepared to tell them what it’s like by using other works.”   Open Mike Night...in space.  

Okay cool.  I expect Infamous Iron Man just to frustrate me anyway.  Spell on Wheels it is!