Such an amazing concept, but buckles under the weight of its own aspirations.

What if the Avengers were real? That's the basic idea behind this book. Taking a cue from Star Wars Skywalker Family at War, Avengers Assembled treats the Avengers as a real group and this is the biography of their formation by adapting the stories from the original comics.

I've never heard of this book but I was immediately sold when I found it at a local book store. It's such a great idea seeing as there are decades worth of material to adapt. Unfortunately that's the main issue here with this book, there is just too much that could be contained in one volume.

The first few chapters are the origin stories of the founding members of the Avengers and the rest of the book is adaptations of their run-ins with various villains Loki, Kang, Ultron, Namor, and the other heroes that join the team. This is all told at a break neck pace that never really lets up, nor does it give the reader time to really sink their teeth into what is going on.

David Betancourt should obviously be applauded for attempting such a feat. I however feel this should have been a series of books detailing the history of the Avengers. It's a really interesting way to tell these stories for someone who really doesn't have the time, nor money to invest in reading all of these stories.

The book only covers up until the Kree-Skrull war for a single chapter and then jumps decades into the future. Suddenly we have the Avengers knowing Iron Man is Tony, Sam Wilson is Captain America and Spiderman is Miles Moralis. What about the Infinity Trilogy, Secret Wars, and Civil War? Stories which I would argue are pretty essential in the history of the Avengers, if you want to tell their story as a biography why skip on such massive moments in their history?

I said this should have been part 1 in a multi volume series detailing the history of Earth 616 Avengers. I understand that could be a massive undertaking, but if you're not willing to go all the way I don't really see the point.This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.Show full review1 Neil1,175 13

This review is going to be a bit rough since I am trying to finish it after having read the book a few months ago, so my apologies there. If I reread the book again any time soon, I'll update my thoughts.

When I saw this at a local comic book store, I excitedly looked at the table of contents. It looked an interesting concept, telling the early comic stories of the Avengers in a type of historical narrative. Overall, I enjoyed reading it, but I am not sure how well it works. Despite the choppy flow, it still held my interest because I was familiar with most of the stories written about in the book, and I wanted to see how well they translated into a kind of "historical novel format" (for lack of a better description). One nice feature of the book is that the author includes a list of the comics used for each chapter in the back of the book. That was pretty cool and decent of him to do for those who want to look for the original stories.

The first five chapters involve the origin stories of Iron Man (Tony Stark) (updated a bit for the modern times), Captain America (Steve Rogers), the Hulk (Bruce Banner), the Mighty Thor with some major modern retconning inspired by the recent stories about how Firehair (the Phoenix Force) convinced Gaia to have a child with Odin, that Odin and Firehair had many romantic dalliances, that Mjolnir contains the power of a sentient cosmic storm, and adds reasons why Thor was banished to Earth, and Ant-man and the Wasp (Hank Pym and Janet van Dyne). The sixth chapter is the adventure that brings these disparate characters together to form a team. It was a decent start. Then it starts bouncing around and the chapters feel disjointed as a result. I would have preferred a better sense of continuity, where one chapter flows into the next chapter.

Referencing the book's disjointedness: For example, the author focuses a lot of time on Hawkeye and the Black Widow before Hawkeye actually joins the team. In retrospect, I am sure the author is trying to lay the foundation for Hawkeye's joining the team he did with the original cast in chapters 1-5. He does something similar with Wanda and Quicksilver, giving them a chapter of their own for their "origin story" before they join the team. It was such a break from the main story, though, that cannot decide how much focusing on these characters helped the overall narrative of the story he was trying to tell (especially with the Black Widow not joining the team in the book or any iteration of the team until (relatively) much later in their history).

It felt the author also focused a lot on the Black Knight, which did not make a lot of sense to me as he (Dane Whitman) was not really integral to the Avengers until much later as well (but really came into his own during The Gatherers storyline, in my opinion). But that could just be my interpretation of events in the book versus the comics.

The author skips over a LOT of stories in the comics; not just the stories between issues #5 and #57 but then between 57 and 97 with another jump of several hundred issues between #98 and the All New, All Different Avengers volume 1 issues 1-3. You have the story where the Wasp is shot and nearly dies. The first meeting between the FF And the Avengers as they try to capture the Hulk (granted, that takes place in the issues of the FF, but the author has already incorporated stories from other series into this novel). You have the first meeting between the Squadron Sinister and the Avengers. When the Avengers tousle with the X-Men. The wedding of Janet van Dyne and Hank Pym. The Avengers fighting the Sentinels, Magneto, and then Thanos (briefly). The Avengers traveling through time. Some stories are more important than others, yes, but even the chapter on the Kree-Skrull Space War felt very brief and abrupt. It just "is"; there is no lead up to the events that take place in the chapter. It happens, briefly, and then is over, and it did not feel that chapter really focused on the Avengers, anyway. I felt it focused more on Rick Jones than the Avengers. One thing I found funny is how the Avengers have to go to S.H.I.E.L.D. to get "advanced technology" to travel through space; I would have thought with Tony Stark on the team, that should not have been an issue. Apparently I was wrong, hahahah.

These various jumps in Avengers history to only focus on the stories that the author wanted to tell add to the disjointedness of the overall story arc. Granted, I am assuming he specifically chose the stories he wanted to “novelize”. I assume this mainly because of the chapter involving Dr. Doom. It is set up as the “second” adventure together, but that story involving Dr. Doom never took place in the original continuity, it was later “retconned” in for whatever reason thirty years after the series had started. In my opinion, it was a stupid retcon, on the one hand, because of issue #25 in the first series when “Cap’s Kooky Quartet” faced off against Doom in Latveria. Had the original Avengers truly “battled” Doom in issue 1.5, then Doom would have made comments about it in issue 25. Then again, the power levels were lowered so much with the founding members being gone, would Doom truly have faced off against a “weaker” team because it would have been below him? on the other hand, I can also see why issue 1.5 was included in the book. This story helps showcase some of the Hulk's strength and belligerence; it also shows him working with the team on some level despite his belligerence. The Hulk left the team after the second issue and teamed up with the Sub-Mariner to fight the Avengers in issue #3. Because of the Hulk's rapid departure from the team in the original run, I can understand wanting to have the Hulk appear in another mission and showing how that might have gone down before he left the team. In any case, I digress.

I think the author should have included chapter headings or more statements indicating how much time had elapsed between chapters. If the next chapter truly takes place after the prior chapter, time indicators are not necessary. Otherwise, I felt it would have been more helpful to have a heading that says something , "Two weeks later . . ." I felt these "gaps" became noticeable as the book progressed because the chapters stop feeling they take place "one after the other".

As I am looking at the cover of the book, I just realized Monica Rambeau (aka Captain Marvel aka Photon – the two hero names I am familiar with) is on the cover, but I do not remember her being mentioned in the book, hahahah. A shame – she is a great character.

The cover describes the book as “the origin story of Earth’s mightiest heroes”. That is what it should have done. There are twenty-five chapters in the book. I think the author should have fleshed out, say, the first fifteen or sixteen issues of the original run, really dove into the “meat and potatoes” of this group of heroes until the original Avengers left and Cap revealed the new team consisting of Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, and Hawkeye. I think he did try to do that, on the one hand but I do not know how well it worked. The first twelve chapters probably have the best continuity because of how chapters six through twelve do a “decent” job of following the storyline in the comics (but could still have been better). After that, the narrative starts to lose its cohesion.

The action sequences in the book were well done. I thought he did a good job describing those moments. I also thought he did a good job of capturing the "essence" of the villains throughout the book. They did not feel cardboard cutouts (even with his translating them from comic book stories into a novel).

And kudos to the author, too, for taking on a daunting task this. Despite my gripes about the discontinuity, he still did a solid job of taking so many disparate stories and weaving them together into a novelized narrative. The character development was decent; I do think he managed to develop the various characters a bit while translating them from a pictorial story to an entirely written format. I am sure it was pretty challenging for him, on some level.

In closing, I appreciated the two "batches" of images/pictures from the various comics depicting the characters at various moments of their history and that of the Avengers. These images are fun, because of the wide range of artwork in them; they depict the early artwork of the Avengers comics up to the present day and the various "forms" used. It's a fun piece of Avengers history and I am glad it was included in the book (a form of Easter eggs, maybe?).

I've probably already said too much, but it was a fun book to read. I would not mind seeing either the author or Marvel expanding upon this volume with a second volume that delves further into the history of the Avengers. I am glad that I picked it up and read it.action adventure fiction ...more Wayland SmithAuthor 22 books59

I'm a huge hero geek, and have been all my life. I was surprised and excited when I saw this book at my local comic shop, and grabbed it. it's sort of a text adaptation of a lot of important Avengers stories; origins for the founders, then Cap and his coming to the modern era, Hawkeye, Vision, Black Panther joining the team, you get the idea. Oddly, the Black Knight gets a lot of screen time, and he's not a major Avenger and hasn't been one in a while. The stories faithfully use the original dialogue, which reads a bit clunky to the modern ear, but points for sticking with that. At the end, there's a big jump forward in time to the All-New, All-Different Avengers, which included Ms. Marvel II (Kamala), Nova II (Sam Alexander), Sam Wilson as Captain America, Jane Foster's Thor, and Miles Morales Spider-Man.

I d it, but this book needed another pass at the editor. Among the odd things were: Iron Man's first armor was the Mark I, not the Mach I (that's a whole different character), Bruce Banner's blood wasn't "thinking" during his origin, and I'm not sure how Tony Stark was working on something in Avengers Mansion before the team had ever met, let alone been named. There was a major typo in the Vision's origin story that threw me completely out of the story and I had to reread it several times to figure out what was meant.

Also, comic book nerd moment here, so skip this if the idea makes you roll your eyes: Captain America's shield is a unique alloy of Adamantium and Vibranium in the comics. It's only Vibranium in the movies because of the comic books rights issues. Here, it's referred to several times as an Adamantium and steel alloy which is just wrong. I don't know if that was instruction from on high, a rights issue of some kind, or what (although that would be odd, since mutants in general, and both Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch appear here), but it bugged me.

It's a good collection of older stories, and certainly recommended for comic geeks me. superheroes1 Cheyenne Pagal Scott67 1 follower

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