Giant Naked Guy: Avengers Assemble #20 Review

Avengers Assemble #20 does a lot in 20 pages. First of all, it’s a rare one-and-done, which is refreshing in the middle of the Infinity event that has been going on for a couple of months but which sometimes makes me feel like we have always been at war with The Builders. Second, it gives a spotlight to Wonder Man, Wasp and Scarlet Witch, who have been inveterate second stringers recently (when one character has become a pacifist and another who just about a  year ago was valiantly fighting to remain dead. Third, it gives us a taste of what we can expect from the Great Terrigen Mist Release of 2013 (the fact that what we can expect is a bunch of people with new superpowers all reliving the first season of Heroes is beside the point). And finally, it wraps all of this in a relatable story about side characters who were damaged long before they were affected by the Terrigen Mist.

But this is not a perfect story. In order to fit everything into a single issue, writer Al Ewing has Wasp make a couple of quick and significant leaps in logic to get the story from Point A to Point B. Further, in order to balance Wonder Man’s out-front and obvious pacifism, Ewing contrasts it with a child gleefully stomping bad guys to death.

So there’s a lot here, some of which works and some of which doesn’t. But is does it work as a coherent whole?

Wasp, Scarlet Witch and Wonder Man are on the run in a Quinjet following a battle with the Builders’ invaders where Wonder Man refused to fight, when them come across something you don’t see every day: a giant naked middle-aged guy stomping around the suburbs of New York. As the giant dude flails around, we flash back to his, and his family’s and neighbors’ stories, while Wonder Man uses his new trademark pacifism to talk what is, after all, a scared pantsless man, down enough to describe that his wife was affected by the Mists, and when she came out of it, he grew and she disappeared. Wasp posits that the wife, Alice, shrank in proportion to the dude’s growth, straight into the Microverse, so Wasp combines her powers with Scarlet Witch’s probability power to shrink herself back into the Microverse (where she was when she was presumed dead), to find the wife and neighbors being savaged by Micronaut bad guys, with Alice needing to come to terms with her new powers stat if they want to live.

So Ewing gave himself 20 pages to come up with a story using Wasp, Wonder Man and Scarlet Witch, and find a way to make all of them relevant to the story in limited real estate, which would be a tricky task even if Wonder Man wasn’t currently using his superhuman powers to ask if we can’t all get along. And he not only gives each of the primaries a little room to breathe, but allows them to use their powers in ways that make clear what each can do, but does it in exciting ways. He seems to take special fun with Scarlet Witch, moving her powers beyond generic “hexes” and clearly demonstrating her abilities to affect probability in ways that any good English writer of 2000 AD stories, who simply must have therefore read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, should embrace. Further, he actually does something with Wonder Man’s newfound pacifism (other than making him a useless scold yammering in the background), using it to further the story and dissolve a situation without having to resort to violence. It gives each of the characters a nice showcase, and it all fits into the scope of the story.

Further, Ewing does a good job making Giant Naked Guy and his family and neighbors more than just props. Ewing sets up a first page tragedy for Alice (Huh. Alice from Through The Looking Glass shrunk and grew. Lookit me remembering books without pictures!) and Giant Naked Guy Dennis that have left them standing still for years. And while that tragedy is a shorthand, it’s an easily relatable one that immediately humanizes them, and allows Alice’s new-found powers to fit within the scope of Ewing’s setup. It puts a human face on the story that I found really satisfying.

The characterizations are really what make the story work, because again: there are some plot problems and leaps in logic that have to happen for this all to fit in one issue. Wasp’s immediate supposition that Alice shrank to make her husband grow makes a little sense given Wasp’s own powers and association with Hank Pym, but not only was it a little quick and on-the-nose, but it doesn’t make a lot of sense if you stop and think about it for more than ten seconds. If Alice was shifting mass around to shrink in any kind of proportional manner, for her to take herself, two bystanders and a fucking house into the Microverse, Dennis should have been bumping his head on Mars.

And then there’s what happens in the Microverse itself. I can kinda buy that that’s where Alice and company ended up, and I can even kinda buy that Scarlet Witch’s power set things up so that everyone would land in the clutches of Gouzar – the Micronaut who was fucking with Wasp a year ago. But that also doesn’t really hold up for very long under scrutiny: Scarlet Witch explains twice in this issue that she can alter probability to make the very improbable happen… so rather than ask if she can put Wasp where Alice is, why doesn’t Scarlet Witch just make the very improbable event that Alice and company just reappear happen? And yes, Ewing is smart enough to show Scarlet Witch as fatigued after an early use of her powers, but why not give her a nice glass of orange juice, a short nap, and then she can wish the entire Infinity invasion away? At this point, I think I’d kinda prefer that anyway.

Pepe Larraz’s art is, in general, pretty good straight ahead comic art. It’s not particularly flashy, with solid pacing and reasonably clear storytelling – a lot of pages eschew standard panel layouts, but Larraz takes extra care to make sure that characters’ sight lines and body positioning help the reader flow across the page in the right order. Plus, Larraz does good work in dealing with the changes in perspective that come when characters start shrinking and growing in the Multiverse. But I found myself liking the art more than I normally would, and I finally figured it out: Larraz’s style reminded me a lot of Tradd Moore’s from Luther Strode (mostly in the eyes and faces). Which is a style I like, and it went a long way toward my enjoying the story.

And I did enjoy the story. Sure, it has some plot and logic problems, but it embraces the characters, giving all the heroes solid things to do, with a normal human tragedy in the mix to keep everything grounded. And it’s all done in one issue, which is remarkable considering that we’re in the middle of one of the biggest crossovers of the year. It ain’t perfect, but it’s fun, human and intimate, which is something that Infinity in general has been sorely lacking.