Captain America and the Mighty Avengers 1: Open for Business

captain america and the mighty avengers volume 1 open for business cover
3.0 Overall Score
Story: 2/10
Art: 7/10

Ok art

Story is incoherent and characters are not in character

Comic Info

Comic Name:  Captain America and the Mighty Avengers

Publisher:  Marvel Comics

Writer:  Al Ewing

Artist:  Luke Ross/Iban Coello

# of Issues:  7

Release Date:  2015

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Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #1 (Variant)

Reprints Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #1-7 (January 2015-June 2015).  The Avengers and Mighty Avengers are at war and Sam Wilson, the new Captain America, is caught in the middle.  As Sam fights himself, the Mighty Avengers seek to stop their leader Luke Cage from turning on them by selling out to the Cortex Corporation.  What is Cage planning and what evil from Spectrum’s past has returned?

Written by Al Ewing, Captain America and the Mighty Avengers Volume 1:  Open for Business replaced Might Avengers (Volume 2).  The series featured art by Luke Ross and Iban Coello.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers is indicative of Marvel Comics right now.  I grew up loving the Avengers.  With the X-Men, they were a great superhuman team that often put fun characters in the mix.  The Mighty Avengers got the fun characters, but ruined the mix by having a story that lacks direction and is almost nonsensical to readers.

Random things just happen in the series.  I didn’t read the last few years of Avengers leading up to the series and thought I’d try reading this series.  Marvel always relaunches their series to woo new readers, but this series does nothing to clear up what is going on.  If I were a new reader, I would probably quit and just watch the movies.  This is a big problem.  There is a quick little summary at the beginning of the collection, but it doesn’t explain much of the story.

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Captain America and the Mighty Avengers #3

The characters are all so out of character.  In the course of the story, Captain America switches sides but his behavior really isn’t explained.  This segues into Beyonders story which does slightly improve the comic, but it largely remains unbalanced and unreadable.

What does work in the comic is the fun inclusion of Nextwave.  Nextwave was written out of continuity essentially, but in this volume it is revealed that it really did happen.  I love Captain Marvel aka Photon aka Pulsar aka Spectrum and it was fun to see her Nextwave incarnation return.

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers 1:  Open for Business isn’t a very good read and it shows a major problem for comics right now.  The stories aren’t compelling and even as a veteran reader, I find them confusing and disjointed.  I imagine trying to be someone just getting into comic books and picking up the first issue.  As a kid, I used to be excited just to get the chance to get a comic, and if I had to spend the money comics ask you to pony up now and got Captain America and the Mighty Avengers, I would have been disappointed.  Captain America and the Mighty Avengers 1:  Open for Business was followed by the final volume Captain America and the Mighty Avengers 2:  Last Days.

Related Links:

Captain America and the Mighty Avengers 2:  Last Days

Author: JPRoscoe View all posts by
Follow me on Twitter/Instagram/Letterboxd @JPRoscoe76! Loves all things pop-culture especially if it has a bit of a counter-culture twist. Plays video games (basically from the start when a neighbor brought home an Atari 2600), comic loving (for almost 30 years), and a true critic of movies. Enjoys the art house but also isn't afraid to let in one or two popular movies at the same time.

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