War of the Realms: New Agents of Atlas #1: A Pear is a Pear

A frantically paced issue that introduces us to maybe a dozen characters in 20 pages or so? The concept of a Pacific Rim team with all Asian members is a little odd (living in Seattle I’m technically in the Pacific Rim, not Asian, eh, minor semantic nitpick) even the Pacific Islanders are pretty underrepresented. Eh. I was really glad to see Shang Chi, as he is a borderline forgotten character at this point who is really cool and underrated. Likewise I’m interested to see Amadeus Cho in action as I’ve been interested in the character but haven’t been able to find one person who can recommend a story they like that he’s in, although this issue references an arc from The Incredible Hulk I’ll probably check out sometime. Greg Pak does a good job depicting a new team learning to work together.

The “a pear is a pear” scene was pretty cool, I like that all these characters if varying ethnic backgrounds (some of whom don’t necessarily like each other) are going to be learning to work together.

Obviously being a War of the Realms tie in we had to reference the New York takeover and such, it is a bit aggravating that all the tie ins seem to be taking place in the opening stages of the War, obviously Marvel had to pace the series’ releases otherwise we would have gotten 20 issues or so in the first 2 weeks of the event but it really detracts from the immersion of the event when the timeline jumbles like that. Another nitpick, as shown in The Mighty Thor v2 #20-22 the only thing that can extinguish Muspelheim fire is Fire Goblin blood, not water, ice, sand, what have you. This was a very major plot point when the Light Elf Realm (Alfheim) was taken by Malekith’s forces led by Sindr, leading to the creation of War Thor and a major defeat in the War of the Realms.

The art by Gang Hyuk Lim is pretty cool especially given the insanely varied power sets on display, I wanna be best friends with the magic bear. I’m not a huge fan of Shang Chi in a red onesie, but I can certainly get over it thanks to Shang Chi being in a big ticket book again. The splash with Sindr’s big entrance is also fantastic and the fire goblins look great.

Is he soft? I bet he’s soft!