The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1349: Avengelyne: Revelation #1, January 2001

It turns out that a demonic enemy of Avengelyne's set up in ancient Rome, and she had to oust him. I think.

I'm getting the feeling that these different series of Avengelyne that Avatar releases are not really different series. The events of Revelation tie directly back into the end of Bad Blood, which I assume is the series that preceded it. I think the multiple #1s really ought to be treated more as story arcs, rather than series in and of themselves. This, of course, gives far more opportunity to print multiple covers for the issues, and to publish prelude and #1/2 issues when there isn't quite 2 comics worth of stories.

That sounded a bit snarky, but it wasn't meant to. For some people, this is the joy of the hobby, the collection of variants and premium comics. Who am I to disparage that? The reason that I bring up the idea of story arcs is that it shifts the way I approach the comics as I read them. If I pick up a full series, I expect to get a full story. If I pick up a story arc, I recognize that there will be much I'm not getting. The movement of the arc to series status camouflages the fact that this is actually an ongoing series. What it really means is that I'm reading this alternate Avengelyne out of order.

I have no idea why I'm so taken with this series. There's something vaguely magically  realist about the way that the people that Avengelyne comes into contact with in the first century seem to have no qualms with the way she's dressed. I mean, we would now, so I can't imagine what the uproar would have been then. I might read some more Avengelyne tomorrow. We'll see.

More to come...

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 1348: Avengelyne: Revelation Prelude, November 2000

I mentioned in my post on the Glory covers that I'd recently got rid of a number of comics in the collection that were simply variant covers. I also noted that Avatar Press are the absolute nadir of this kind of variance. I ordered numerous Avengelyne titles from the cheap list sent to me by Diamond Comics, in order to pad out the fairly thin back issue selection. The fact that I have them 17 years later shows you how well that worked. But because these comics were in my mind this week, I thought I'd give them a go.

This one is not bad. Still too much T&A, especially in a story that's basically a 12-page tale of Christians getting fed to wild animals in ancient Rome, but there's at least a semblance of story. According to a bit of reading I've done, the stories that Avatar publishes of this character are seen by fans as non-continuity, her appearances in Image and various Liefeld properties being the canonical tales. Which, of course, immediately intrigues me. I looked it up, and there are only 10 comics from Avatar featuring this character that I don't have. The stories aren't bad, the art's okay, but I think what draws me is that this is a whole alternate continuity for the character, and I like the idea of having something that complete in the collection.

Of course, then the rational part of my brain adds a caveat. "Only if they are dirt cheap, like 25 cents each."

Which is totally fair enough.

Also, the covers I kept in the collection are, by and large, Al Rio covers. I really, really like his work.

More to come...