New Avengers #34

It's a fine line, the one between decompression and writing for the trade. Some would say it's the same thing, but us smart people--we knows better. Like lots.

Decompression is a valid storytelling technique in comics--whether it's a "widescreen" approach that gives an artist room to breathe with lots of full-page and double-page spreads, or just a slower pacing that provides character beats and tangents that would never be possible without the breathing room in the story.

Yet in these days where Borders is becoming as good a place as your local comic shop to buy these silly stories about men in tights, there IS a fine line, and on the other side of it lies tales distended and distorted for the sake of padding out the eventual collected edition.

It's hard to tell if New Avengers 34 is an example of smart decompression or padding out the trade, because there's a sense in which it's no more a continuation of the actual plot than last issue was. There's still the same focus on character over action, and I don't just mean "action" in the sense of punching and kicking, but "action" in the sense of movement forward period. In a plot outline, the bullet points covered in this issue would be pretty miniscule: Wolverine fights the Hood; The Avengers regroup; Dr. Strange uses magic to prove none of them are Skrulls; The Avengers head to stop an attack on Avengers Tower.

It's the classic debate, and by "classic" I mean "frequent amongst fanboys": Does the fact that there is only a tiny portion of plot contained in a decompressed comic like this necessarily mean it's being poorly written? Is it a play for taking a two-issue story and making it six issues, or is it just a creative choice?

I think the bottom line has to be whether you're entertained or not--I wasn't quite as entertained by this issue as I was by last issue, but I still chuckled a couple times and had at least one or two moments of "That's kick-a$$," which I feel is worth $2.99.