Armor Hunters #4 Review: Armor Hunted!
Reading time: 3 minutes
Events can be a tricky thing, and unfortunately, Armor Hunters is seemingly another example of a crossover that wasn’t really able to capitalize on it’s full potential. That’s not to say that the story was bad, but the length of the tale, the amount of crossover with other books, and the dull fighting moments didn’t quite lead to that big bang that fans were probably hoping for towards the back half of these past two issues. Bits of the story that were more interesting than other parts were reserved for other places. In addition, this tale doesn’t even set up future stories in the way that it probably should of. In truth there are a couple of key issues with this final chapter of the book that really being to undervalue the weight of what came before.
Author Robert Venditti chooses to structure the story of the final chapter in a manner that will make readers more than confused. The first nine story pages of the comic book are reserved for setting up the last confrontation between the Armor Hunters & Unity. This leaves little in the way for the brawl to actually show these groups clashing in a physically imposing manner. While comics aren’t made just for the sake of action, this confrontation should have been so durastic and threatening to both forces, that fans should have immediately cared about the weight of both of these forces. Perhaps that’s another place where this tale also seems to falter from the others, the stakes. While the Armor Hunters are definitely bad, the physically imposing threat was never that clear. Even with the different Hunters clearly being able to take down the different Armors throughout cosmos, they don’t seem to pose the same threat as previous villains in the series like the Vine. This problem is not coming from Venditti’s end, as the plotting itself in this tale isn’t bad, the problem seemingly lies wtihin structure that the comic decides to go in.
If the team was going to reserve such massive amounts of time for getting the band back together, another issue of the comic would have been preferred. Those that feel let down by this crossover posing a threat as flimsy as another alteration on the personality of the hunter themselves should take a look at the issue of X-0 Manowar that also came out this Wednesday. The armor concepts teased in this issue play out much better and in a fully formed manner there. This tale is also more concerned with closing up the plot threads of this mini-series than exploring some of the after-effects of this tale along with the surprise ending towards the last half. The themes that the book has been exploring with Amalgam are explored in greater detail there as well. Making this tale oversized and including that material would have definitely been interesting, but it's not the direction that Valiant decided to take their line in, and will not be reviewed as such.
None of the previous observations that may put fans off are located in the art of Dougie Braithwaite, who brings the same level of craft to the foundations of this story. In fact, the art may be the selling point of the title, as the incredibly detailed pencils add some much needed gravitas to that final encounter between Aric and the Hunters. Coloring from Laura Martin is another much needed bit of scale added to the storytelling here. Her look gives the title some color tones that make Braithwaite’s sense of scale a motion that is less static.
This may not be the event that is going to blow readers away, but it doesn’t take the sails out of the core Valiant titles either. There is a lot of room to grow based on the foundations of this story arc. Aric is now living up his full potential as a true hero, watching Venditti and X-0 explore the mature hero is going to captivating with-or-without this event storyline slightly distracting from the greater narrative.
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