The Cover (by Greg Horn) for this issue is a huge flaming A, as a homage to The Hunger Games. I've never been a fan of the series, but it was one of the inspirations for this series and it honestly looks pretty damn cool. I'd give this cover a 3.5/5 since it technically isn't an original idea, and it's not meant to be, but I really like the fire effect on it.
It's been eight days now since the teens have been confined to this death game, and they have started to break apart into groups and create ambushes. Cammie is still mostly on her own, being mostly just a human trained to fight in space (who apparently worked with the Annihilation GotG team). Juston, a teenage character who is able to repair/reprogram the sentinels who hunt the x-men (they even compare him to the kid from Iron Giant), surprises her and metal starts flying. Darkhawk (basically a guy in an advanced space suit, who is joked to no longer be a teenage hero even though he used to be in the New Warriors.) also joins the fray and gets avoided by Cammie and her jet-packing laser-pistoling hijinks. They come to an agreement since they are both just looking for whoever is attacking people at night.
Cammi leaves him behind and moves through the snow, getting ambushed AGAIN by a camouflaged X-23. The wolverine clone notes that her scent dosen't match who she's looking for. She gets thrown to the ground and is clearly very frustrated, shooting into the air. A robot ambushes Darkhawk in the woods nearby and blasts him through the chest, seemingly killing him. I thought this issue was nicely drawn with the cool backgrounds and effects (snow and forests, ect) and neat looking flashy characters. A 7.5/10.
Avengers Arena #4
Written by Dennis Hopeless and penciled by Alessandro Vitti.
Nico and Chase from the Runaways (A series I need to read sometime, considering I also really liked Victor from Avengers AI) lounge by a tree and decide to wait all of this out. Chase laments about all the death he saw in his life as being a Runaway (parents were villain scientists) and he's more afraid that he will kill someone more than he will die, torching the forest with his powers after hearing a chipmunk in the trees!
X-23, Reptil, and Hazmat group around a fire as they start to realize it's becoming harder and harder to find food as Arcade is forcing them to fight this out rather than drag it out. Nico jumps out of the jungle and, looking like a witch, is attacked by the group. She shows them that she grew out a magic tree that grows magic fruit so they form a sort of alliance. She can do things like more stable like grow trees, but her magic is too random to let her teleport out or harm Arcade.
Chase tells Reptil that he's still pretty bad, even as a "hero" he really isn't much of a good guy. Just then, someone with a flamethrower torches the dinosaur kid and everyone blames the fire-thrower until they realize that he was out of range. All the power effects look really crisp and colorful :). The group breaks apart in strife, and Chase finds Darkhawk's amulet that was removed from him last issue. This allows Chase to become the new (younger) Darkhawk. I really liked both of these issues, and they both focus and give flashbacks for one spotlight character who is interesting to watch in action while keeping the tension high. The flashbacks, dialogue, effects, and art style really draw me in and overall I can't wait to see where this series ends up going. These new characters are also explained to me, as someone who does not know these sub-characters, fairly well. This gets a 8.5/10 for me, mostly because the cover did pretty much not come true. Oh well...:).
Another note: I wrote the Catching Fire tagline for #3 trying to mock the hunger games cover, and then saw in the following issue how Chase could blast out fire and how Reptil caught on fire...it was an even better title that I didn't know beforehand.
Edit: I'm going to probably post more of my classic reviews, so spiderman #33 coming up next.
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