Lost in the library: Acts of Vengeance

The local library was closed by a lockdown for four months, but I kept ordering all the latest comic book nonsense - all the superhero crossovers I'd never pay for, the latest piece of brilliance from Jason, a ridiculous amount of essay and history comics, and anything with John Constantine in it - and now they've all come in at once and I'm reading three trade paperbacks a day.

Most of them are barely more than a bored flick-through, just to see what the Fantastic Four are up to these days - same old shit, apparently - and some of them take a lot longer. But you can find unexpected patterns in reading these things this way.

Take the weirdly formless Acts of Vengeance crossover that Marvel put out in the late 80s. After the dud philosophizing of Secret Wars II - which could have been something if anybody else than dear Al Milgrom was drawing it - Marvel went in big on Acts of Vengeance as the eighties closed, a major Avengers-focused crossover that pulled in everyone.

The big idea was that all the really big supervillains would team up and take on the heroes they wouldn't usually face. It has its moments, like the Red Skull getting owned by Magneto who won't have anything to do with the Nazi scum and there was an action figure pleasure in pitting Iron Man's usual foes against Spider-Man.

But after reading the entire thing in the collected editions, it's notable how much it needs the spine of a core mini-series. There is a lot wrong with crossover mania, but you do need something for it all to revolve around, or the central plot of the whole thing becomes lost in Cloak and Dagger spin-offs.

It's spread all over the place, across so many comics, but there is no difference between the key texts and the vague tie-ins. With the recent collection of the whole thing across three different books, it makes even less sense, because it's all wrapped up in one corner of the universe, and then the Mandarin is still blasting away at Jubilee in another. It only really makes sense in a wrap-up that was annual filler in one of the titles, and even then, it just barely holds together.

Marvel will put out half a dozen big crossovers a year now across its various titles, and most of them have the spine. Acts of Vengeance shoots its load all over the place, instead of focusing on a suitably sized target.