All-New, All-Remote Avengers #18 – ‘Reluctantly Crouched at the Starting Line’

Here we are, the beginning of the big A.I.M base assault!

Originally, I posted the comics in the Phil Wrede Marvel Action Figure Comic Universe to Instagram, and so the formatting and page count of many of these comics was done to fit the Instagram limitations.* So, numerous large-scale fight scenes are done over multiple posts, as I could only fit 10 images into a single post on Instagram, and half-to-a-full one of those images needed to be given over to a credits page.

What we have in this comic are a lot of pretty “classic” examples of Phil Wrede writing tropes: very specific references to literature/film/music that I love, sudden explosions, low-level flunkies expressing tremendous regret about their life choices… It’s very fun when the images and the dialogue flow naturally – as anybody who does anything creative will probably tell you about their own work – and it almost makes the days when creating is a terrible slog worthwhile.

*I’ve found many of the native Instagram limitations useful in focusing my comic-making, so I’ll likely hew closely to them in the future, but it’s nice to have the option to break them for dramatic/visual affect when necessary.