Written by: Gene Luen Yang, Michael Dante Di Martino, & Bryan Konietzko
Art by: Gurihiru
Publisher: Dark Horse
Avatar the Last Airbender was one of my favourite shows on Nickelodeon, and it is extremely pleasing to see the story continued.
We start off this issue, shortly after the ending to the actual television show. The evil fire lord has fallen, and Aang and his buddies are at a celebration in Yu Dao. It’s people are presenting their new coalition government with the fire and earth nations. Things get trickly pretty quickly once a past Avatar, Yangchen appears to Aang. He rides around on his air ball, and throws gusts of wind with his hands at her, trying to catch her attention and figure out the reasoning for her visit, but to no avail. For she vanishes and leaves Aang pondering her appearance in the first place. He gets it into his head that it must be because a festival held in Yangchen’s name would take place the next day. With that in mind, he gathers Sokka, Toph, Katara, and the air acolytes for a field trip.
Yang does a terrific job in bringing these characters back to life. Katara remains to be the level headed one, while her brother, Sokka, keeps up with the jokes. Toph is still stubborn and humorous in her own way, and Aang is still young at heart. Gurihiru is spot on when it comes to the art of character likeness. Reading and staring at this first issue, wasn’t any different then sitting down and watching another episode.
This comic is very much kid friendly, but is written well enough to keep adults entertained. The only question I asked myself at the end of the issue, was how likely would it be that issue two would take it’s light-hearted cliff hanger toward a action packed plot line? I personally will continue reading to see if my question gets answered.
