Infinity: Heist/The Hunt

Infinity

by Frank Tieri (Writer), Matt Kindt (Writer), Ramón F. Bachs (Aritist)

Infinity Tie-In!
As the Marvel Universe prepares for a massive assault by Thanos' armies, Spymaster and some of Marvel's best baddies decide that where there is chaos - there is opportunity! It's the crime of the century, an alien invasion is all the cover they need, and Spymaster has unveiled the perfect plan - so what the hell's wrong with Blizzard, and why is he having doubts? Frank Tieri, Ramon Bachs and Al Barrionuevo bring you a trip to the dark side, and the biggest score in the galaxy...it's the Infinity Heist!

COLLECTING: Infinity: Heist 1-4, Infinity: The Hunt 1-4

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Comic Book, Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 11, 2013

Reviews

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection slams two minis together that couldn't be less alike if they were born of deities and demons. Editorial convenience? Ignorance? Absolute hatred of the one good creative team? Total pity for the other?

Infinity: Heist

Great irreverent introduction. Hell of a way to capture my attention, making fun of the obviously ridiculous things like how Thor prefers to fly unprotected in space.

So this is a book with a feel very much like Superior Foes of Spider-man - C-list supervillains with an attitude, moral flexibility and an amusing irreverence to take the piss out of the usual Marvel dealings.

Did Frank Tieri also write Superior Foes? Let me check...nope, that one was Nick Spencer. OK, then we've got two writers with a promising future around here - pull up a chair boys.

Nice little tale of crossed purposes and not everyone playing nice with each other.

Unfortunately, this book is also a classic example of the breakdown in artist output on a monthly (or worse) schedule. Books 1 & 2 have a single pencil/ink artist, then book 3 brings on a helper, and book 4 piles in every free hand they can grab. By the end the look of the book, and the quality of the output, is gone straight to hell - like something out of an early 90's Image title.

Infinity: The Hunt?

OMG it's bad, not even worth reading one issue. The entire first issue is total filler, there to mansplain the premise (which needed maybe two panels) and heavily introduce every single character who's meant to ever appear here.

Here's a typical line:

"Located in Mumbai, the Pan-Asian School is headed by Jimmy Woo and Sanjar Javeed. They are responsible for recruiting the best and brightest students from all of Asia. Funding for the school is rumoured to be with a cursed treasure, but the results of their work are anything but cursed."

DNF. Matt Kindt is a highly overrated...something.

[Nuno Gil Franco · Rating 2 out of 5]

Heist was pretty neat, although the ending would have been better if it weren't a "dream". But I was expecting WAY more from Kindt and Hunt: loads of new characters (as far as I know) but it was just weird seeing kids that have fought some hard battles (like the Avengers Academy or the Jean Grey school ones) just sucking pretty bad from the get-go. And the fact that the art changed so drastically in the last issue didn't help matters none (art AND color, mind you).

[Krzysztof Grabowski · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Hunt opisałem na innej stronie, więc streszczając się: zbędny filler, który da się przeczytać, ziewając makabrycznie w między czasie. Inna sprawa z Heist...

Infinity jako wydarzenie przysporzyło ziemskim herosom masę kłopotów. Cztery-zeszytowe opowiadania daje nam spojrzeć na całe zamieszanie zupełnie z innej strony. Ba, nie ma to prawie nic wspólnego z Nieskończonością. To opowieść o kilku łotrach, którzy próbują wykorzystać fakt, iż herosi są mocno zajęci. Chodzi o pewien nietypowy skok... na wieżę Starka. Cel: zbroje Iron Mana. Zleceniodawca ma w tym własny cel, bohaterowie opowieści chcą się zwyczajnie wzbogacić, tylko jak zwykle coś idzie nie tak i trzeba walczyć o własne życie.

Jest tu sporo zaskakująco dobrego humoru, a i sama historia bawi, mimo faktu, iż to typowy filler, ale mam wrażanie, że Tieri doskonale sobie zdawał z tego sprawę. Intryga jest sprawnie opisana, a i postacie są tutaj dosyć czupurne, zwłaszcza główna dwójka bohaterów, która niby zła, a jednak tak nie do końca. Rysunki są nieco niespójne, bo co kolejny zeszyt to widzimy dzieło innego rysownika, ale nikt nie wybił się poza standardowe rzemiosło.

Dla Heist warto nabyć tą pozycję do swojej biblioteki. Jeżeli da się zrobić to oddzielnie, to zróbcie to, bo w takim przypadku daję tej luźnej historii 3.5/5. W duecie z The Hunt robi się to już niesmaczne.

[Rocky Sunico · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't exactly the biggest fan of the Infinity crossover event, but here and there I stumble across books from the series in my collection that I picked up on sale.

This volume collects two tie-in mini-series- Heist and The Hunt.

In Heist, we have a bunch of lower-echelon Marvel villains who decide to steal Iron Man's armors while he's scheduled to be away. I kind of have a soft spot for these kinds of books that give more character and back story for the different Marvel villains that don't get a lot of time in the spotlight - in this book the leads are the likes of Whirlwind and Blizzard. The resulting story is pretty quirky but still fun.

The Heist sort of tried to build on the interest from books like Avengers Arena and expand it futher to include even more schools for young heroes all over the world. But of course thing big Contest of
Champions had to coincide with Thanos's invasion of Earth at the start of Infinity, so the tale becomes one of a different kind of survival. Great character moments for a lot of younger heroes but largely the stakes don't feel genuinely great once you get to the end of things. Also a generally fun read.

[Tim B · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Heist was a fairly enjoyable Villain centric story about stealing Iron Man’s costumes. The twist was a pretty cool way of concluding it. The Hunt brought many of the schools together again, including the Braddock Academy. Meggan came up with the name Contest of Champions, which was a neat thing showing her interest and growth. It seems like creative teams only want to use Braddock Academy to fight the other schools, introduce a couple of new characters, and then not be mentioned. Loch and Box could have brought more to the table. Loch basically existed in this story to look weird and get hurt. Interesting, but nothing special.

[Shane · Rating 3 out of 5]

A group of villains decide to steal Stark's old Iron Man suits while the world is ending and also students from the various superhero schools around the world gather together to help stop the invasion, even though their teachers told them to stay inside.

If you're a fan of comics about the bad guys trying to work together (and failing as usual) then you'll dig Heist. If you're into seeing new heroes with teen angst issues you'll dig Hunt.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

So it turns out I already read this in Infinity Companion Infinity Companion. But I only remembered The Hunt. The Heist is not especially memorable. It's like a super-light version of Superior Foes of Iron Man. Longer than it had to be and with Iron Man villains that aren't particularly interesting or relatable.

The Hunt is more interesting. It combines two fan favorites: Avengers Academy and Wolverine and the X-Men. The problem is that those titles were already running out of steam so the ability to reshuffle the teen team heroes was a little lost.

[Mikael · Rating 2 out of 5]

An hollow and inconsequential tie-in. Dumb ending, like the last panel is so dumb. Art's good though.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heist. It's hard not to compare this to Superior Foes of Spider-Man, a contemporary story of villainous heists. Heist comes up short, but it's still a pretty good book. The villains are well-characterized, and there's a nice undertone of humor to the book. The only thing really holding it back is the artwork, which makes it hard to distinguish between the characters, even while they're in costume (in part due to some 1990s-itis). Still, this is a fun volume, and I wouldn't have minded to see this group again. Who is Frank Tieri anyway? He's not bad. [6+/10].

The Hunt. It's hard not to compare this to Avengers Arena, a contemporary story of Marvel's teen heroes fightin', and unfortunately The Hunt comes up very short and it's not good. The characterization is shallow and the writing is straight out of a 1970s comic, but it's the plotting where things really collapse. The first issue is entirely setup for a contest that doesn't happen, then the second issue uses our protagonists as passive observers of cataclysmic events. They have pretty much no agency. That's half the mini-series totally wasted. It gets a little better in the last half, but it's still just two issues of fighting, with just one plot point: "We can succeed if we can work together!" Ugh. I can't believe Matt Kindt wrote this. [3/10]

The connection of these comics to Infinity is also pretty weak, as they spin off of events with little explanation and with no good through-line for the two mini-series.

[Silas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well, these stories really had nothing to do with each other other than being relatively short and taking place during the Infinity event. The one is a crime story about Iron Man villains trying to steal Stark's armors while he is away in space, and the other is about several groups of young people with super powers having a competition to see who is best that is interrupted by an alien invasion (and happens to take place at the same time as Avengers Arena, to have peak young super hero saturation). I liked the Hunt more than the Heist, but that may just be because I tend not to enjoy crime stories very much. I did find that the Heist had some pretty weird bits in it (why were they fighting the Iron Patriot, and was the bald guy with the chain supposed to be Luke Cage?), but was fine if you didn't think about it too much. The Hunt introduced some new characters that I have yet to see elsewhere, but they were kind of fun, and I wonder if I will ever see them again. These are fairly good as somewhat stand alone stories, but probably not particularly worth seeking out.

[Anchorpete · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book should get two different ratings, since it contains two different stories. Story one- featuring Villains like Blizzard, Whirlwind and Whiplash, is far stronger than the story featuring the teen heroes from the various super hero training schools. Story 2, the hunt, seems like a far more ambitious and yet far weaker version of Avengers Arena. I do love the idea of multiple Super hero training schools across the world, but unfortunately, there is barely enough time to focus on any one character in any of the schools. I would have loved to have seen it dragged out for at least twelve issues, truly develop each character.
Heist was a lot better. It was cool to see a story about Iron Man Specific villains. Since robert Downey Junior has come along, Tony Stark is a far more interesting and important character in the Marvel Universe. The villains in this book are all from pre- Marvel Cinematic Universe. Heist was a good step in modernizing these rather lame rogues.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is really 2 stories. One has villains planning on capitalising on the fact that all the heroes have left Earth. The other looks at a teenage super hero olympics that is interrupted by the events of Infinity, and the teenagers decide what to do. My favourite was the teenage storyline, it reminded me of what the writer said he had originally wanted to do with Arena before it was changed. A good read.

[Doug Cornelius · Rating 1 out of 5]

Neither of the two stories is interesting. I don't understand why the two disparate stories are in the same book.

[Frans Kempe · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two Infinity stories. One about superhero students and the other about a couple of villains that tries to rob Iron-man