The War of the Realms: New Agents of Atlas

The War of the Realms

by Greg Pak, Gang Hyuk Lim (Illustrator), Billy Tan (Cover Art)

Collects War Of The Realms: New Agents Of Atlas #1-4.

A new band of heroes unites to defend the Pacific Rim! As Sindr and her legions of Fire Demons march on Asia, can Amadeus Cho reassemble his ragtag “Protectors” — Shang-Chi, Silk and Jimmy Woo — to once again save Earth from an alien invasion? Where is Kamala Khan? And just who are Crescent, Io and Luna Snow? Prepare to meet Marvel’s newest heroes from China — Aero and Sword Master — and the mysterious new Filipina heroine named Wave! Together, they are all that stands between the Queen of Cinders and her ultimate goal: to melt the polar ice caps and turn all of Midgard into a sweltering new Muspelheim!

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

109 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 17, 2019

About the author

Greg Pak is an award-winning Korean American comic book writer and filmmaker currently writing "Lawful" for BOOM and "Sam Wilson: Captain America" (with Evan Narcisse) for Marvel. Pak wrote the "Princess Who Saved Herself" children's book and the “Code Monkey Save World” graphic novel based on the songs of Jonathan Coulton and co-wrote (with Fred Van Lente) the acclaimed “Make Comics Like the Pros” how-to book. Pak's other work includes "Planet Hulk," "Darth Vader," "Mech Cadet Yu," "Ronin Island," "Action Comics," and "Magneto Testament."

Reviews

[Baba · Rating 2 out of 5]

Let's cut to the chase, I feel that this book was solely created to introduce an all-Asian Marvel team. But it sadly revealed just how few Asians there were, so Marvel had to create most of the team from scratch or from very much forgotten minor characters! Oh dear!

Very average read, as expected from a tool solely for introducing the new team, a team which includes Brawn and Silk by the way, as well as Shang Chi!!! 5 out of 12.

2019 read

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a bit of a mess, unfortunately. Uniting Brawn, Silk, Shang-Chi, and a number of Marvel's Future Fight creations as one team seems like a good idea to start with, and a logical extension of what Greg Pak was doing over in Totally Awesome Hulk with the Protectors, but I think he goes a little overboard.

There are a lot of characters here, most of which 90% of readers won't know. Swordmaster, Aero, Luna Snow, Crescent and Io, and Wave are all brand new at this point, and throwing them all into one book and not giving them time to establish themselves just makes them forgettable. Having one character that controls air, one that controls water, and one that controls ice just seems a little redundant, and there's not much else to separate them.

The actual plot isn't bad - it gives them a reason to unite, and the subplot of Jimmy Woo trying to force Amadeus Cho into a leadership role is pretty good, but when every page is stuffed full of other characters it gets lost in the shuffle.

On art is Gang-Hyuk Lim, whose slick pencils work well with the setting - his Sindr is excellent, although the huge amount of characters again works against him because he can't give them all the detail that they really deserve.

A good idea on the surface, but not really given the page count to work it out properly. Hopefully the follow-up mini-series is better.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

War Of The Realms: New Agents Of Atlas brings the Atlas team into the War Of The Realms as they take on Sindr! We are introduced to the team which consists of old and new characters! The team dynamic is laid out from the start as they realise that their differences come together in a way that makes them greater! War Of The Realms: New Agents Of Atlas is a roller coaster from the start with characters really being thrown in it! Pak puts the charcters through it! Amadeus Cho and Silk are shown in more leadership rolls! The other host of characters such as Shang-Chi, Jimmy Woo, Io all come across as three-dimensional with their own powers! These powers work brilliantly and contrast excellently with the forces of Sindr!

The are of flies off the page really marrying up briliantly with the script! The art is crisp, vibrant etc which goes brilliantly with the script that never lets up from the start! War Of The Realms: New Agents Of Atlas's is script of charcter defining and team battles that explode off the page! At the same time the book inclusdes a break down of the characters that comes in handy of you not familiar with the characters!

War Of The Realms: New Agents Of Atlas also engages inepic world building! Not only do we fly around the world from Seoul, Philippines but we also get to see more of what the other realms such as Muspelheim, Asgard etc that really put everything on epic an scale! Sindr's invasion is brilliantly handled with everything on an edge where you do not know where things are going to go! The characters on bothsides are really put through it and it will keep you guessing as to what is ging to happen to them! You will be up late to see what happens!

War Of The Realms: New Agents Of Atlas is peic from the start! War Of The Realms: New Agents Of Atlas is filled with world building as we get to see events from all over the Universe, daring do as the Agents of Atles take on Sindr and put a lit on what is going on, team dynamics as the Agents of Atlas get to know each other, epic character develepment as Cho, Silk and the rest have to step up, Universe shattering events as everyone is having to pitch in, adventure as we globe op realms hop and action! Brilliant Crisp High Five! Highly Recommended! Get it if You Can!

[Vail Chester · Rating 3 out of 5]

You KNOW this was written by someone who is knowledgeable about Asian cultures when the heroes are in a bunker, need to kill time by eating a meal, discover it full of nothing but SPAM & rice, and the Hawaiian, Filipina, & Koreans all perk up.

Score a major one for ethnic diversity, there are NO white people featured in this book (evil dudes & dudettes from Norse mythology don't count). Heroes from all over the Asian continent, as well as some from the diaspora, are brought together in this book, some for the first time in print (some heroines were from a mobile game, and I only knew they existed from ANOTHER mobile game, Marvel Snap) as they have to fight invading beings from the fire realm on the Yggdrasil tree.

As is typical from event tie-ins, heck for Marvel & mainstream comics in general, they don't do much characterization here for ALL their characters (heck, Ms. Marvel dips out after the introduction to take care of her precious New Jersey), what with the editors hoping you're already familiar with some characters and the introduced ones getting you interested enough to keep reading more about them in later books. And while the heroes are on the ropes for a good chunk of the book, they prep good, train under Shang-Chi & the Marvel version of Sun Wukong (looking for all the world like a regular Chinese man) for an afternoon tops, then they all one punch the flame princess after some trickery to depower her. *confused Jackie Chan gif goes here*
Hoping to see more of these weird lil characters and I will keep my eye out for this super team.

Finding it pretty darn hilarious that Jimmy Woo is in this, famously played by Randall Park, and he does an identity theft for Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire...Randall Park who impersonated Jim on the Office..."IDENTITY THEFT IS NOT A JOKE JIM!"

[Trike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I want to like this more but it feels even more inconsequential than most comics. I suspect it’s aimed at a much younger audience than usual, too, which is not a bad thing other than it being far too simplistic to take on the story it wants to tell. Plus, introducing a bunch of new characters all at once gives them short shrift; we know as little about them at the end of the tale as we did at the beginning.

These War of the Realms books just underscore yet again how much I dislike these crossover event stories. I really wish Marvel would take a decade off from doing these big dumb crossovers. Letting these Asian characters grow and have adventures on their own before throwing them into universe-ending mega-events is how Avengers and X-Men became best sellers back in the day. Let them breathe a little.

[JC · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like the new characters and I like the effort to make it more global and international. It touches on international and global issues that can only be managed by international collaboration. Moreover, hinting on issues such as fighting climate change and dealing with the climate crisis we are in adds an interesting component making this issue worth reading. Artwork is great. My only problem is the dialogue. The writing is not very smooth and compelling. This issue lives from the story idea and artwork but the dialogue could be improved.

[Dimitris Papastergiou · Rating 1 out of 5]

It got boring way to fast for me to care what happens and after awhile it was a chore to read. I really didn't care about any of the characters and it wasn't interesting enough to keep me excited. Maybe it's on me cuz every single character here sucks and I wouldn't give a damn about, but still, I wouldn't touch it or continue reading even if there was something to continue in the series.

[Craig · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not absolutely terrible, but largely inconsequential...

[gurleen · Rating 3 out of 5]

story was ehhhhhhh and i thought kamala would have a bigger role but shangchi looked fine as hell so it's okay🫶🏽

[Ronald · Rating 3 out of 5]

Meh, 2.5 stars.
I really do not like the totally Amazing Hulk character, the character has just devolved to a child over time it is really frustrating since he turns out to be the center of this entire story.
It is also not a great show of confidence in the story that every issue re-introduces the characters as if you had never seen them before or read any of the previous issues. There are so many characters it is hard to keep track, I don't know what is up with this dumb War of the Realms tie-ins but they don't all have to star 100s of characters that all have to say something.
Also, the bleeping Monkey King had to be tought Kung-Fu. Really do the authors of the comic not know who the Monkey King was?
The story is how a bunch of gods and demi-gods and omega level heroes can't beat a second rate fire giant without good old fashioned team building montages. Oh well.

[Rocky Sunico · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this War of the Realms crossover book, but there's something happily indulgent about a book filled with Asian heroes. Sure it's a little gimmicky and you have a bunch of new characters who haven't really featured in the big comic book crossover events before, but still, they were fun to read about and experience them working together.

How they come together to face off against a deity like Sindr made for great action and some pretty well-thought-out narrative plotting that helped to better establish this new incarnation of the team. It's a little preachy with the constant reminders about the need for teamwork but that's part of its somewhat campy charm. And we could all use more Asian heroes, right?

[amanda marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Seeing a Filipina superhero was something I never thought I’d experience and also something so fulfilling to read! I loved the nods to her culture and seeing her Lolo made me tear up and made me think of my own.

[Honora Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was so so fun. I had been wanting to read any Agents of Atlas title for a while thanks to Wandavision showing more of Jimmy Woo's awesome character and finally picked this up after watching the new Shang-Chi and the Legend of the 10 Rings movie this past Friday. (No spoilers on that front but it was so good and I highly recommend it as one of the best solo marvel movies!) During the little intro about the comic history of Shang-Chi presented at Alamo Drafthouse I saw this run appear multiple time in the presentation. I already knew a great deal about the cast of characters in the book but it was the new characters (and my new found infatuation with Shang-Chi after seeing the movie) I knew it would have to read it. Crescent and Io, Wave, Sword Master, Aero, Luna Snow were just all so cool and good a kicking butt. In the past Agents of Atlas was a team kinda made up of random characters that just kind of worked together but seeing the title "retooled" for lack of a better word, to become a team of just Asian characters was really neat and nothing we've seen from Marvel in a long form, or limited series. I loved this. I loved the characters and I loved that while this is a tie in to "The War of The Realms" it works as a totally detached series, you don't really need any prior knowledge to get into it and enjoy. I can't wait to read Agents of Atlas: Pandemonium next!

[Silas · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this. I had heard that it sets up a new Agents of Atlas team. Having read a fair amount of the old Agents of Atlas, I noted that it didn't really have much in common with that team, and was instead kind of a pan-Asian superteam. I am a bit sad that the old Agents of Atlas are no longer a thing, because they were a weird and interesting mix, but I could get behind a pan-Asian team if it made sense. It doesn't feel like a lot of work went into that here. The story feels like a skeleton, with really arbitrary decisions that people just go with, and barely any dialogue of consequence. The story directly conflicts some other tie-in comics about where certain characters are in the world, which I suppose is just the nature of this sort of event. There were one or two jokes, but they mostly revolved around reductive stereotypes, so that wasn't great. What also bothered me a bit was that this was a racially segregated team, and not based on geographic proximity, since quite a few of the characters are Asian-American, and are not even based on the Pacific coast or anything. Pretty much every element of this book very clearly states that editorial wanted this, and nobody really put in a lot of effort into making it a good book or making a lot more sense than the elevator pitch.

[Sasa · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don't know what the low-star reviews are yapping about. as an asian reader, new agents of atlas is a great introduction to pacific islander, southeast, and east asian characters that already existed from a veteran writer in the comic industry (greg pak) accompanied by veteran artists like haining. it's high action, fast-paced, with great character development and cultural significances in many scenes like eating spam dishes family-style. i'm only upset that i didn't read this in 2019 when people in the industry were fighting tooth and nail to get asian stories by asians published. i wanna say i hope marvel sticks to it but, after discontinuing marvel voices and not making any promises to not use generative AI or pay their industry professionals fairly, disney has proven time and time again they only care about profits so i've resorted to supporting bipoc creatives directly. i really like this series and want it to continue because of how hard pak and his team fought to make it happen.

[Jason Tanner · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a crossover story, it's fine. I actually like the new (to me at least) Asian/Pacific Island heroes. Shang Chi teaching humility to gods and heroes by whooping them is always fun.

As as Agents of Atlas book, though, I think it fails. Jimmy Woo is kind of there, but mostly he's acting as a mentor for Amadeus Cho, who seems to have undergone negative character growth since his Hercules days. None of the other Atlas stalwarts even appear, and the mission of the Atlas Foundation is barely even considered. This is just a book that throws a bunch of heroes together and gives them a trademarked name.

This was a fine throwaway adventure, but not an Agent of Atlas book, which is what I bought it for. So, 3 stars, and I'm being kind.

[Fiona · Rating 2 out of 5]

this has been on my tbr for a while cos i heard it was an ~all asian team up~ and it sounded cute and i was happy to spot it at the library but oh no it was so cheesy and bad hahah

there were some nice team cultural moments (all involving food wow??) but the story itself was lacking,, just a lot of marvel pew pew

also in the extras section at the end i found out so many of these characters were created for the marvel future fight game asdkfjlasdfj. i am this close to playing marvel snap again omg

alsoalso captain marvel randomly appears on two pages she has zero lines but she gets punched lmaoo

[Rick · Rating 3 out of 5]

While was entertaining, there’s a bit too much going on for just four issues. All the new characters are interesting, but their appearances here suffer from the same problem that all the new characters did in the pages of Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions, with no time to develope any kind of characteristics these new characters just come across as cliches. So interesting potential, but poorly developed.

[Joey Nardinelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was very fine. The art felt acceptable without being all that amazing (I feel like the design for and execution of Sindr remains simultaneously inspiring and mundane, maybe just depending on the panel itself). None of the characters stood out save Amadeus, who other than Silk was the only recognizable character. This seems like a cool series for the international scope certainly (loved the spam joke) but otherwise it’s there’s just too many characters packed in here to give them any amount of spotlight.

[Sean · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Greg Pak's earlier Agents Of Atlas books. This was definitely a different iteration. I completely understand why these particular characters come together but it reads very forced. The War Of The Realms story worked here though even though there were far too many characters, especially new ones. I will always love Jimmy Woo. The art by Gang Hyuk Lim was pretty fantastic. Overall, a decent read that was by the numbers but worth the time.

[ISMOTU · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was skeptical about a new Agents of Atlas team without some of my favourite characters but Greg Pak does a great job of infusing the new team with personality. Even in the midst of a gigantic crossover event Pak and Gang Hyuk Lim set up a new status quo while not invalidating or erasing the original team. I'm on board for more.

[RND · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun enough, and means well, but sometimes feels like it's too many characters to get to know in too little time, so only a few of them stand out. Sometimes there's good hero moments, but just as commonly, some corny/dry lines.

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

Collects War of the Realms: New Agents of Atlas issues #1-4

I like the characters that make up this new team, and I think there is a lot of potential for future stories, but as a tie-in to "War of the Realms," I didn't love this one.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

I like how this comic touches on climate change. My favorite part was when they all ate Spam. :D

It's obvious this was a compilation of issues, since the characters kept getting re-introduced. Curious to see where this goes, especially where Wave is concerned.

[Daniel Butcher · Rating 2 out of 5]

While I appreciate the diversity but this version loses all the quirkiness and fun of Parker's Agents of Atlas. I believe it would have worked better with a different name without the baggage of the past team.

[Sarospice · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like many of these characters but Marvel won't let you. Everyone is thrown together to eat spam and fight a fire goddess with the other elements. How did this get greenlit for another two series?

[William Thomas · Rating 1 out of 5]

Just too messy, too sloppy to make the grade. No heart, either, which makes and breaks the team books. Sadder for it being geared toward you get readers and missing all the key elements necessary for us as readers to really care about what happens.

Grade: F

[Maxoel Costa · Rating 2 out of 5]

É interessante a Marvel ter feito um grupo de heróis asiáticos, mas a história não me pegou. Acaba sendo um tie-in longo para resolver um problema que poderia ser desenvolvido em 2, no máximo 3 páginas da série principal.

[Corey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this because Silk is in it, but honestly am now more interested in Luna Snow, White Fox, and Aero! Honestly a bit too much action and not enough character arcs, but I did enjoy the twist ending.

[Mark Dickson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gentle bit of fun with slightly too many characters. I think this would have been a lot better with a more focused approach.

I’m not the intended audience for this though so my opinion only goes so far.