Hey, what’s up?

I’m back with another comic review! If you’ve read my first review, it was about Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise arc. Instead of writing about every single arc one by one, I decided to just review the whole Avatar: The Last Airbender comic series that I’ve read so far. I feel like I’d end up giving too many spoilers if I wrote separate posts for each arc, so combining everything into one post makes more sense.

Just a heads up — these comics are the sequels to the TV series (each arc has three parts, or you can buy the combined Omnibus edition). The arcs are:

• The Promise
• The Search
• The Rift
• Smoke and Shadow
• North and South
• Imbalance

The first arc is The Promise. I’ll skip this one since I already wrote a full post just about it. In that review I mentioned how much I love the comics because the art is amazing and you can really see that the characters have grown. This applies up until arc number five, because after that the illustrator changed. Gurihiru was the main illustrator at first (including the covers), and then Peter Wartman took over for the later arc. Both have their own unique style, but personally I still prefer Gurihiru!

The second arc is The Search. In this arc, Zuko and Team Avatar work together to find his lost mum. Yes, she’s alive! To cut the story short, she was banished from the Fire Nation by the Fire Lord and changed her face with the help of a spirit creature. They eventually track her down in her home village, help her regain her memories, and restore her face. Honestly, this one is my favourite because Zuko really deserves a happy ending.

The third arc is The Rift. Here, Aang is celebrating Yangchen’s Festival with the Air Acolytes. They soon discover that people have built factories and settlements on sacred Air Nomad land. The spirits, as you’d expect, are not happy and almost destroy everything, but Aang manages to stop it. Also, Toph may or may not be falling in love with a non-bender Fire Nation engineer…

The fourth arc is Smoke and Shadow. This one is mainly set in the Fire Nation. Princess Azula returns (of course) and starts causing chaos again. She stages fake spirit kidnappings and takes children to spark fear and unrest, hoping to overthrow Fire Lord Zuko. With the help of Aang, Mai, and the Kyoshi Warriors, her plan is uncovered and the children are returned safely.

The fifth arc is North and South. In this story, Sokka and Katara return to the South Pole and discover that their small village has been transformed into a massive city with help from the Northern Tribe. Not everyone is happy about this development. Conflict breaks out between the two tribes, but with the Avatar’s help, they manage to reach an understanding. This is the last arc illustrated by Gurihiru, and I personally think the artwork here is especially beautiful.

The sixth arc is Imbalance. In Yu Dao, tensions rise as machines begin replacing benders, and non-benders feel threatened by benders who still hold power. A culprit is also stirring up fear and poisoning minds. Team Avatar steps in to help resolve things. By the end, they decide to stay in Yu Dao for a while to see how the city develops with advancing technology.

There’s also The Lost Adventures, which is a collection of side stories that weren’t included in the TV series. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but from what I’ve seen, the artwork isn’t quite on the same level as Gurihiru or Peter Wartman — so I don’t currently plan to review that one.

Alrighty, thanks for reading my blog! I hope you enjoyed it. These are just my personal thoughts. I went to a comic store recently and couldn’t seem to find any good comics to read, so comic reviews may go into hibernation mode until I discover a new favourite. I might go back to novels for a while. If you have any graphic novel recommendations (not manga please!), drop them in the comments.

See you in the next post!