Comic Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise

Hey all, Dani here.

So I totally started devouring these comics after I finished watching the entire series, and they are so entertaining. Now, I will say that you can get all three parts of the story in one volume in hardcover, BUT, I needed them to match the copy of The Lost Adventures I had and that one was only released in paperback. For that reason (and the fact that each volume is only around 70 pages long, I’m just going to review them together as one story.

Summary

The war is over…but the adventure has just begun!

Picking up exactly where Avatar: The Last Airbender left off. The Promise takes Aang to a Fire Nation colony in the heart of the Earth Nation, where tensions between neighbors threaten to shatter the world’s newfound peace–putting the Avatar on a collision course with one of his closest friends, Fire Lord Zuko!

The Avatar’s greatest adventure continues!

Aang and Katara work tirelessly to prevent a dispute between Fire Lord Zuko and Earth King Kuei that could plunge the world back into war! Meanwhile, Sokka helps Toph prepare her hapless first class of metalbending students to defend their school against a rival class of firebenders!

The final chapter!

The Harmony Restoration Movement has failed, and the world is plunged back into war! In the midst of the battle, can Avatar Aang and Fire Lord Zuko mend the rift between them, or will Aang be forced to take actions that can’t be undone?

My Thoughts

Rating: 5 stars

I was so pleased to find that this comic literally starts right where the show ends. Because as anyone who has read a lot of books or watched a lot of shows or movies can tell you, just because the big battle has been won, does not mean that peace reigns supreme and everyone is happy. No, obviously it will take a bit of time for the new society and hopeful peace to form and spread.

That is where the comic truly picks up, and it is interesting to see. Honestly after adding a little bit to the concluding scenes of the show, the comic then jumps ahead about a year, which is fine because then we get to see how Team Avatar is handling the transition with the Harmony Restoration Movement. One colony is still holding out in the Earth Kingdom, one of the first Fire Nation colonies that settled at the beginning of the Hundred Year War. For those citizens this colony is their home; they have been living there for generations.

This makes things problematic between Earth King Kuei and Fire Lord Zuko. Kuei is trying to stand up for his people and get the Fire Nation out, but Fire Lord Zuko is trying to stand up for his people who don’t want to leave what has become their home. And Aang is stuck in the middle trying to find a peaceful resolution to the matter. I think the resolution could have come a lot sooner if Kuei, Zuko, and Aang would have just met with the people of the colony and listened to what they wanted, but that wouldn’t have added much conflict to the story.

The one thing that kind of bothers me with these is just how frequently Aang and Katara call each other “sweetie.” Seriously, they do it constantly. And I get it; they’re in a relationship but that doesn’t mean that we need to be pounded over the head with the lovey-dovey pet names for each other. It’s enough to have frames of them holding hands or supporting one another, and okay, the occasional term of endearment.

But I did enjoy this story, and I think it left off at a very interesting place, where I was super excited to jump into the next story arc. Because the next set of stories–The Search–follows Zuko’s search for his mother.

Where to Buy

You can pick these up from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-million, Book Depository, Comixology, or your local indie bookstore.