Avatar: The Last Airbender- The Promise Part One REVIEW

Avatar: The Last Airbender, oh how I LOVE this animated series. Avatar was definitely the type of cartoon I enjoyed watching: it had a solid plot, memorable characters, action, and a sweet romance. I’m a big fan of cartoons, animes and comic books made up of these components, but Avatar was different. Avatar touched on many things you often didn’t find in “children” television shows: great loss, great responsibility, faith and religion, belief systems, possible psychological thoughts of grandeur (Azula), social class and the most talked about one: skin tone and how it didn’t define a character’s importance.

Great news! This week, Dark Horse comics premieres a new Avatar graphic novel. Avatar: The Last Airbender – The Promise Part 1 picks up where the final installment of the Avatar series leaves off. Now that the Fire Nation Leader has been taken down, the Avatar world can go back to peace.

At least that is what Aang, along with his group of friends, believe. In this first novel, Aang finds him self making a promise that he would rather not keep. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the writer of this novel, Gene Luen Yang.

Yang is best known for his award winning graphic novel “American Born Chinese.” With such a talented writer and such awesomely drawn and colored panels, it would be hard to believe that the story could possibly be bad. As an adamant Avatar fan, though, I did find this first novel to move way too fast. Time jumps a year nine pages into the story.

However, since most of us are dying for more storyline, it might not be that big of a deal. If you can get past the fast paced storyline and a few cringing moments (Spoiler Alert) like when Aang and Katara call each other cute nick names, then you’ll like The Promise Part One. As for me, I need the story to be just a little on the level with its previous kin in order to keep me wanting more. We’ll just have to wait to find out.