I am terrible at keeping up with this series. Part 2 came out all the way at the end of May, and only now did I think to look into it and get myself a copy for review. Someone remind me to look for Part 3 in September. Though after reading The Promise, Part 2, I can’t say as how I’m too disappointed with missing out. This series – an in-canon continuation of the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon – takes a noticeable step down in both quality and excitement with the second chapter, much to my displeasure.

The Promise, Part 2

Roughly about 90% of this comic is just filler material, and bad filler material at that. Nickelodeon and writer Gene Luen Yang clearly knew where they wanted the story to be at the end of Part 2, but it seems like they ran out of interesting stuff to do following the cliffhanger for Part 1.

Comic rating: 3/5: Alright.

I don’t even know if I can call this an entertaining comic. It’s not funny, the action is boring, it’s painfully predictable, and nothing of note happens to any of the main characters. The only thing Part 2 has going for it is that it looks and feels like an Avatar cartoon. Most of our favorite characters are back, and they talk and act like we remember them. The art is also exactly like the old cartoon. Plus the spirit of Avatar: The Last Airbender is in this comic. It feels like I could be watching a real episode. So I guess that’s a plus, and it should make fans happy. But if you were looking for a real, interesting look at life after the cartoon, Part 2 does not deliver.

Still, the overall story has me interested enough to return for Part 3 in September. As long as someone reminds me to pick it up.

Join me after the jump for a full synopsis and more review.

First, let’s provide a little back story to anyone who isn’t familiar with the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

The story is set in an ancient world modeled after feudal Asia. In this world, there are people born with the ability to manipulate – or “bend” – the four elements: fire, earth, wind and water (Sorry, no ‘heart’). The world has been split into different continents and kingdoms based on the different elements: the Fire Nation, the Earth Kingdom, the Air Nomads and the southern and northern Water Tribes. There are normal people in the world who don’t have any powers, and they are still members of whichever kingdom they were born into.

The cartoon was about the Avatar, the one person in all the world who can bend all four elements. His name was Aang, he was a young boy who was born into the Air Nomads, hence his being an airbender. The basic story was that Aang disappeared for 100 years, during which time the Fire Nation rose up and tried to take over the world, launching the Hundred Years War. But eventually Aang came back, made a few friends and together they defeated the evil Fire Lord Ozai, restoring peace to the world!

The Promise takes place once year later, with Aang and his pals trying to get everything back to normal after 100 years of war. You can read my review here, or I’ll just sum it up.

The problem is that when the Fire Nation invaded the Earth Kingdom 100 years ago, they took over some cities and built some colonies along the coast. So these cities, despite being in Earth Kingdom land, have been part of the Fire Nation for generations. The people identify themselves as Fire Nation, or a combination of both Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom. However, Aang and some others think that the Fire Nation should move out, keeping the countries to their traditional borders.

And so the Harmony Restoration Project was moving along nicely…until the new Fire Lord Zuko (Aang’s friend, and a main character from the cartoon), spent some time in the city Yu Dao, and saw firsthand how ingrained the Fire Nation was in the city. Zuko called off the Project, declaring that the Fire Nation colonies would remain. Aang obviously became upset at this sudden change, so he went and met with Zuko, who agreed to a meeting with the Earth King so that they could all talk it out and settle this dispute.

Part 2 picks up with Aang and his girlfriend Katara, a waterbender, flying to see the Earth King to talk to him about the summit.

They are sooooo in love, you guys

And almost immediately, the filler begins.

A subplot from Part 1 revealed that Toph, another main character, had started a school to teach metalbending. Toph is an earthbender, and during the cartoon, she discovered metalbending, because metal is essentially just minerals from the Earth, right? Being the world’s first metalbender, Toph had decided to teach others. It was a neat subplot, essentially just a “where is she now?” kind of gimmick for the one-year-later aspect of the comic.

However, Part 2 is all about Toph’s metalbending school and the three one-joke students she is teaching. Everything with Aang and the border dispute is shoved into the background so that we can get a boring, predictable and unfunny take on the classic “save the youth center” story.

Seriously, they might as well have a dance competition instead, or a ski race. The story is all about Toph and her students learning to be better metalbenders in time to save their school from the greedy property owner. I kid you not.

And it sucks.

You also better believe that on the night before the big competition, the students overhear a candid moment with Toph where her words then inspire them to win the day. It’s just so predictable. And none of it tells us anything new about Toph or any of the other characters involved. It doesn’t add to the Avatar world. And it focuses on three brand new, one-dimensional characters who were never part of the cartoon. What possible reason is there to care more about them than about the actual main characters, like Aang?

Still, let’s get to the synopsis. I’ll try and be quick. The comic starts with Toph and Sokka (who doesn’t have any bending powers), leaving Aang and Katara to return to Toph’s school. Meanwhile, Aang and Katara continue on to meet the Earth King.

At the school, we’re reintroduced to Toph’s students and their single personality traits. Ho Tun, the fat one, is always worried about his doom. Penga, the girl, is obsessed with either shoes or Sokka. And The Dark One hates everything and everyone.

Every single line of dialogue each one has references those specific character ‘traits’

They’ve been kicked out of their school by Firebending Master Kunyo, who claims that the building used to belong to him, but he and his students moved out as part of the Harmony Restoration Project. Which is weird, because this implies that Toph simply found an empty building and decided to just claim it for her metalbending school? Didn’t she know that she didn’t own the property?

Well anyway, now that Zuko has cancelled the Project, Kunyo and his students have moved back in…during the whole day or so that Toph was away from the school in Part 1.  Again, it doesn’t really line up. Toph has clearly been at the school for some time, so Kunyo had to have moved out as part of the Project awhile ago. But where did he go, if not back to the Fire Nation? That was the whole point of the Project, to send people back to the Fire Nation. With the Project cancelled, did he have time to move back to the Earth Kingdom?

Anyway, whatever, they all quickly decide that the firebending students and the metalbending students will compete for ownership of the school. Kunyo wants it to be to the death, but Sokka has a different, stupider idea.

Because ‘to the death’ would just be too exciting

Again, proper ownership paperwork should decide who legally owns the damn building. If Toph and her students are squatting, they have no right to the school. But whatever. They have three days to learn how to metalbend, because the students don’t yet actually know how to bend metal. Sadly, we don’t get an awesome training montage either. Their entire training process plays out over the course of this comic.

Eventually we cut to Aang and Katara arriving in Ba Sing Se to meet with the Earth King…except that they don’t actually meet with the Earth King, not yet anyways. Instead, we get an extended storyline where they meet the local chapter of the Official Avatar Aang Fan Club, which is made up of a bunch of cute, young girls. They take Aang back to their clubhouse, where he shows them cool airbending stuff. Meanwhile, Katara is super jealous of all the female attention that Aang is getting.

Airbender dance party!

And that’s the extent of this subplot. It goes on and on for several pages, and is the very definition of filler. Though there is a slight hint that the fan club is going to show up in Part 3, for whatever that’s worth.

There’s another subplot in the comic where Zuko meets with his father Ozai in prison to get advice about being the Fire Lord, since heavy is the crown. Just like in Part 1, I find this subplot to be ridiculous. Zuko’s entire character arc in the Avatar: The Last Airbender cartoon was about realizing how wrong and evil his father was, and how he had to get out of the old man’s influence. Zuko did this with the help of his Uncle Iroh, who was awesome. However, instead of going to Iroh for advice in this comic, Zuko starts listening to his evil father, who does nothing but continue to put Zuko down and fill his head with more evil.

Psychotic, deposed former warlords give the best advice

Seriously though, why not have Iroh? Everybody loved Iroh! Is it because his highly respected voice actor died, and you don’t want to show the character out of respect? That’s ridiculous! It’s a comic book, you don’t have to get a replacement voice actor. And how is it respectful to negate everything the character accomplished in the series by having Zuko immediately go back to his father for advice? Obviously Zuko is seeking advice from his father because the writers needed to start a war between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom. But to sacrifice both Uncle Iroh and Zuko’s impressive character growth to make this happen is a travesty.

The only thing that really comes from this subplot is that Zuko’s girlfriend, Mai, confronts him about meeting with his father. And even though Zuko seems to be rejecting his father’s teachings, Mai is still pissed that he would meet with the old bastard, and would do so in secret. She leaves him. Also, Suki, the Kyoshi Warrior who is Zuko’s bodyguard, expresses that she’s really worried about him. I don’t know if that will lead to anything.

There’s also one very brief scene where the firebending assassin Kori meets with her boyfriend Sneers in Yu Dao. Kori, if you recall, is the one who convinced Zuko to break off the Project, since she is a shining example of the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom living and working together in harmony in Yu Dao. Kory has a Fire Nation Father and an Earth Kingdom mother, and they all get along great, so why can’t everyone else coexist? This scene gets only two pages, where Kori finds out that Sneers is part of the anti-Fire Nation protests, so she dumps him.

One does not choose Smellerbee over a hot, firebending assassin girlfriend

And those are the subplots.

As for the main plot, we really just get a lot of extended training sequences where Toph and Sokka try different methods to teach their students how to metal bend. Most of them are just comedic, like when Sokka builds a giant pig monster robot to try and push them into reacting to a threat.

The Winged Boar Spirit, the ancient harbinger of doom and eater of fine footwear

But that doesn’t work. They all freeze up in the face of their greatest fears. There are a few more training sequences, but I’m not going to bother detailing them here. It’s all very dull, and not even Sokka is funny. It all comes down to the night before the showdown, where Toph and Sokka have a private chat, where she tells him that she shouldn’t have expected her students to be something they’re not. She’s going to just forfeit. Of course, her students secretly heard her, and they are so touched that she expected them to be something more than just themselves that they can now metalbend. So they win the competition and the metalbending school remains. Hooray!

Anyway, the entirety of this issue really comes down to one single scene, when Aang and Katara finally meet with the Earth King to discuss the summit with Zuko. The Earth King, who was a huge dingus in the cartoon show, thinks on their proposal a moment and decides that he’s no longer going to be a pushover.

The only panel in the entire 76-page comic that moves the plot forward

And the issue ends with both the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation armies heading to Yu Dao for war.

That, my friends, is the entire point of Part 2. But because they couldn’t make a comic of just the Earth King deciding to go to war, they had to come up with all of this filler about the metalbending school and the Official Avatar Aang Fan Club. And the series suffers greatly for it. Part 1 was a lot of fun, bringing back our favorite characters and sending them off on a new adventure. And no doubt Part 3 will be about this great war/showdown. But clearly nobody had a very good idea on how to get from Part 1 to Part 3. Hence the boring, predictable and utterly pointless filler.

Which is really just a shame, because this comic had a lot of potential to tell a really cool, in-canon story about Aang and his gang. Let’s hope Part 3 is better.