Avatar: The Last Airbender: Team Avatar Treasury by Faith Erin Hicks and Peter Wartman

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Team Avatar Treasury: Katara and the Pirate's Silver / Toph Beifong's Metalbending Academy / Suki, Alone

Collection published: 2024
Contents originally published: 2020-21
Read: January 2026

Script: Faith Erin Hicks
Art: Peter Wartman
Colors: Adele Matera
Lettering: Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt

Since Imbalance, Dark Horse's Avatar: The Last Airbender comics have moved away from continuing the ongoing story of the tv show (as begun by Gene Yang and Gurihiru) into shorter standalones, some set after the show, some not. I don't know why this is. The first three of these are collected in Team Avatar Treasury, which contains two stories set during the show and one afterwards.

The two set during the show are "Katara and the Pirate's Silver" and "Suki, Alone." The former is about Katara getting separated from the other members of Team Avatar and falling in with a band of pirates. The story is fine, but fairly inconsequential; I feel like a good during-the-show tie-in manages to reveal a new aspect of a familiar character, but this didn't really succeed in that. Some sloppy work here, as at one point, the dialogue contradicts the art. My favorite part was actually Aang arguing with an Air Nomad genocide conspiracy theorist.

The other during-the-show story has more of a clear purpose, filling in Suki's time in the Boiling Rock prison between when she gets captured by Azula and when Sokka and Zuko arrive to rescue her. This I thought was pretty good; I always like Suki a lot, and the flashbacks especially give her some nice material. It does manage to reveal a new aspect of a familiar character.

Lastly, we get a post-show story about Toph, building on what previous stories have shown us about her founding a metalbending academy. This was decent: Toph has always defined herself as a bit of a rogue, so how does she cope with being "the man"? This one has some good jokes and nice cameos; I particularly enjoyed the return appearances by Toph's three students from Yang and Gurihiru's run.

I did think both the Suki and Toph stories were brought down a bit by being heavy-handed thematically; the scripts seem to re-restate the purpose of everything for people who aren't paying attention. More subtlety would have been better.

We've been buying our Avatar comics in the oversized "library editions." I like getting the art at this scale, but since Gene Yang left the title, the marginal creator commentary hasn't been very insightful, and at its worse, re-re-restates points made clear in the story. And at least one marginal note is clearly in the wrong spot!

Review: Avatar: The Last Airbender: Imbalance by Faith Erin Hicks and Peter Wartman

Collection published: 2020
Contents originally published: 2018-19
Read: September 2020

Avatar: The Last Airbender: Imbalance

Script: Faith Erin Hicks
Art: Peter Wartman
Colors: Ryan Hill, Adele Matera
Lettering: Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt

With this volume, the Avatar continuation comics switch from being by Gene Luen Yang and Gurihiru to Faith Erin Hicks and Peter Wartman. It's an effective transition. I liked Yang's writing overall, but though he captured the characters well in dialogue, I didn't always feels that he did a great job with their actions, and a couple of his installments felt sort of aimless. Hicks knocks it out of the park right out of the gate (now there's a mixed metaphor for you). All of Team Avatar have a strong sense of voice, but also their personalities and predilections really shine through. Aang struggles with how to balance disparate communities when there's no villain as obvious as a Fire Lord; Toph discovers a talent for investigating; Sokka provides humor and humanity. Only Katara feels somewhat superfluous, not really fulfilling a narrative role other than Aang's girlfriend. The story does a good job setting up much of what we will see in The Legend of Korra, and Hicks explores timely themes of "reverse discrimination." Plus the jokes are good, which is of course important for Avatar.

Wartman's art apes the style of the cartoon less than Gurihiru's; his linework looks more like comics linework, with variable thickness, than the smooth linework of Gurihiru. Your mileage may very (I am sure someone wants this to closely ape the tv show), but I liked it more as a result. He has a strong sense of character. Like the Yang/Gurihiru "Library Editions," this one includes marginal notes from the creators. Yang was always a smart commentator, but I found Gurihiru's insights a bit bland; thankfully, Wartman has much more to say about his own creative process than Gurihiru did.

Another worthwhile installment of this series, which is why it surprises me to learn that Dark Horse is abandoning the post-tv trilogy format in favor of a series of standalones set during the tv run for future Hicks/Wartman volumes. Not sure what what's about, but I will be there regardless.