Avengers: Art of the Avengers [Tapa dura]

Just like other Marvel movie art books before, this is big and thick. In fact, at 272 pages, it's thicker than The Art of Captain America: The First Avenger and The Art of Thor which are both at 240 pages each.

The cover looks great and it's actually a slipcase.

Almost all aspects of the movie are covered. There are the Avengers themselves with their new costume designs, Loki, The Chitauri, flying leviathans and other characters like soldiers, Nick Fury, etc. The art is great and these are all printed big. The characters are mainly drawn by Andy Park and Charlie Wen. Most look very much like the actors. The Iron Man design is, as usual, amazing. There are also a few pages of Hulk art which are new obviously since there are no Hulk movie art books.

Many locations, props and vehicles are featured as concept art. You'll see Bruce Banner's hideout home, Tony Stark's tower a breakdown of the technology that suit him into Iron Man or un-suit him, the warehouse where Black Widow was held, the Helicarrier and its interiors and even the tunnel Loki escaped in. The props are all sort of gadgetry shown in the movie, stuff like Hawkeye's bow, other weaponry, a sequence of Tony Stark suiting up into Man VII in mid-air. There is a lot to see because some pictures are filled with details. The visuals are spectacular.

I think the layout is slightly chaotic because there's a lot going on with so many characters and big set pieces. The content is presented chronologically as they appear in the movie.

The writeup is extensive and there's a lot to read about various part of the movies. This will probably be very interesting to those who want to find out how The Avengers differs in areas as compared to the comics.

This is an awesome art book and informative movie companion. Highly recommended.

(There are more pictures of the book on my blog. Just visit my Amazon profile for the link.)

Having collected all of the previous Marvel Movie art books this one most definitely keeps up the great consistency. However, I do think the "art of Thor Book" is still the best. This book does a great job showing off the amazing character renderings and explanations for the designs but also weaves in some of the marketing art and design for this film and previous movies as well (Film posters, promo art, merchandise design and so on). Not only does this book serve as an art and design book but it also catches the reader up to speed on the Marvel Cinematic Universe Movie franchise even including a fold-out timeline so you even know the order of when certain events occurred in relation to all the films.

The only thing about this book is that it seems to skimp a bit on art for the alien race: The Chitauri. Some of the best work in the book are the designs for these creatures...I wish they would have given us a bit more. I love the renderings for the character "The Other"....very creepy! I also wished they would have had some sketches of "The Mystery Villain" from the mid credits scene (I don't want to spoil the surprise for anybody who hasn't seen the film).

If you have any of the previous art of Marvel books and enjoy them, there is no reason you shouldn't love this book. Like the others, this book comes in a high quality sturdy slipcase. The design and quality of the book is really nice, although I wish the pages were a little thicker. All this stuff is pretty nit picky. If you love the design and art of movies or Marvel movies you will love this book!

completely beautiful book. i was a little disappointed at how little we hear from joss whedon directly, and i might have preferred more text in more places - but i guess i can wait for the blu-ray special features to dig more directly into the production process. that said, the book is gorgeous all around. i saw a few people complaining about pixelated images in the "art of thor" book; to my eye, i only found one pixelated image in this book, and only a few spots where the book designers made the unfortunate decision to allow a key image to span the spine of the book in a way that chopped the image up instead of allowing detailed appreciation. all in all as a dork who saw the movie 3 times in 7 days, the book was still a total treat and the other "art of..." books are tempting me.