Broken Promise 3: Catastrophes in Threes
Broken Promise 3: Catastrophes in Threes
When Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise Part 1 came out, the Avatar franchise was ascendant. The fanbase was growing and glowing with the anticipated release of the sequel cartoon The Legend of Korra, Dark Horse had already published both a popular Art Book for the original cartoon and the non-canon supplementary comics from the old Nickelodeon Magazine, and the story of ATLA was set to be continued in The Promise itself thanks to the writing talents of the critically acclaimed Gene Yang (American Born Chinese, Level Up) under the supervision of Avatar creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.
We've come a long way since then. The fanbase has split over LoK, and the The Promise trilogy has faired no better with the vocal online communities. Some like it, some don't, and the members of the fandom that once warred over shipping have now turned their fervor to the follow-up material. I panned the first two parts of The Promise, but with the third installment now available in all literary retailers, has the series been redeemed and my criticisms addressed by the story's long-awaited grand finale?
Psh, not even close. I will now proceed to explain why by ridiculing the story beat by beat. I recommend getting some popcorn. Spoilers are to follow, naturally.
Previously on Avatar's Pale Pretender...
In Part 1 we were introduced to the intriguing conundrum of the Fire Nation Colonies, bits of the Earth Kingdom that were seized during the war into which the Fire Nation tried to sow its culture with all the grace and sensitivity of the Disney Corp building a theme park in China. The obvious solution, now that the Fire Nation has been defeated by the efforts of Avatar Aang and his groupies, is to tell the Mouse to get out of the House, but the problem is that mice breed like crazy, and after a hundred years it's going to be really hard to tell which mice are "natives" and which ones were merely born there and had Evil Invader grandparents. (Hm, that metaphor broke down in a hurry.)
Unfortunately, this situation proved to be the only smart part of the entire story, as Fire Lord Zuko's response to the situation was to refuse to give up the colonies, attack his old friends without explaining why, and make excuses for the colonists in red comprising the richest 1% of the population. Then, when the other characters noted that this might not be entirely fair, he went to his abusive, sociopathic, and sadistic father for advice. Aang, as befits an Airbending Master whose spirit is like the wind passing around an obstacle, and who spent much of his early life traveling all over the world making friends in all the nations, took the opposite track from Zuko and decided that the Four Three Nations must absolutely remain separate or else the world would end, and anyone who couldn't get behind that was misguided Evil and deserved respectful debate instant death. Predictably, Zuko kind of tripped over this policy, and Part 1 ended with Katara pushing herself between the two murderously (literally, they both attempted deadly attacks against each other) feuding boys and telling them to go back to their respective corners.
In Part 2, Sokka and Toph trained some Metalbenders. This had nothing to do with anything.
Also, Aang met some fangirls of the old Air Nomad culture who liked to pretend to be members of his extinct nation by living together in a dubiously funded house and holding dance parties using ancient cultural artifacts. Aang thought this was just the buzzard-bee's knees, even though Katara wasn't impressed by the girls' explicitly stated goal of seducing Aang and making him their club mascot. However, that didn't stop the Avatar from meeting with the Earth King to explain the colony situation in a way that convinced Kuei to send his army of Earthbenders and super-tanks to peacefully relocate anyone who wears red. And by peacefully, I mean they were going to use all force necessary to throw people out of their homes, perhaps even breaking up families. What they were planning to do with people of Fire Nation descent who wore green, or what precautions they were taking against any genocides accidentally happening, were questions left not only unanswered, but completely unasked.
Meanwhile, Zuko sat around his palace asking his warmonger of a father for advice on preserving lives, which for reasons completely beyond me didn't lead to Zuko getting any satisfactory answers, and then his girlfriend broke up with him for cheating on her with his own father or something. That got Zuko so mad he decided to take his colony-reconquering army back to the colonies to reconquer them. Again. (Is it just me, or was Mai maybe working for Ozai? You have to admit, it's suspicious when you look at things summarized this way.)
With a setup like that, I don't know what could possibly go wrong with the grand finale.
The Road to War, Supplied by MapQuest
The third and final part of the trilogy opens with a shared dream sequence between Aang and Zuko. Both are looking down at a battle between soldiers of the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom, and you can tell stuff is getting serious because it's raining and the sky is all dark and scary. The only cliché missing is the phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night!" Tactically, I wouldn't think that Firebenders would be so eager to stand in an open field and fight in parade lines while being weakened by a torrential downpour, but hey, it's a dream, so who cares about that kind of thing? Not helping matters are the spirits of Ozai and Roku, who are both so into the idea of killing everyone who looks at them wrong that they could swap dialogue without anyone noticing. Well, no, not really, but the implications are that Roku and Ozai share the same intolerant parallels. I remember when Fire Lord Sozin used to be the old dead guy most often equated with Lord "Burn the Whole World" Ozai, but apparently this story doesn't have time for any peacenik sissies, so Roku has to shape up and turn into Sergeant Slaughter if he wants to get any page time.
Zuko starts begging Aang to kill him, because dying is way easier than comedy making a decision between "War" and "Not War," and with Roku shouting in his ear Aang figures that the best solution is to give his friend the mercy kill he's asking for, even though Zuko explicitly said in the first book that he only wanted Aang to promise to kill him if he "goes bad" and turns into a man just like Ozai. I'd argue that Zuko's angst and waffling on the whole matter of starting a new war means he isn't yet the type of person to light his son's face on fire and then laugh about it, and that Aang actually taking his friend's opinion into account and talking respectfully would go a long way towards diffusing the situation, but hey, dream logic! And it’s not like the original ATLA cartoon explicitly stated that Zuko’s defining characteristic is that he never gives up, even in seemingly hopeless situations.
So Aang “mercy kills” Zuko, and both do that thing where they sit up in bed and swear off pepperoni pizza before naptime.
The next day, Aang arrives in Yu Dao, the colony that started all this trouble, for the stated purpose of warning them to evacuate before the Earth King and his army arrive to ethnically cleanse the entire population and sell the land to the Disney Corporation. As I stated in my review for Part 2, Aang could use the Avatar State to just stick a mountain between that Earth Army and Yu Dao, but for that to happen Aang would have to be portrayed as having control of the Avatar State like in the cartoon's finale, and we can't have that because the casual fans might not buy this comic if it doesn't remind them strongly of the cartoon's second season (the bestest one, according to online polls).
Okay, so Aang figures it's better to evacuate people. Whatever. Does he go to the city's governor, and see about making it happen in an efficient and orderly manner? No. Does he go to Zuko, and get him to use his Fire Army to evacuate everyone with professional precision? No. Heck, he could even ride through the city shouting, "The British are coming, the British are coming!" But no, instead he flies Appa over the city, screaming that everyone has to abandon their homes right now, without one word of explanation.
And I'm supposed to be surprised when someone throws an axe at his head?
What follows is a painful sequence of panels where Aang and Katara dodge all manner of weapons and Bending attacks while they deliver long lines of trite dialogue. Do me a favor and say the word "sweetie" out loud. How long did it take you? A second? One and a half? Now, have one of your friends throw an axe past your head. It's okay, I'll wait; this is a worthwhile experiment. How long did the axe take to fly past you? Less than a second, I'm willing to bet. Yet, despite the situation, Aang still has time to deliver lines like "Whoa! Watch out, sweetie! We're being attacked by Firebenders!" Here's a free hint to all you aspiring comic scripters: if you have to shove painfully long lines of dialogue into what is supposed to be a fast-paced action scene so that the reader can tell what's going on, you should fire your artist. Despite my dislike for Gurihiru's style, the art very clearly and with a good sense of motion shows that Aang is dodging a burst of flame in that panel, so the dialogue is both unrealistic and completely redundant.
As long as I'm giving free hints, here's one for Gene Yang: if you don't want people complaining about "sweetie" as a term of endearment, don't shoehorn it into the most inappropriate places possible.
One crash later, Aang discovers that the townspeople are attacking him because they think he's trying to ship them back to the Fire Nation, as led by Sneers the Freedom Fighter and Kori the mixed Fire/Earth offspring. (Who are dating, as the story goes out of its way to highlight several times. Gee, the author's favorite side character and the girl with the perpetually bare midriff are dating. Color me surprised. The color of "surprised" is, incidentally, a very pretty purple.) Talking is had, people are brought up to speed, but opinions are stubbornly adhered to. Then the Yu Dao chapter of the Air Nomad-wannabes show up.
Despite Aang nearly marrying the entire outpost of Air Nomad fangirls in Ba Sing Se in the last volume, he really has a problem with this group because they actually live and look more like real Air Nomads, right down to the tattoos. Apparently, buying authentic antique Air Nomad flutes and using them to decorate your clubhouse is okay, but Koh forbid you tattoo an arrow on your forehead, that's treating culture dress and symbols like cosplay and just as bad as genocide. Or maybe Aang is just peeved that this group of fangirls isn’t shamelessly flirting with him? And here I thought Sokka was the one with a history of sexism.
The crazy part is that I'm actually a bit on Aang's side, here. For these people to appropriate his culture without truly understanding the significance of the arrow tattoos is potentially offensive, but Aang's subsequent conversation with Katara, where he's adamant that the nations must remain separate and he'd rather live and die alone in a cave than let the Air Nomad culture live on in a new way, turns the presentation into a condemnation of his reaction to the fangirls. And considering that, at the end of the whole story, he's explicitly stated to be wrong in his opinions and Zuko completely right...
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Before moving on to the next segment, I have to note Zuko's quick scene in the midst of all this. He's talking to a picture of his Uncle Iroh the same way he used to talk to his old friend the Badgertoad of the Western Air Temple, and I can't decide if this is a step up for a step down, because at least the toad was alive and made cute little ribbity noises. Zuko admits that he has no idea what to do about the colonies and the stress of being Fire Lord is driving him crazy, but he decides that he'd rather start a whole new world war that might wipe out another nation than bug his Uncle in his retirement. I guess this is supposed to address all those fan complaints that Zuko should have just written a letter to Iroh two volumes ago, but it doesn't explain why he didn't ask Piandao instead. Or Jeong-Jeong. Or anyone else in the White Lotus, given that they’re all worldly people with leadership experience. Or some of his civilian and military advisors in the Fire Nation. Or some of the Governors in the colonies. Or the girl Aang danced with when he infiltrated that high school on one of the Fire Nation islands. Or, heck, even Chief Arnook of the women-hating Northern Water Tribe. Or any of the half-way intelligent and non-evil people in the world!
Instead, he went to his father. The guy who wanted to burn the entire Earth Kingdom down because pacifying it was too much work. The guy who lit Zuko's face on fire and then said it was for Zuko's own good. The guy who was going to murder Zuko just for a chance of being named crown prince, before the "pressures" of being Fire Lord had any effect on him.
It would be something of an understatement to say that I find this explanation to be less than satisfying. In fact, if you want the full impact of my feelings on the matter, go have Mr T punch you in the face. Eight times.
Who's Side Are You On, Anyway?
Back near Yu Dao, Sokka and Toph are still wasting time with the latter's Metalbending school. We get a quick re-introduction to Toph's one-note flat-character Metalbending students (fat panicky guy, emo poet guy, and boy-crazy shoe-loving girl), because it's not like we have a complicated moral and political situation to deal with and a limited number of pages in which to do it. Suki shows up, having last been seen acting as Zuko's bodyguard and only friend, with the explanation that the Fire Nation guy who Toph stole the school building from sent a letter of complaint directly to the Fire Lord over what is essentially a minor property rights issue. The complaint was to Zuko, who was on his way to Yu Dao with an army at the time and therefore wouldn't be at his palace to receive the Messenger Hawk. And Suki abandoned Zuko, commandeered an Airship from the military that's preparing to reconquer their colonies, and flew ahead of the main group to visit with Sokka and recruit him to help stop Zuko.
If you can find any two elements of that summary that fit with each other, I'm buying you lunch.
Back at Yu Dao, Smellerbee and her Earth Kingdom terrorists attack the city in an effort to force the colonists to go back to the Fire Nation, and this is treated like a real threat. Does Yu Dao have no militia or law enforcement, beyond Kori and her Boffo Bending Cousins? Does Smellerbee intend to kill anyone who won't let her push them into a boat? And where did Smellerbee get a green tank with which to break through Yu Dao's walls? Last I heard, only the Northern Air Temple and Ba Sing Se had mechanized war vehicles, and Smellerbee's little terrorist group is portrayed as a random gaggle of Earth Kingdom citizens who want the colonists gone and can't wait for the authorities to do it properly. Where did they scrounge up a state-of-the-art tank? And why is this considered a more important plot point than exploring where Smellerbee's deep-seated hate of anything Fire-related come from, since Aang is trying to get everyone to talk peacefully anyway?
Oh, right. Kiddies like action, don't they? Well, let's heap it on, then. The cartoon's toys sold lousy, we can't risk that happening to the comics.
Hm, maybe the tank is an homage to M Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, where a random tank of the same vague shape as Smellerbee's made a forgettable one-scene appearance.
Back with the peanut gallery, Sokka, Suki, and Toph decide that the best way to stop Zuko- who Suki describes as lonely and confused- is to steal a tank and attack him and his army. Well, so much for Suki's future as Zuko's only friend. Incidentally, read the page where Suki talks about Zuko without looking at the bottom row of panels. If you cut out the part where Sokka reveals that he just got an idea, it looks like he's freaking out hearing Suki talk so tenderly about the guy to whom she was just playing bodyguard.
Back at Yu Dao, more pages are wasted on the fight between the colonists and the "Freedom Fighters" when the Earth Kingdom army arrives! When last we saw the Earth King, he was looking to prove to the world that he couldn't be messed with, couldn't be tricked or intimidated, and that anyone who tried was going to find out just how strong and unreasonable he could be! Here, we see him cowering above his army in a War Balloon, even before the fighting has started. Katara even calls up to him, but he goes full coward and refuses to come down and even talk to anyone.
Where did this come from? Did he see his own army and find it intimidating? Did he take the time to think about what a new war would do his people, who have already suffered through so much? Did he simply realize that he's a wimp, and going along with his army to a big fight might not be conducive to his long-term health? I don't know, because the comic never explores any of it. It's a "book-end plot," a beginning and an end without a middle, slapped together solely to create an artificial conflict for the story that can then be resolved quickly and shallowly. No mention is made of the time the Earth King spent walking his Kingdom disguised as a peasant, which the cartoon explicitly showed, and which you'd think might be used as some kind of explanation for his actions either here or in the previous volume. Did he spend that whole time living out of a luxury hotel with his bear?
It seems the cartoon is only relevant to the story when it offers something we can copy. Let's just say this is a satirical moment aimed at American Republicans and move on. It might even be true.
Then Zuko's army arrives, and positions itself squarely across from the Earth Kingdom army. (Even though, since the Fire Army's mission is to protect Yu Dao, you'd think they'd try to take a defensive position around or within the city.) We waste a page in which Toph demonstrates that she only needs to stomp the ground in order to use her Metalbending to make every bolt, screw, and rivet pop out of a Fire Nation tank, and that sound you hear is Sifu Kisu himself crying for the loss of Bending as an expression of martial arts and physical direction. Say hello to the new Bending, which operates more like something out of an X-Men comic, and start dusting off the old "Chuck Norris" jokes that we love to apply to Toph. It's the last time she's relevant in this story, anyway, unless she pulled the same trick on the Earth Kingdom’s tanks between scenes, since they don’t play much part in the coming battle.
And with that, the big war advertised on the back cover starts. War, what is it good for? Besides easy sales, I mean.
Apocalypse Later
Aang kicks things off by freaking out, plunging into the Avatar State, and trying to kill Zuko again, even though it was the Earth Kingdom that started things by dispatching the first army. Once again, despite having a very smart and believable conflict in the form of the colonies issue, our main characters are primarily focused on the matter of The Promise, as though the audience doesn’t already know, thanks to The Legend of Korra, that Zuko goes on to outlive Aang. We still haven’t been told why killing Zuko will solve the problem, since he’s likely the most moderate guy in his whole nation. You’d think that if the story was going to focus so much on the matter, it would take the time at some point to answer these questions, but instead we keep getting the characters rehash the same dialogue over and over.
As the wider battle rages, Katara apparently gets as sick of this plot as I am and does her whole peacemaker thing again by snatching Aang away before he can bury Zuko. (It's a good thing Zuko's bodyguards abandoned him, because someone could have just as easily killed Aang in the Avatar State and so ended the Avatar Cycle for all time. Avatar Aang: Dangerously Incompetent.) She spends a few pages patiently explaining to Aang that deporting people from the land where they were born is kind of unfair, and that the whole idea that the nations have to remain absolutely separate kind of puts the kabosh on the idea of the Last Airbender dating a Water Tribe girl.
Aang's only argument is that whenever two elements from separate nations get together, one always bullies the other, although how he came to this conclusion is beyond me. Except for Smellerbee's terrorists in the first part of this trilogy, there has never been an instance in any Avatar product where someone from the Earth Kingdom acts anything but polite towards a member of the Water Tribe, and vice versa. In fact, it's really only when the Fire Nation gets involved that tempers flare, and considering said Fire Nation liked to genocide anyone with whom they disagree, I think it's an understandable reaction.
Heck, Aang's own people bullied him far more than any other nation. The Fire Nation just wanted to kill him as a viable military target. The Air Nomad leadership wanted to tear him away from his guardian and turn him into a living weapon for a war that hadn’t even happened yet.
Just sayin'.
Anyway, Katara pulls the old reliable "Agree with me or sleep on the couch!" tactic, and Aang retreats to discuss things with Roku. Aang's predecessor still thinks that killing Zuko will magically solve the colony problem, and I really have to give kudos to the storytelling here, because we're three volumes in and at the climax of the story and still there's been no mention of what everyone expects to happen after Zuko dies, the Fire Nation is plunged into a succession crisis, and more extremist elements will have a chance to seize control. Maybe Roku wants to wipe out the whole rest of the Fire Nation just to be safe? In that case, it probably would have been a lot easier to do that a year ago, when they weren't ready for it.
Back at the battle, the rest of the gAang is watching and talking while the three armies try to kill each other. Yes, three: Smellerbee's Freedom Fighters and the Earth Kingdom are described explicitly as one side who want the colonists to go; Zuko and the Fire Nation are another who want the colonists to stay; and Yu Dao itself is a third who want to be "left alone." Maybe I'm missing some really deep subtleties, here, but isn't "colonists staying" and "colonists left alone" pretty much the same thing? Then wouldn't Yu Dao be fighting with Zuko? So why is Sokka talking about them as if they're different factions with different goals? Is he confused by the color-coding? Green, red, and green/red? I hate to break it to Gene Yang, but not even the Transformers toyline divide factions up by color anymore.
It's all moot, anyway, because this battle hasn't resulted in any casualties yet. The Air Nomad fangirls are out there knocking trained soldiers around with their staffs and preventing them from killing each other, despite the fangirls not being Benders, not having any armor, at most having started training with those Airbender staffs a year ago, and trying not to hurt anyone. Dang, I gotta get me a set of those, they could probably conquer a small nation for me. Katara, Sokka, Toph, and Suki find this so inspiring they jump out to do the same thing. If this sounds completely inadequate to the task, don't worry, the whole subplot last volume pays off when Toph's Metalbending students show up to help and start hitting armored soldiers with coins. (No exaggeration!) They take another page showing off their same three jokes, and then start using their Metalbending powers to spin helmets around so that the Fire Nation soldiers can't see. I guess that's better than coins, but I'm really not buying that these people are better than your average soldier. Heck, given the small size of these "armies," I would hope that we're dealing with the more elite veterans that each nation has access to, but I guess we can try to read against the text in order for things to make more sense.
Fine, all the soldiers are incompetents. Whatever will get this done and over with quicker.
Katara personally goes to the Earth King and tells him that the important stuff in life isn't about who owns some vague point on a map where the best swords and armor in the world are made and all the people of Fire Nation descent are living the good life on the backs of anyone unfortunate enough to inherit green clothing, it's all about people, man! Stop fighting for things that don't matter, and let the richest 1% eliminate the middle class and steal the rights of the rest of the nation! Yeah! ...wait, was the Earth King supposed to be a parody of the Republicans or the Democrats? I'm losing track, and I actually follow American politics very closely. Maybe it's making fun of the British Parliament? Or the Chinese Government's issues with natural human rights?
I got nothing.
Zuko and the Earth Kingdom general are just getting into a one-on-one fight that looked to be interesting when Aang decides that he's had about enough of this stupid story, and you know what? I'm totally on board with this. I'm even ready to give up a cool fight if it will make this thing end faster! I'm not quite willing to accept a horrible ending, though, so I guess I just can't win. Aang's solution is to use the power of the Avatar State to... dig a trench around Yu Dao.
A trench.
You know, like a thin canyon?
Remember, an army of Earthbenders is standing just over there. One of them is even waving at you, right now. And Omashu’s surrounding canyons didn’t stop the Fire Nation from conquering it.
Just sayin’. Again.
Zuko falls into the trench, or maybe he tries to commit suicide. One panel shows him standing there, the next him falling into the trench. The dream earlier implied that he was suicidal, but later Zuko claims that he totally tripped, honest. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself again. Aang catches Zuko, brings him over to the Earth King, and declares that he's reached a decision: Zuko was right all along, the Earth Kingdom doesn't get its colonies back, and it's all about the people, dude. The best thing for the people of Yu Dao (note that the rest of the colonies aren't mentioned) is to be given their independence, even though they apparently have no law enforcement, military protection, trading ties that don't come from a national military's use of their weapon products, and are vulnerable to any random rabble that can produce a little tank and ram the city walls with it.
If only there were something like a larger United Republic that Yu Dao could join, but apparently no one but Korra is looking that far ahead yet. Of all the stuff this comic could have put off establishing, the UR was the last thing I would have put on the list. But Aang accepts the fangirls as the first official Air Acolytes now that he's decided to let Katara dictate his opinions for him, so I guess the fans will be satisfied.
Things wrap up quickly from there, with the Earth King also agreeing with Katara with no reservation. Kori reiterates that Yu Dao doesn't even want to go back to the Fire Nation, despite Zuko's giving them away being the reason she tried to assassinate him in the first comic. I guess they still can't be friends after the breakup? Sounds like all my past romantic relationships.
The only points the ending addresses from there are Zuko and Aang finally deciding that the titular Promise probably isn't a good idea after all since it predisposes them towards murder when a healthy conversation would probably do, while on the other side of the spectrum Aang tells Roku's spirit that anyone who advocates killing Zuko as a solution to every little international disagreement ain't welcome around here no more, there's the door, don't let it hit your incorporeal backside on the way out, even though Roku can probably just walk through doors anyway because he's a ghost. (Hey, no one ever said Aang was good with insults.)
Now for the part the fandom was actually interested in. Zuko has decided that one of the reasons he's been so irritable about colonies, girlfriends who won't let him take advice from his father, and Avatars who try to kill him for sneezing wrong is because he hasn't been able to find his mother over the course of the last year. Ozai won't blab about it, so Zuko figures that Azula might have better luck, even though she's still wearing straightjackets and accusing mirrors of not loving her. I don't know why he thinks Ozai would be nice to Azula, since one of the reasons she went crazy in the cartoon’s finale is because she realized that he never really cared about what she really wanted, but hey, the last page is no place for Zuko to suddenly start being smart after all this time.
And so comes the promise that we'll finally get that story about Zuko's mother, after putting up with the broken promise of The Promise. I guess we deserve a reward for surviving this awful storyline, but I would have preferred a new writer. Hoowah! Oh yeah, I'm on fire.
The Art
Same as the first two parts. Consistency is a virtue.
The Good Bit
I liked that gag where Toph was leading Sokka and Suki down an underground slide, and she made fun of Sokka’s girly scream. Sokka says that it was Suki screaming, not him, and the Kyoshi Warrior gets miffed at him. It wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but it was an amusing interaction between characters I like.
That’s pretty much all I can think of.
Conclusion
Sigh. I had such high hopes for a great writer like Gene Yang and the long-awaited continuation of Aang's story, but now I'm actively dreading getting the return of Zuko's mother! The Promise trilogy sold well and Dark Horse is thus committed to continued publishing, so my preference would have been for fans to now boycott the series to send the message that while we have strong buying power, we won't pay for poor-quality writing. However, I know that Ursa's return is too big for any ATLA fan to actually do that, so I'm just giving up. Maybe posting my criticisms on the internet will do some good.
And maybe someone actually thought that Aang would kill Zuko.
When Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise Part 1 came out, the Avatar franchise was ascendant. The fanbase was growing and glowing with the anticipated release of the sequel cartoon The Legend of Korra, Dark Horse had already published both a popular Art Book for the original cartoon and the non-canon supplementary comics from the old Nickelodeon Magazine, and the story of ATLA was set to be continued in The Promise itself thanks to the writing talents of the critically acclaimed Gene Yang (American Born Chinese, Level Up) under the supervision of Avatar creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.
We've come a long way since then. The fanbase has split over LoK, and the The Promise trilogy has faired no better with the vocal online communities. Some like it, some don't, and the members of the fandom that once warred over shipping have now turned their fervor to the follow-up material. I panned the first two parts of The Promise, but with the third installment now available in all literary retailers, has the series been redeemed and my criticisms addressed by the story's long-awaited grand finale?
Psh, not even close. I will now proceed to explain why by ridiculing the story beat by beat. I recommend getting some popcorn. Spoilers are to follow, naturally.
Previously on Avatar's Pale Pretender...
In Part 1 we were introduced to the intriguing conundrum of the Fire Nation Colonies, bits of the Earth Kingdom that were seized during the war into which the Fire Nation tried to sow its culture with all the grace and sensitivity of the Disney Corp building a theme park in China. The obvious solution, now that the Fire Nation has been defeated by the efforts of Avatar Aang and his groupies, is to tell the Mouse to get out of the House, but the problem is that mice breed like crazy, and after a hundred years it's going to be really hard to tell which mice are "natives" and which ones were merely born there and had Evil Invader grandparents. (Hm, that metaphor broke down in a hurry.)
Unfortunately, this situation proved to be the only smart part of the entire story, as Fire Lord Zuko's response to the situation was to refuse to give up the colonies, attack his old friends without explaining why, and make excuses for the colonists in red comprising the richest 1% of the population. Then, when the other characters noted that this might not be entirely fair, he went to his abusive, sociopathic, and sadistic father for advice. Aang, as befits an Airbending Master whose spirit is like the wind passing around an obstacle, and who spent much of his early life traveling all over the world making friends in all the nations, took the opposite track from Zuko and decided that the Four Three Nations must absolutely remain separate or else the world would end, and anyone who couldn't get behind that was misguided Evil and deserved respectful debate instant death. Predictably, Zuko kind of tripped over this policy, and Part 1 ended with Katara pushing herself between the two murderously (literally, they both attempted deadly attacks against each other) feuding boys and telling them to go back to their respective corners.
In Part 2, Sokka and Toph trained some Metalbenders. This had nothing to do with anything.
Also, Aang met some fangirls of the old Air Nomad culture who liked to pretend to be members of his extinct nation by living together in a dubiously funded house and holding dance parties using ancient cultural artifacts. Aang thought this was just the buzzard-bee's knees, even though Katara wasn't impressed by the girls' explicitly stated goal of seducing Aang and making him their club mascot. However, that didn't stop the Avatar from meeting with the Earth King to explain the colony situation in a way that convinced Kuei to send his army of Earthbenders and super-tanks to peacefully relocate anyone who wears red. And by peacefully, I mean they were going to use all force necessary to throw people out of their homes, perhaps even breaking up families. What they were planning to do with people of Fire Nation descent who wore green, or what precautions they were taking against any genocides accidentally happening, were questions left not only unanswered, but completely unasked.
Meanwhile, Zuko sat around his palace asking his warmonger of a father for advice on preserving lives, which for reasons completely beyond me didn't lead to Zuko getting any satisfactory answers, and then his girlfriend broke up with him for cheating on her with his own father or something. That got Zuko so mad he decided to take his colony-reconquering army back to the colonies to reconquer them. Again. (Is it just me, or was Mai maybe working for Ozai? You have to admit, it's suspicious when you look at things summarized this way.)
With a setup like that, I don't know what could possibly go wrong with the grand finale.
The Road to War, Supplied by MapQuest
The third and final part of the trilogy opens with a shared dream sequence between Aang and Zuko. Both are looking down at a battle between soldiers of the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom, and you can tell stuff is getting serious because it's raining and the sky is all dark and scary. The only cliché missing is the phrase, "It was a dark and stormy night!" Tactically, I wouldn't think that Firebenders would be so eager to stand in an open field and fight in parade lines while being weakened by a torrential downpour, but hey, it's a dream, so who cares about that kind of thing? Not helping matters are the spirits of Ozai and Roku, who are both so into the idea of killing everyone who looks at them wrong that they could swap dialogue without anyone noticing. Well, no, not really, but the implications are that Roku and Ozai share the same intolerant parallels. I remember when Fire Lord Sozin used to be the old dead guy most often equated with Lord "Burn the Whole World" Ozai, but apparently this story doesn't have time for any peacenik sissies, so Roku has to shape up and turn into Sergeant Slaughter if he wants to get any page time.
Zuko starts begging Aang to kill him, because dying is way easier than comedy making a decision between "War" and "Not War," and with Roku shouting in his ear Aang figures that the best solution is to give his friend the mercy kill he's asking for, even though Zuko explicitly said in the first book that he only wanted Aang to promise to kill him if he "goes bad" and turns into a man just like Ozai. I'd argue that Zuko's angst and waffling on the whole matter of starting a new war means he isn't yet the type of person to light his son's face on fire and then laugh about it, and that Aang actually taking his friend's opinion into account and talking respectfully would go a long way towards diffusing the situation, but hey, dream logic! And it’s not like the original ATLA cartoon explicitly stated that Zuko’s defining characteristic is that he never gives up, even in seemingly hopeless situations.
So Aang “mercy kills” Zuko, and both do that thing where they sit up in bed and swear off pepperoni pizza before naptime.
The next day, Aang arrives in Yu Dao, the colony that started all this trouble, for the stated purpose of warning them to evacuate before the Earth King and his army arrive to ethnically cleanse the entire population and sell the land to the Disney Corporation. As I stated in my review for Part 2, Aang could use the Avatar State to just stick a mountain between that Earth Army and Yu Dao, but for that to happen Aang would have to be portrayed as having control of the Avatar State like in the cartoon's finale, and we can't have that because the casual fans might not buy this comic if it doesn't remind them strongly of the cartoon's second season (the bestest one, according to online polls).
Okay, so Aang figures it's better to evacuate people. Whatever. Does he go to the city's governor, and see about making it happen in an efficient and orderly manner? No. Does he go to Zuko, and get him to use his Fire Army to evacuate everyone with professional precision? No. Heck, he could even ride through the city shouting, "The British are coming, the British are coming!" But no, instead he flies Appa over the city, screaming that everyone has to abandon their homes right now, without one word of explanation.
And I'm supposed to be surprised when someone throws an axe at his head?
What follows is a painful sequence of panels where Aang and Katara dodge all manner of weapons and Bending attacks while they deliver long lines of trite dialogue. Do me a favor and say the word "sweetie" out loud. How long did it take you? A second? One and a half? Now, have one of your friends throw an axe past your head. It's okay, I'll wait; this is a worthwhile experiment. How long did the axe take to fly past you? Less than a second, I'm willing to bet. Yet, despite the situation, Aang still has time to deliver lines like "Whoa! Watch out, sweetie! We're being attacked by Firebenders!" Here's a free hint to all you aspiring comic scripters: if you have to shove painfully long lines of dialogue into what is supposed to be a fast-paced action scene so that the reader can tell what's going on, you should fire your artist. Despite my dislike for Gurihiru's style, the art very clearly and with a good sense of motion shows that Aang is dodging a burst of flame in that panel, so the dialogue is both unrealistic and completely redundant.
As long as I'm giving free hints, here's one for Gene Yang: if you don't want people complaining about "sweetie" as a term of endearment, don't shoehorn it into the most inappropriate places possible.
One crash later, Aang discovers that the townspeople are attacking him because they think he's trying to ship them back to the Fire Nation, as led by Sneers the Freedom Fighter and Kori the mixed Fire/Earth offspring. (Who are dating, as the story goes out of its way to highlight several times. Gee, the author's favorite side character and the girl with the perpetually bare midriff are dating. Color me surprised. The color of "surprised" is, incidentally, a very pretty purple.) Talking is had, people are brought up to speed, but opinions are stubbornly adhered to. Then the Yu Dao chapter of the Air Nomad-wannabes show up.
Despite Aang nearly marrying the entire outpost of Air Nomad fangirls in Ba Sing Se in the last volume, he really has a problem with this group because they actually live and look more like real Air Nomads, right down to the tattoos. Apparently, buying authentic antique Air Nomad flutes and using them to decorate your clubhouse is okay, but Koh forbid you tattoo an arrow on your forehead, that's treating culture dress and symbols like cosplay and just as bad as genocide. Or maybe Aang is just peeved that this group of fangirls isn’t shamelessly flirting with him? And here I thought Sokka was the one with a history of sexism.
The crazy part is that I'm actually a bit on Aang's side, here. For these people to appropriate his culture without truly understanding the significance of the arrow tattoos is potentially offensive, but Aang's subsequent conversation with Katara, where he's adamant that the nations must remain separate and he'd rather live and die alone in a cave than let the Air Nomad culture live on in a new way, turns the presentation into a condemnation of his reaction to the fangirls. And considering that, at the end of the whole story, he's explicitly stated to be wrong in his opinions and Zuko completely right...
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Before moving on to the next segment, I have to note Zuko's quick scene in the midst of all this. He's talking to a picture of his Uncle Iroh the same way he used to talk to his old friend the Badgertoad of the Western Air Temple, and I can't decide if this is a step up for a step down, because at least the toad was alive and made cute little ribbity noises. Zuko admits that he has no idea what to do about the colonies and the stress of being Fire Lord is driving him crazy, but he decides that he'd rather start a whole new world war that might wipe out another nation than bug his Uncle in his retirement. I guess this is supposed to address all those fan complaints that Zuko should have just written a letter to Iroh two volumes ago, but it doesn't explain why he didn't ask Piandao instead. Or Jeong-Jeong. Or anyone else in the White Lotus, given that they’re all worldly people with leadership experience. Or some of his civilian and military advisors in the Fire Nation. Or some of the Governors in the colonies. Or the girl Aang danced with when he infiltrated that high school on one of the Fire Nation islands. Or, heck, even Chief Arnook of the women-hating Northern Water Tribe. Or any of the half-way intelligent and non-evil people in the world!
Instead, he went to his father. The guy who wanted to burn the entire Earth Kingdom down because pacifying it was too much work. The guy who lit Zuko's face on fire and then said it was for Zuko's own good. The guy who was going to murder Zuko just for a chance of being named crown prince, before the "pressures" of being Fire Lord had any effect on him.
It would be something of an understatement to say that I find this explanation to be less than satisfying. In fact, if you want the full impact of my feelings on the matter, go have Mr T punch you in the face. Eight times.
Who's Side Are You On, Anyway?
Back near Yu Dao, Sokka and Toph are still wasting time with the latter's Metalbending school. We get a quick re-introduction to Toph's one-note flat-character Metalbending students (fat panicky guy, emo poet guy, and boy-crazy shoe-loving girl), because it's not like we have a complicated moral and political situation to deal with and a limited number of pages in which to do it. Suki shows up, having last been seen acting as Zuko's bodyguard and only friend, with the explanation that the Fire Nation guy who Toph stole the school building from sent a letter of complaint directly to the Fire Lord over what is essentially a minor property rights issue. The complaint was to Zuko, who was on his way to Yu Dao with an army at the time and therefore wouldn't be at his palace to receive the Messenger Hawk. And Suki abandoned Zuko, commandeered an Airship from the military that's preparing to reconquer their colonies, and flew ahead of the main group to visit with Sokka and recruit him to help stop Zuko.
If you can find any two elements of that summary that fit with each other, I'm buying you lunch.
Back at Yu Dao, Smellerbee and her Earth Kingdom terrorists attack the city in an effort to force the colonists to go back to the Fire Nation, and this is treated like a real threat. Does Yu Dao have no militia or law enforcement, beyond Kori and her Boffo Bending Cousins? Does Smellerbee intend to kill anyone who won't let her push them into a boat? And where did Smellerbee get a green tank with which to break through Yu Dao's walls? Last I heard, only the Northern Air Temple and Ba Sing Se had mechanized war vehicles, and Smellerbee's little terrorist group is portrayed as a random gaggle of Earth Kingdom citizens who want the colonists gone and can't wait for the authorities to do it properly. Where did they scrounge up a state-of-the-art tank? And why is this considered a more important plot point than exploring where Smellerbee's deep-seated hate of anything Fire-related come from, since Aang is trying to get everyone to talk peacefully anyway?
Oh, right. Kiddies like action, don't they? Well, let's heap it on, then. The cartoon's toys sold lousy, we can't risk that happening to the comics.
Hm, maybe the tank is an homage to M Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender, where a random tank of the same vague shape as Smellerbee's made a forgettable one-scene appearance.
Back with the peanut gallery, Sokka, Suki, and Toph decide that the best way to stop Zuko- who Suki describes as lonely and confused- is to steal a tank and attack him and his army. Well, so much for Suki's future as Zuko's only friend. Incidentally, read the page where Suki talks about Zuko without looking at the bottom row of panels. If you cut out the part where Sokka reveals that he just got an idea, it looks like he's freaking out hearing Suki talk so tenderly about the guy to whom she was just playing bodyguard.
Back at Yu Dao, more pages are wasted on the fight between the colonists and the "Freedom Fighters" when the Earth Kingdom army arrives! When last we saw the Earth King, he was looking to prove to the world that he couldn't be messed with, couldn't be tricked or intimidated, and that anyone who tried was going to find out just how strong and unreasonable he could be! Here, we see him cowering above his army in a War Balloon, even before the fighting has started. Katara even calls up to him, but he goes full coward and refuses to come down and even talk to anyone.
Where did this come from? Did he see his own army and find it intimidating? Did he take the time to think about what a new war would do his people, who have already suffered through so much? Did he simply realize that he's a wimp, and going along with his army to a big fight might not be conducive to his long-term health? I don't know, because the comic never explores any of it. It's a "book-end plot," a beginning and an end without a middle, slapped together solely to create an artificial conflict for the story that can then be resolved quickly and shallowly. No mention is made of the time the Earth King spent walking his Kingdom disguised as a peasant, which the cartoon explicitly showed, and which you'd think might be used as some kind of explanation for his actions either here or in the previous volume. Did he spend that whole time living out of a luxury hotel with his bear?
It seems the cartoon is only relevant to the story when it offers something we can copy. Let's just say this is a satirical moment aimed at American Republicans and move on. It might even be true.
Then Zuko's army arrives, and positions itself squarely across from the Earth Kingdom army. (Even though, since the Fire Army's mission is to protect Yu Dao, you'd think they'd try to take a defensive position around or within the city.) We waste a page in which Toph demonstrates that she only needs to stomp the ground in order to use her Metalbending to make every bolt, screw, and rivet pop out of a Fire Nation tank, and that sound you hear is Sifu Kisu himself crying for the loss of Bending as an expression of martial arts and physical direction. Say hello to the new Bending, which operates more like something out of an X-Men comic, and start dusting off the old "Chuck Norris" jokes that we love to apply to Toph. It's the last time she's relevant in this story, anyway, unless she pulled the same trick on the Earth Kingdom’s tanks between scenes, since they don’t play much part in the coming battle.
And with that, the big war advertised on the back cover starts. War, what is it good for? Besides easy sales, I mean.
Apocalypse Later
Aang kicks things off by freaking out, plunging into the Avatar State, and trying to kill Zuko again, even though it was the Earth Kingdom that started things by dispatching the first army. Once again, despite having a very smart and believable conflict in the form of the colonies issue, our main characters are primarily focused on the matter of The Promise, as though the audience doesn’t already know, thanks to The Legend of Korra, that Zuko goes on to outlive Aang. We still haven’t been told why killing Zuko will solve the problem, since he’s likely the most moderate guy in his whole nation. You’d think that if the story was going to focus so much on the matter, it would take the time at some point to answer these questions, but instead we keep getting the characters rehash the same dialogue over and over.
As the wider battle rages, Katara apparently gets as sick of this plot as I am and does her whole peacemaker thing again by snatching Aang away before he can bury Zuko. (It's a good thing Zuko's bodyguards abandoned him, because someone could have just as easily killed Aang in the Avatar State and so ended the Avatar Cycle for all time. Avatar Aang: Dangerously Incompetent.) She spends a few pages patiently explaining to Aang that deporting people from the land where they were born is kind of unfair, and that the whole idea that the nations have to remain absolutely separate kind of puts the kabosh on the idea of the Last Airbender dating a Water Tribe girl.
Aang's only argument is that whenever two elements from separate nations get together, one always bullies the other, although how he came to this conclusion is beyond me. Except for Smellerbee's terrorists in the first part of this trilogy, there has never been an instance in any Avatar product where someone from the Earth Kingdom acts anything but polite towards a member of the Water Tribe, and vice versa. In fact, it's really only when the Fire Nation gets involved that tempers flare, and considering said Fire Nation liked to genocide anyone with whom they disagree, I think it's an understandable reaction.
Heck, Aang's own people bullied him far more than any other nation. The Fire Nation just wanted to kill him as a viable military target. The Air Nomad leadership wanted to tear him away from his guardian and turn him into a living weapon for a war that hadn’t even happened yet.
Just sayin'.
Anyway, Katara pulls the old reliable "Agree with me or sleep on the couch!" tactic, and Aang retreats to discuss things with Roku. Aang's predecessor still thinks that killing Zuko will magically solve the colony problem, and I really have to give kudos to the storytelling here, because we're three volumes in and at the climax of the story and still there's been no mention of what everyone expects to happen after Zuko dies, the Fire Nation is plunged into a succession crisis, and more extremist elements will have a chance to seize control. Maybe Roku wants to wipe out the whole rest of the Fire Nation just to be safe? In that case, it probably would have been a lot easier to do that a year ago, when they weren't ready for it.
Back at the battle, the rest of the gAang is watching and talking while the three armies try to kill each other. Yes, three: Smellerbee's Freedom Fighters and the Earth Kingdom are described explicitly as one side who want the colonists to go; Zuko and the Fire Nation are another who want the colonists to stay; and Yu Dao itself is a third who want to be "left alone." Maybe I'm missing some really deep subtleties, here, but isn't "colonists staying" and "colonists left alone" pretty much the same thing? Then wouldn't Yu Dao be fighting with Zuko? So why is Sokka talking about them as if they're different factions with different goals? Is he confused by the color-coding? Green, red, and green/red? I hate to break it to Gene Yang, but not even the Transformers toyline divide factions up by color anymore.
It's all moot, anyway, because this battle hasn't resulted in any casualties yet. The Air Nomad fangirls are out there knocking trained soldiers around with their staffs and preventing them from killing each other, despite the fangirls not being Benders, not having any armor, at most having started training with those Airbender staffs a year ago, and trying not to hurt anyone. Dang, I gotta get me a set of those, they could probably conquer a small nation for me. Katara, Sokka, Toph, and Suki find this so inspiring they jump out to do the same thing. If this sounds completely inadequate to the task, don't worry, the whole subplot last volume pays off when Toph's Metalbending students show up to help and start hitting armored soldiers with coins. (No exaggeration!) They take another page showing off their same three jokes, and then start using their Metalbending powers to spin helmets around so that the Fire Nation soldiers can't see. I guess that's better than coins, but I'm really not buying that these people are better than your average soldier. Heck, given the small size of these "armies," I would hope that we're dealing with the more elite veterans that each nation has access to, but I guess we can try to read against the text in order for things to make more sense.
Fine, all the soldiers are incompetents. Whatever will get this done and over with quicker.
Katara personally goes to the Earth King and tells him that the important stuff in life isn't about who owns some vague point on a map where the best swords and armor in the world are made and all the people of Fire Nation descent are living the good life on the backs of anyone unfortunate enough to inherit green clothing, it's all about people, man! Stop fighting for things that don't matter, and let the richest 1% eliminate the middle class and steal the rights of the rest of the nation! Yeah! ...wait, was the Earth King supposed to be a parody of the Republicans or the Democrats? I'm losing track, and I actually follow American politics very closely. Maybe it's making fun of the British Parliament? Or the Chinese Government's issues with natural human rights?
I got nothing.
Zuko and the Earth Kingdom general are just getting into a one-on-one fight that looked to be interesting when Aang decides that he's had about enough of this stupid story, and you know what? I'm totally on board with this. I'm even ready to give up a cool fight if it will make this thing end faster! I'm not quite willing to accept a horrible ending, though, so I guess I just can't win. Aang's solution is to use the power of the Avatar State to... dig a trench around Yu Dao.
A trench.
You know, like a thin canyon?
Remember, an army of Earthbenders is standing just over there. One of them is even waving at you, right now. And Omashu’s surrounding canyons didn’t stop the Fire Nation from conquering it.
Just sayin’. Again.
Zuko falls into the trench, or maybe he tries to commit suicide. One panel shows him standing there, the next him falling into the trench. The dream earlier implied that he was suicidal, but later Zuko claims that he totally tripped, honest. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself again. Aang catches Zuko, brings him over to the Earth King, and declares that he's reached a decision: Zuko was right all along, the Earth Kingdom doesn't get its colonies back, and it's all about the people, dude. The best thing for the people of Yu Dao (note that the rest of the colonies aren't mentioned) is to be given their independence, even though they apparently have no law enforcement, military protection, trading ties that don't come from a national military's use of their weapon products, and are vulnerable to any random rabble that can produce a little tank and ram the city walls with it.
If only there were something like a larger United Republic that Yu Dao could join, but apparently no one but Korra is looking that far ahead yet. Of all the stuff this comic could have put off establishing, the UR was the last thing I would have put on the list. But Aang accepts the fangirls as the first official Air Acolytes now that he's decided to let Katara dictate his opinions for him, so I guess the fans will be satisfied.
Things wrap up quickly from there, with the Earth King also agreeing with Katara with no reservation. Kori reiterates that Yu Dao doesn't even want to go back to the Fire Nation, despite Zuko's giving them away being the reason she tried to assassinate him in the first comic. I guess they still can't be friends after the breakup? Sounds like all my past romantic relationships.
The only points the ending addresses from there are Zuko and Aang finally deciding that the titular Promise probably isn't a good idea after all since it predisposes them towards murder when a healthy conversation would probably do, while on the other side of the spectrum Aang tells Roku's spirit that anyone who advocates killing Zuko as a solution to every little international disagreement ain't welcome around here no more, there's the door, don't let it hit your incorporeal backside on the way out, even though Roku can probably just walk through doors anyway because he's a ghost. (Hey, no one ever said Aang was good with insults.)
Now for the part the fandom was actually interested in. Zuko has decided that one of the reasons he's been so irritable about colonies, girlfriends who won't let him take advice from his father, and Avatars who try to kill him for sneezing wrong is because he hasn't been able to find his mother over the course of the last year. Ozai won't blab about it, so Zuko figures that Azula might have better luck, even though she's still wearing straightjackets and accusing mirrors of not loving her. I don't know why he thinks Ozai would be nice to Azula, since one of the reasons she went crazy in the cartoon’s finale is because she realized that he never really cared about what she really wanted, but hey, the last page is no place for Zuko to suddenly start being smart after all this time.
And so comes the promise that we'll finally get that story about Zuko's mother, after putting up with the broken promise of The Promise. I guess we deserve a reward for surviving this awful storyline, but I would have preferred a new writer. Hoowah! Oh yeah, I'm on fire.
The Art
Same as the first two parts. Consistency is a virtue.
The Good Bit
I liked that gag where Toph was leading Sokka and Suki down an underground slide, and she made fun of Sokka’s girly scream. Sokka says that it was Suki screaming, not him, and the Kyoshi Warrior gets miffed at him. It wasn’t laugh-out-loud funny, but it was an amusing interaction between characters I like.
That’s pretty much all I can think of.
Conclusion
Sigh. I had such high hopes for a great writer like Gene Yang and the long-awaited continuation of Aang's story, but now I'm actively dreading getting the return of Zuko's mother! The Promise trilogy sold well and Dark Horse is thus committed to continued publishing, so my preference would have been for fans to now boycott the series to send the message that while we have strong buying power, we won't pay for poor-quality writing. However, I know that Ursa's return is too big for any ATLA fan to actually do that, so I'm just giving up. Maybe posting my criticisms on the internet will do some good.
And maybe someone actually thought that Aang would kill Zuko.