With the release of Netflix’s Avatar: The Last Airbender, the world of Avatar has been a point of discussion for many. Bringing Avatar back to the forefront of our minds resulted in revisiting the animated show, a classic that has endured for over a generation, and has earned its place as one of the greatest works of animated fiction of all time. As a huge Avatar fan, I got caught up in the excitement as well! Not only did I watch the live action show (might review that a bit later) and start rewatching the animated show (again), but I also decided it was finally time to read through the Avatar: The Last Airbender comics I had collected so long ago.
Many people don’t know that the story of Avatar was continued in comic book form – in a total of 6 3-part stories, and 4 (soon to be five) standalone one-shots. Here is the reading order (the main 6 volumes have been noted by full numbers, the one-shots have been noted with decimals).
0.1: Katara and the Pirate’s Silver
0.2: Suki, Alone
0.3: Team Avatar Tales/The Lost Adventures
1: The Promise
2: The Search
3: The Rift
3.1: Toph Beifong’s Metalbending Academy
4: Smoke and Shadow
5: North and South
6: Imbalance
6.1: Azula in the Spirit Temple
Coming Soon: The Bounty Hunter and the Tea Brewer (which features Iroh and June!)
I often compare comic issues to 25 minute episodes of a television show, and these fit that model effectively. The three-part stories are like three-part Avatar episodes, and the one-shots are similar to single episodes. It’s not always a one-to-one comparison, but it is a helpful way to picture the length of stories if you are not familiar with the medium.
In this review, my goal to: A. rate each of these from 1-10 (in the format of an iMDB rating – so a single 10s place decimal is allowed (1.0 being the lowest possible rating, 10.0 being the highest) and B. explain my rating without giving you explicit spoilers for the story, though I will be giving a general overview of the plot of each in my review! I will order them from what I believe to be the weakest to the strongest story.
I used this episode list for reference while rating these – my ratings slot these stories in where I believe they would land if they were released as actual episodes rather than post-show comics.
This post will cover #11-#6. Part Two will contain what I believe are the top 5 Avatar: The Last Airbender Comics!
I will also be linking to the actual books on Amazon (I personally am a huge fan of the Library editions – they look amazing on the shelf and come with a lot of interesting commentary from the writers).
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#11 – The Lost Adventures/Team Avatar Tales
Is this an entertaining collection of stories? Certainly. Is it better than any individual episode of the show? Hardly. I’d refer to these stories as “completionist content”. They are worth owning and reading if you want to own/read everything that has been collected from the show. These stories take place throughout the show (some afterwards), and are actually a combination of two volumes (The Lost Adventures and Team Avatar Tales). They are not necessary to the main story (though one of the shorts gets briefly referenced in Smoke & Shadow), and they are similar to shorts rather than episodes. There were a few that stood out to me as worthwhile, and that I enjoyed, but for the most part this one can be easily skipped if you’re just looking for top-notch Avatar content from the books.
Rating: 6.8
#10 – Suki, Alone
I read the one-shots after I had already read most of the main story, and I have to stay, this one was the one that disappointed me the most. I suppose with A:TLA, one gets spoiled with high quality stories and characters, so you come to expect excellence when reading anything attached to the show. Suki, Alone unfortunately didn’t deliver on this. It has a lot going for it – Suki is a fantastic character, and this episode is tied to The Boiling Rock, one of the best episodes of the show. Unfortunately, none of this saves it from being a relatively bland narrative that leaves you feeling like the plot didn’t really go anywhere. It is a decent tale, and gives some welcome Suki backstory, but when I recommend Avatar comics, this will not be high on my list.
Rating: 7.0
#9 – Katara and the Pirate’s Silver
Katara and the Pirate’s Silver is a one-shot starring (you guessed it) Katara. It takes place during the show, and is an adventure that could easily have happened as an episode. As a story, I’d say that the easiest way to describe this is that it’s good. It’s not a bad story by any means, but it’s not remarkably memorable. It is just… good. And that’s okay! Not every story needs to be incredible. Unfortunately, when you’re spending money on a single story that is just good, you can find better bang for your buck. It also isn’t particularly memorable when compared to other episodes of the show either (this rating puts it on the same level as Avatar Day). Is it worth reading? For sure, if you can get your hands on it. Is it worth purchasing? That is something only you can decide.
Rating: 7.4
#8 – Toph Beifong’s Metalbending Academy
Unfortunately, the title of this story is a minor spoiler for The Promise: yes, Toph starts a metalbending academy! I felt that Toph’s arc during the course of this series was solid – in general, most of the main characters were given solid growth and development in the post-Sozin’s Comet world. Toph has a one-off here that is memorable and fun – unlike Suki, Alone, this one I will likely revisit when I return and reread these comics. Toph’s students took me a little bit to warm up to – it was the only time where I truly felt like I was reading something targeted to children. This story is engaging enough, and has some cool bending fights, so that is a selling point for sure! Overall, worth the read.
Rating: 7.6
#7 – The Promise
The first of the three-part main stories is also the weakest. Perhaps the comics needed this to get their legs – The Promise walked so that the rest of the stories could run, to use the old adage. But I don’t want to sell The Promise short – it is still an excellent story. It has some fantastic scenes (I especially enjoyed their depiction of Ozai, who you can see on the cover – as a matter of fact, one thing that I would have loved to see from this series is more post-Comet Ozai). However, perhaps because this was the new writers’ first foray into the Avatar world, it gets held back by a significantly out-of-character pact made by Zuko and Aang. This is at the core of the story, and does not track with some important elements from the show.
I showed one of my good friends a (completely separate from ATLA) show that was very heavy-handed on asking deep questions about life. After a particularly self-indulgent scene in that show, he referred to it as “Timmy’s First Philosophy Class”. Which is probably the most apt way to describe the core conflict of The Promise. It presents some significant philosophical questions about government, colonization, occupation, and freedom in a way that young readers can understand, breaking a nuanced and important problem down and giving a satisfying discourse about it. However, there are times where it feels like Team Avatar has backtracked some of its character growth during the show in order to make this conflict work, and that is my biggest complaint with the story. Overall, this one is still excellent, and begins a series that truly captures the heart of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Rating: 8.2
#6 – The Rift
Most of the issues in The Promise are resolved almost immediately in the following stories. The Rift is the third main-series story, and it is a solid story with some spirit-world aspects (something I would have again liked to see a little bit more of in this series). The conflict here is realistic to the characters, and the writers treat it with nuance. It no longer feels philosophically heavy-handed, instead, it simply explores complex ideas in a natural way (just like the show). Big selling point here – Toph is always great, and this is probably the story where she plays the biggest role. She didn’t get a ton to do in these post-Comet stories, so having her be so important in this one was a great choice.
Rating: 8.4
Stay tuned for Part Two, where I rank the top 5 Avatar: The Last Airbender sequel and tie-in comics!
A Thinker in Space 
What do you think?