Series Review: Avatar the Last Airbender Comics

Hi and welcome to the reading world!

Today’s review is actually for a full series of comics written by the Avatar: The Last Airbender team. These are official graphic novels that follow the television show. Avatar has been beloved by many for years so I’m excited to share more on the continuation from the animated tv show.

There are several installments in each of these comics, but I’m going to share my brief thoughts overall for each while focusing on the entire comic series as a whole. There may be spoilers for the animated tv show!

At this point, I’m unsure if the Avatar comics are completed. Imbalance, the final installment, came out in 2020. So, this review is up until then!

Avatar: The Last Airbender - The Promise Part 1 by Gene Luen Yang, Tim Hedrick
Published by Dark Horse Comics on January 24, 2012
Genres: Comics & Graphic Novels / Fantasy, Comics & Graphic Novels / Media Tie-In, Performing Arts / Animation
Pages: 80


The wait is over! Ever since the conclusion of Avatar: The Last Airbender, its millions of fans have been hungry for more—and it's finally here!

This series of digests rejoins Aang and friends for exciting new adventures, beginning with a faceoff against the Fire Nation that threatens to throw the world into another war, testing all of Aang's powers and ingenuity!

* The continuation of Airbender and the link to its upcoming sequel, Legend of Korra!

* Written by Gene Luen Yang, author of the National Book Award-nominated American Born Chinese.

The reading order of the Avatar Comics are as follows: The Promise, The Rift, The Search, Smoke & Shadow, North & South, and Imbalance. I would recommend reading them in order because the past events of other stories are oftentimes referenced and new in-novel characters are introduced and brought back in other installments.

My personal favorites of this series included The Search, Smoke & Shadow, and North & South. Of those three, The Search is definitely my new favorite. However, I liked all of the stories at least. There is more of the great character development and exploration of balance and change that the Avatar tv show was so beloved for. This expansion is a great way to revisit the characters!

Overall, if you’re a fan of the Avatar tv show and have seen how it ends and want more from the characters, I would recommend checking these out! The art is well done (Imbalance is done by different artists than the others but I personally liked the art in all of them) and the stories are pretty fast paced and engaging.

Have you read any of the Avatar graphic novels? Who’s your favorite character? Feel free to let me know in the comments!

Thank you for stopping by!

Rae