In my previous essay, I touched upon the fact that Bendis’ take on the Avengers has been very similar Chris Claremont’s enduring X-Men formula. Both storytelling engines use long stories with extensive subplots and no designated end. Both have an ensemble cast that mix characters across various age, experience, and personality archetypes ( in addition to an even larger supporting cast ). And both the New Avengers and the Classic Claremont X-Men have the heroes as underdogs and outlaws struggling against a nebulous enemy that can’t ever be defeated. One might consider it redundant for Marvel to take their #2 team franchise and twist it into an imitation of their #1. I’d be surprised this complaint hasn’t been leveled more often at Marvel, but for the fact that the company has handicapped the X-Men franchise on a level that seems almost calculated to make the Avengers more significant.
I say “ seems “ because I don’t know for sure. And it would be stupid for a company to take something profitable and push it to the side in favor of a new version of something classically LESS lucrative. If Marvel really wanted the X-Men to fail so the Avengers could become their central franchise, they could just cancel the books; that’s a strategy they’ve actually used with the Ultimate Marvel revamp. They wouldn’t intentionally make the books crappy, and I don’t think the X-Books are outright bad even the franchise has taken several missteps in the past few years. But they have made the X-Men increasingly cut-off from the rest of the Marvel Universe, and that’s where the company’s creative and commercial emphasis has been of late.
So let’s say, in a strictly hypothetical context, that Marvel wanted the Avengers to be their publishing bread and butter, and wanted to diminish the X-Men to make it happen. First, they would need a motive. The exponential increase in comic book movies is good enough; Marvel’s bread and butter is in intellectual property, and while both the X-Men and Avengers have that appeal, they have the drawback that their individual characters/parts do not make up the whole. You can do a successful X-Men movie; it’s been done four times now ( even if only three of those were team movies, and only two of that fraction weren’t a waste of time, money, and Stewart ). But a Colossus movie would never happen, just as a Wasp movie wouldn’t get past the pitch; they’re decent enough as members of an ensemble cast, but don’t have the appeal or versatility for isolated endeavors. Hence New Avengers, a Justice League-style team comic made primarily of successful solo characters; Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, and even lesser heroes with untapped licensing potential like Luke Cage.
Thus they give me the perfect perfect segue; one of the successful solo heroes put on the new team is Wolverine, the X-Man most successful as an independent protagonist. At the time, Wolverine was just “ lending “ his services to the Avengers, and still stuck with the X-Men. But from our hypothetical conspiracy perspective, this is the first blow to the X-Men. The most popular character of the X-Men has been partially exported to the Avengers, his marriage to the X-Men becoming a Salt Lake City affair. Phase one of eliminating Marvel’s own competition.
Of course, that leads to ( hypothetically ) sinister phase two-- House of M. This story brings the X-Men into an Avengers story for a mega crossover, and ends up DeciMating the mutant population. Homo superior, at that point numbering in the millions and able to fill their own nations, has been magically cut down to a small fraction ( which was supposed to vary to upwards of thousands, but once the name “ the 198 “ was attached, that became literal ). Most of the important characters keep their powers, but many villains and second-string heroes just become regular people, usually shuffled off to the background. Those who survive become cloistered within the mansion, all but ignoring super-heroing to focus exclusively on the problems faced by the few mutants left. Even those mutants are no longer special, because super-humans without the X-Gene stigma far out number them. There’s no reason being a mutant is different from being a radioactive spider victim or Super Soldier specimen or other, making the minority metaphor an arbitrary, self-imposed exile.
Which is even more convenient-- or deviously schemed. After House of M, mega-crossovers become even more prominent. Every year has a big event series, and every year, the X-Men decline to participate. Sure they get a tie-in book or two, but otherwise they remain peripheral ( except for Wolverine, who’s now readily identified with the Avengers and shows up for these events ). In Civil War, they remain neutral and simply don’t engage with either side; in World War Hulk, they’re just a brief pit stop on the Hulk’s rampage, as he attacks Professor X based on the possibility that he would have joined the heroes in shooting the green bastard into space ( even though Xavier was absent during the actual event ). And in Secret Invasion, all we see is the X-Men as the San Fransisco resistance for the Skrulls’ global attack.
Now, the X-Men franchise has continued through these events, but their storylines remain stifled and insular. They try to undo the DeciMation and restore the depowered mutants, but each time receive a microscopic nudge towards success at best. Now their plan involves making their own closed island nation while waiting for the Messiah Baby to save them. But since the X-Men’s only real mission now is trying to save the dying species, any other stories are irrelevant. If they go into space, find a lost civilization, or make a hit squad to fight zombies, it’s just trying to draw attention away from the big picture, and failing. Thus, what was once Marvel’s most important franchise is now treading water with its island of just under 200 super-malcontents, with no concern other than protecting said just under 200 super-malcontents.
Meanwhile, the Avengers has gained many of the tropes that made the X-Men popular. Large, diverse, and dynamic cast? Check-- in addition to the traditional rotations of the Avengers line-up, the book’s importance in the shared continuity gives it a huge supporting cast that pops in and out. Long stories that branch outwards instead of reaching a resolution? Check-- even after Secret Invasion wraps up one conspiracy storyline, we go directly into Dark Reign, where Norman Osborn becomes the new Big Bad. Stories where the heroes are the outsiders? Check-- the Avengers were on shaky territory with the authorities from the start of Bendis’ series, and they became the literal underground resistance after Civil War.
The difference is that in the Avengers, they are at least trying to do good, to fight against a massive multi-layered foe even if they fail. The X-Men are holed up on their island, ready to take down anyone who looks at them funny. But as Norman puts it, the X-Men can just be ignored as long as they stay off the mainland. Better for the Avengers, and their new merchandising powers.
Showing posts with label bendis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bendis. Show all posts
Friday, October 30, 2009
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
New Avengers: 5 Years New Retrospective--Storytelling Engine
In November, Marvel's popular comic series New Avengers will have been running for five years. If you count its run as starting when writer Brian Michael Bendis did the old Avengers book's final arc, it's been going since August 2004. In this time, the Avengers have become the most popular/profitable franchise Marvel has, supplanting even the X-Men. They've gone from one book to four; New was followed by Mighty, The Initiative, and now Dark.They've also become the flagship of the shared universe, dictating the way all the other books go.
Needless to say, the New Avengers have been subject to intense criticism. To be fair, much of this is internet criticism, which is about as intellectually sound as three-year-olds whining about how they want macaroni and cheese instead of Chef Boyardee. But valid points have also been made about the errors of Bendis and Marvel's direction. I happen to agree with many of the individual criticisms, but not enough that I would lose interest in the franchise overall. In fact, Bendis' Avengers may have made me the most intellectually engaged in a Marvel franchise's progress that I've ever been; the contradictions are part of what make it so fascinating and enjoyable.
The most common criticism of New Avengers as a series that I've seen is that it isn't new, other than as repackaging the Avengers in a darker and edgier setting. John Seavey, a very insightful comic blogger who coined the term " Storytelling Engine " in reference to an ongoing series' underyling " blueprint ", derided New Avengers in his essay on the Old Avengers. He commented that by excising the old Avengers' storytelling engine, the New Avengers have ended up a random group of superheroes that use some Avengers trappings.
I submit to Mr. Seavey that the void left by the old Avengers' long history is the point.
One thing that has always bothered me about superhero comics is how they so easily slip into taking their fantastical, convoluted genre history for granted. They're stories where you have grown men and women who dress in bright, revealing spandex, have amazing powers and gadgets, and fight evil across realms of magic, aliens, gods, and more. To a person who's familiar with superheroes, this is par for the course. To a person who's not familiar with superheroes, it's either incredibly awesome or incredibly stupid, depending on how the creators make it across.
The Old Avengers was a book whose storytelling engine so often put it in the " incredibly stupid category ". This is not to diminish the fine work the title's many writers and artists have done over the years, but to acknowledge that it was the kind of book that existed in a space where superheroes were business as usual. The original line-up was an attempt to ape DC's Justice League and have all the A-List heroes in one monthly book; however, at the time the Marvel Universe was still very new and didn't have a well-defined A-List. What's more, Marvel's heroes were much rougher around the edges in personality than DC's; where DC's Justice League was like the country club of superheroes with its affluent, pretty, well-adjusted white guys, Marvel's heroes tended to be significantly more anti-social. Spider-Man was not put on the original team, the Fantastic Four were already a cohesive family unit, and the Hulk left in the second issue after realizing that the prettier members hated him. So the line-up became a home for second-string heroes, and cycled through a growing base of possible members repeatedly. Like a sports team, the membership varied regularly, but the status quo was always there; they would always be the A-List superhero team, the bright-and-shiny public heroes that lived in Tony Stark's New York Mansion, had an official charter and regular meetings, and fought evil within the confines of the law.
Bendis' Avengers has that history, but it's used in a much more self-conscious way that allows for increased story potential; in his series, being a super-hero is not a fixed identity, but one that has been challenged by world events, and one that the characters work to redefine. When the series starts, the Old Avengers have disbanded after one of their most trusted members went crazy and used omnipotent power to kill, injure, discredit, and otherwise traumatize many of her comrades. A breakout at a supervillain prison creates a setting where a new group of heroes band together, and decide to take on the Avengers name again. But they don't slip so easily into the role, because they're much more aware of the complexity of the larger world. The stakes are higher than for the Old Avengers; the super-villain underworld has done their own organizing, the government is watching the superhero community with their own agenda in mind, and even the Avengers themselves have their own closets full of skeletons.
Critics have accused Bendis of crassly trying to make the Avengers into an A-List team, most notably by admitting members like Spider-Man and Wolverine. I would be a complete idiot if I denied the marketing value of putting Wolverine on an Avengers team, but it isn't without story purpose. The New Avengers want to establish new value as a symbol, and their membership establishes that. The initial line-up of the team is led by Captain America and Iron Man, original Avengers who represent Greatest Generation idealism and futurist realism, respectively. Spider-Man finally joins the team, the isolated nerd given a chance to prove himself after years of treading water as a working-class vigilante. The membership extends to the other spheres of the superhero community, as we have prominent urban hero Luke Cage ( once a blaxploitation stereotype " Hero-for-Hire ", now given a chance to truly prove his worth ), duplicitious SHIELD Agent Spider-Woman ( an explicit link to the conspiracy theory storylines ), omnipotent yet agoraphobic Superman analogue Sentry ( a hero who could have been great were it not for his mental illnesses, now given a chance to actually be great ), and pragmatically lethal X-Man Wolverine as a link between the two brands. It's a mix of A-List and B-List heroes across multiple parts of the Marvel Universe, that's a calculated appeal in-universe to make super-heroes cool again.
Of course, things don't actually turn out that way for the characters; hurbis is another big theme. In trying to control their meaning to the world, the heroes tend to create more problems. One the series ties into Mark Millar's Civil War storyline, this reaches a head as the heroes split into in-group and out-group. Iron Man is the in-group, who believes that by joining the system he can control it for the benefit of the people, by making superheroes a legitimate function of the law. Captain America is the other side, thinking that the heroes work best when they have autonomy and serve ideals instead of rules. From here the series splits off into two, with New Avengers being the underground resistance, and Mighty Avengers being Iron Man's attempt to make a fully legit team with complete control over their representation. This fails catastrophically for Iron Man, and he ends up being disgraced and replaced by Norman Osborn, which leads to Dark Avengers; villains using this kind of PR manipulation to pass as heroes.
Storywise, this owes much of its influence to the Ultimates, the cynically satirical alternative take on the Avengers. However, while the Ultimates redesigned the heroes from scratch, New Avengers engages with the history of the Marvel Universe; this is not a story about the dawn of the Age of Heroes, but the attempt to start a new one. And while the Ultimates was almost completely self-contained, Avengers has the task of setting the standard for the other Marvel Comics. The other major component to New Avengers is the storytelling style pioneered by Chris Claremont in his foundational X-Men stories; long, soap-operatic sagas with continual progression and no inherent end. By merging the two styles, it creates something unique; an ongoing superhero saga about the attempt to define superhero identity, and the many pitfalls along the way.
I'll be analyzing key Avengers stories from recent years to further try to understand where this is all headed.
Needless to say, the New Avengers have been subject to intense criticism. To be fair, much of this is internet criticism, which is about as intellectually sound as three-year-olds whining about how they want macaroni and cheese instead of Chef Boyardee. But valid points have also been made about the errors of Bendis and Marvel's direction. I happen to agree with many of the individual criticisms, but not enough that I would lose interest in the franchise overall. In fact, Bendis' Avengers may have made me the most intellectually engaged in a Marvel franchise's progress that I've ever been; the contradictions are part of what make it so fascinating and enjoyable.
The most common criticism of New Avengers as a series that I've seen is that it isn't new, other than as repackaging the Avengers in a darker and edgier setting. John Seavey, a very insightful comic blogger who coined the term " Storytelling Engine " in reference to an ongoing series' underyling " blueprint ", derided New Avengers in his essay on the Old Avengers. He commented that by excising the old Avengers' storytelling engine, the New Avengers have ended up a random group of superheroes that use some Avengers trappings.
I submit to Mr. Seavey that the void left by the old Avengers' long history is the point.
One thing that has always bothered me about superhero comics is how they so easily slip into taking their fantastical, convoluted genre history for granted. They're stories where you have grown men and women who dress in bright, revealing spandex, have amazing powers and gadgets, and fight evil across realms of magic, aliens, gods, and more. To a person who's familiar with superheroes, this is par for the course. To a person who's not familiar with superheroes, it's either incredibly awesome or incredibly stupid, depending on how the creators make it across.
The Old Avengers was a book whose storytelling engine so often put it in the " incredibly stupid category ". This is not to diminish the fine work the title's many writers and artists have done over the years, but to acknowledge that it was the kind of book that existed in a space where superheroes were business as usual. The original line-up was an attempt to ape DC's Justice League and have all the A-List heroes in one monthly book; however, at the time the Marvel Universe was still very new and didn't have a well-defined A-List. What's more, Marvel's heroes were much rougher around the edges in personality than DC's; where DC's Justice League was like the country club of superheroes with its affluent, pretty, well-adjusted white guys, Marvel's heroes tended to be significantly more anti-social. Spider-Man was not put on the original team, the Fantastic Four were already a cohesive family unit, and the Hulk left in the second issue after realizing that the prettier members hated him. So the line-up became a home for second-string heroes, and cycled through a growing base of possible members repeatedly. Like a sports team, the membership varied regularly, but the status quo was always there; they would always be the A-List superhero team, the bright-and-shiny public heroes that lived in Tony Stark's New York Mansion, had an official charter and regular meetings, and fought evil within the confines of the law.
Bendis' Avengers has that history, but it's used in a much more self-conscious way that allows for increased story potential; in his series, being a super-hero is not a fixed identity, but one that has been challenged by world events, and one that the characters work to redefine. When the series starts, the Old Avengers have disbanded after one of their most trusted members went crazy and used omnipotent power to kill, injure, discredit, and otherwise traumatize many of her comrades. A breakout at a supervillain prison creates a setting where a new group of heroes band together, and decide to take on the Avengers name again. But they don't slip so easily into the role, because they're much more aware of the complexity of the larger world. The stakes are higher than for the Old Avengers; the super-villain underworld has done their own organizing, the government is watching the superhero community with their own agenda in mind, and even the Avengers themselves have their own closets full of skeletons.
Critics have accused Bendis of crassly trying to make the Avengers into an A-List team, most notably by admitting members like Spider-Man and Wolverine. I would be a complete idiot if I denied the marketing value of putting Wolverine on an Avengers team, but it isn't without story purpose. The New Avengers want to establish new value as a symbol, and their membership establishes that. The initial line-up of the team is led by Captain America and Iron Man, original Avengers who represent Greatest Generation idealism and futurist realism, respectively. Spider-Man finally joins the team, the isolated nerd given a chance to prove himself after years of treading water as a working-class vigilante. The membership extends to the other spheres of the superhero community, as we have prominent urban hero Luke Cage ( once a blaxploitation stereotype " Hero-for-Hire ", now given a chance to truly prove his worth ), duplicitious SHIELD Agent Spider-Woman ( an explicit link to the conspiracy theory storylines ), omnipotent yet agoraphobic Superman analogue Sentry ( a hero who could have been great were it not for his mental illnesses, now given a chance to actually be great ), and pragmatically lethal X-Man Wolverine as a link between the two brands. It's a mix of A-List and B-List heroes across multiple parts of the Marvel Universe, that's a calculated appeal in-universe to make super-heroes cool again.
Of course, things don't actually turn out that way for the characters; hurbis is another big theme. In trying to control their meaning to the world, the heroes tend to create more problems. One the series ties into Mark Millar's Civil War storyline, this reaches a head as the heroes split into in-group and out-group. Iron Man is the in-group, who believes that by joining the system he can control it for the benefit of the people, by making superheroes a legitimate function of the law. Captain America is the other side, thinking that the heroes work best when they have autonomy and serve ideals instead of rules. From here the series splits off into two, with New Avengers being the underground resistance, and Mighty Avengers being Iron Man's attempt to make a fully legit team with complete control over their representation. This fails catastrophically for Iron Man, and he ends up being disgraced and replaced by Norman Osborn, which leads to Dark Avengers; villains using this kind of PR manipulation to pass as heroes.
Storywise, this owes much of its influence to the Ultimates, the cynically satirical alternative take on the Avengers. However, while the Ultimates redesigned the heroes from scratch, New Avengers engages with the history of the Marvel Universe; this is not a story about the dawn of the Age of Heroes, but the attempt to start a new one. And while the Ultimates was almost completely self-contained, Avengers has the task of setting the standard for the other Marvel Comics. The other major component to New Avengers is the storytelling style pioneered by Chris Claremont in his foundational X-Men stories; long, soap-operatic sagas with continual progression and no inherent end. By merging the two styles, it creates something unique; an ongoing superhero saga about the attempt to define superhero identity, and the many pitfalls along the way.
I'll be analyzing key Avengers stories from recent years to further try to understand where this is all headed.
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