Wonder Man, The Crybaby Fanboy Avenger

Last week saw the release of Avengers #1, the new book by Brian Michael Bendis and John Romita Jr. that returns Marvel's venerable superhero team to a position of public adoration. This is after five years of stories also written largely by Bendis that had the Avengers come upon increasingly hard times, starting with the Scarlet Witch's descent into madness and culminating in Norman Osborn obtaining the official rights to the team. Many fans have wondered if Bendis will be able to write more optimistic Avengers stories, and some have completely dismissed the book before it even launched, including one within the text...

" From my point of view...the super hero civil war, the mutant decimation, the skrull invasion, norman osborn, they have-- they all have one thing in common...they are all the Avengers' fault. "

This whiny fan would be Simon Williams, a.k.a. veteran Avenger Wonder Man. This isn't the first time that Simon has complained about the state of things, either; during the Dark Reign stories in New Avengers, we saw him ranting on national television about how being an Avenger is pointless, Norman is what the public deserves, and God is dead ( seriously ). This was, of course, him whining in lieu of actually joining the other Avengers to fight Norman. ( He would join up with some super-villains in a Lethal Legion mini-series to fight Norman, and eventually get arrested, but I haven't read those issues and can't comment ).

But Simon's refusal to be an Avenger in modern times isn't a brave stand against the heroes' failings-- it's the temper tantrum of a spoiled brat who refuses to have things any way but his. It's the reaction of a character who is seeing the world change around him and, unable to accept that life is hard and that good people can make mistakes, chooses simply to say " Screw you guys, I'm going home. ". That the cover for the next issue has Simon attacking the new team suggests that when he does take action, it will be destructive action, trying to force the Avengers to stop taking scary risks.

Basically, Simon is acting like the stereotypical Avengers fan who rails constantly against Bendis for changing the franchise, but doesn't have any constructive criticisms as to how Bendis could do a better job, ( beyond rambling on about the " Good Ol' Days " ), and refuses to accept any potential merits to what he's doing.

It seems like Bendis would be the type of writer to use this sort of metatextual symbolism on purpose, since his Avengers stories have been almost entirely about the characters trying to determine what their identities are. Wonder Man is especially symbolic of a different era in the Avengers, because he's a character whose backstory is almost exclusively confined to the Avengers books, and who represents the worst of the book being about its own arcane, insular continuity soap opera. He was introduced as a throwaway villain, a character the Masters of Evil used to infiltrate the Avengers, but who developed a conscience and sacrificed himself in the name of redemption. Later, after a long absence where he was believed dead, it was revealed that his iconic energy body couldn't die, so he returned to the team. Since then, he's been involved in various story threads concerning Avengers " office romance ", and aside from an attempt at a solo series in the 1990's, hasn't done much else.

To whit; Simon Williams' brother became a deranged super-villain known as the Grim Reaper. He has another " brother " in the Vision, an android whose brain patterns are derived from his own. Simon had a thing for Vision's wife the Scarlet Witch, to the point of refusing to offer his brain patterns to rebuild a destroyed Vision. When he died a second time, the Witch's love brought him back, and he was gleefully sleeping with his brother's ex before breaking up with her because of her residual feelings for the Vision. Oh, and he's dicked around with a career as a B-List action movie star with the help from Hercules, developed an extremely homoerotic buddy in the Beast, and had a rivalry with Iron Man ( who unknowingly ran his father's company out of business, leading Simon to embezzle funding ).

Amidst all of this, what Simon is devoid of is a compelling character hook on his own. Like many characters on the historical Avengers line-up, he's a C-Lister whose appeal is only in the context of an ensemble cast-- take away his connections to the team, and he's not much more than a badly dressed, exponentially whinier ersatz Superman. Which makes him fine when the Avengers is a book about itself, with the team more preoccupied by who's sleeping with who than with doing their jobs and fighting evil. But Bendis has actually given the team opposition much more significant and lasting than villains against the status quo-- old soap opera plot threads have turned into catastrophic nervous breakdowns taking many lives, increasingly complicated cultural situations have created schisms between former friends, and villains have succeeded by attacking through the system. The heroes like Iron Man who Simon blames for causing the problems were only trying to save lives under circumstances where there were no clear solutions, and even then they paid dearly for it. Simon, on the other hand, has been on the sidelines at best, and simply refusing to do anything at worst.

So, without the classic Avengers makeup, Simon doesn't have much to hang his hat on. Now that it's gone, and can't return to the way it was, he can't ( or won't ) think of anything to do except piss and moan about how things are so scary and complicated. Sound familiar?

While there are many valid criticisms that can be levied at Bendis for his Avengers stories ( and I've made several of them ), I can sympathize with his position. His job, as the writer of the book, is to keep it consistently interesting so that people keep buying it. He's done so by trying a lot of different things, and not all of them have worked, with some even being catastrophic mistakes ( see: the Sentry ). But like the Avengers, he's been in a position where he has to take risks-- the franchise had been reduced to B-List at best shortly before he took over, with little to differentiate it from any other super-team book, so he was brought in to overhaul it. And he, like the Avengers at the start of Heroic Age, has ultimately succeeded into transforming the Avengers into something that's once again important. Many of his online critics, like Wonder Man, don't like the direction of the team but aren't going to risk finding something else to attach their attention to, so they'll just level less-than-constructive criticism at it.

You can practically hear him screaming " Worst. Avengers. Ever! " as a battle cry.

The Best Comics of 2009

After a long post of grousing, I felt it was needed to mention the stand-outs of 2009's comic books-- and there were plenty of them. There were a lot of books that genuinely excited me last year. The rise of the Norman Empire made Marvel's line all in all more interesting, and even DC had a few standouts amidst its usual mix of Silver Age nostalgia and relentless sadism. Meanwhile, the smaller publishers gave us a salvo of great new material-- from continually entertaining series like Dynamo 5 and Umbrella Academy, to new phenomenons like Chew and Beasts of Burden. Granted, there was still the influence of Sturgeon's Law upon the industry, but this year it seemed that the quality AND quantity of 2009's portion of good comics was an increase over last year.

So, the awards:

BEST SUPERHERO STORY ARC: World's Most Wanted, Invincible Iron Man, Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca, Marvel. Not since Daredevil: Born Again has a mainstream superhero been torn apart so effectively. I could discuss how the story destroyed the entire empire of Tony Stark, down to the last soldering iron and broom closet. I could discuss how his supporting cast was forced to pick up his slack, and prove their worth against impossible odds. And I could even discuss the meticulousness of Tony's plans, which were so elaborate he could even pull them off with a barely working brain at hand.

But therein lies the greatest part of the story; Tony having to sacrifice his very intellect to fulfill his plans and atone for his sins. Many stories have been told with heroes on the run, and heroes like Tony Stark typically maintain a MacGyver-like aptitude for making solutions out of thin air. In this case, the deconstruction even went for his mind. An uncharacteristic level of sophistication was used for the treatment of Tony's degenerating brain, having the loss of knowledge occur in multiple areas in a randomized arrangement, and showing that he could still accomplish things without certain sections of ability ( as opposed to the linear model of IQ that is tragically common in pop culture ). Eventually, Tony would lose all of his function-- but the last thing to go was his heroism. Even at the end of the story, so addled he couldn't form a complete sentence, Tony tried to fight back against a superior and completely depraved enemy. His victory was phyrric in the practical sense, but in the moral sense, flawless-- would a lesser superhero subject themselves to a fate worse than death to fight off such an enemy? Or would such a story even occur to a lesser writer than Fraction?

The revelation that Tony had a back-up of his mind intended to be used by the other superheroes may somewhat mitigate the redemption of this story, but it was still a huge risk for the hero. And for the creative team, to take a whole year with a story that had the protagonist mentally deteriorating. But Fraction's brilliant scripting and Larroca's always excellent visual storytelling ( especially in regards to his renditions of technology ) pulled it off.

MOST IMPROVED SERIES: The Boys, Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, Dynamite. At its launch, one might have dismissed the Boys as being a puerile spoof of superhero comics, much in the same vein of Mark Millars' Wanted. Superhero comic fans still do, but if they actually read the comic, they'd have less and less justification for their critiques beyond prudishness. What began as a continuation of Ennis' " The Pro " has actually been living up to the author's claim that it would exceed his magnum opus Preacher.

For all the gaudy spandex trappings, the Boys isn't really a superhero comic-- it's a scathing critique of the military-industrial complex, with the capes as the garnish. From the start we knew that the stereotypical superhero universe was just smoke and mirrors for a world of Caligula-like excess, but Ennis and Robertson drove the point home further and further. That the origin of all superhuman power is a compound developed decades ago through the Nazis' vivisection? That the United States' leadership is divided in a coup between the President, the Vice-President, and the military contractors responsible for the power of both? Or that the X-Men analogue " G-Men " is composed of children abducted at a young age and sexually abused to give them the right disposition? Even Norman Osborn in his flag-colored robot suit is nowhere near so cutting an instrument of satire.

Not that it's just unpleasant to read; it has all the great dialogue and dark humor characteristic of a Garth Ennis comic, and Darick Robertson's excellent character design is in full force here. There's even a love story at the heart that serves as an anchor amidst the relentless cruelty of the universe. What Preacher did as a satire of religion, the Boys appears to be doing as a satire of military culture; don't let the abuse of capes detract from that.

BEST SINGLE ISSUE: Captain America: Who Will Wield the Shield. Ed Brubaker, Butch Guice, Luke Ross. Marvel. This wasn't a good year for Cap, after an exceptional 2008; the big event of the year, the resurrection of Steve Rogers, was just an extended action scene with a pointlessly convoluted plot, harmed by the art of Bryan Hitch ( who has moved too far from energetic storytelling into hyper-rendered set pieces, with the story suffering for it. Fortunately, the one-shot epilogue to the series delivered in a very substantial way.

The question raised by the title is answered, but not conclusively-- the prediction was that with Steve Rogers back, his replacement Bucky would either meet a quick end or simply fade into the background. Steve metatextually agrees, hence how he responds to ominous visions by asking Bucky to stay as Cap. But Steve's not simply retiring; he's keeping active in the hero community, especially given how far it's gone to hell in his absence. The characterization is as sharp as ever under Ed Brubaker, but what really sold me on the issue was Steve's dialogue with Barack Obama.

Marvel writers tend to lean towards the left, hence why Marvel-Dubya has been stripped naked tortured by Magneto AND cuckolded by Iron Man. Given Obama's reputation, one would think he'd escape this scrutiny-- at least, last year, that's what one would think. But Barack's inability to make real change has not been unnoticed, and his talk with Captain America makes him almost a pathetic figure-- he's talking about how he doesn't agree with things like Superhuman Registration or HAMMER Director Norman Osborn, but how he can't do anything about it. One might even think that he actually voted for the Registration Act while he was a Senator, and is retrospectively downplaying this given the company he's with. Obama isn't the savior others made him out to be, and his office forces him to support the status quo that he knows should be changed-- so thus, he turns to Captain America.

It's really interesting since the Dark Reign was conceived during Dubya's reign of error, and the Marvel Universe finally appears to be catching up to current politics. If Tony and later Norman represented the Bush administration, Steve is now Obama-- the figurehead for change and hope. I'll enjoy seeing how well he holds up under this level of pressure.

BEST NEW SERIES: Chew, John Layman and Trevor Guillory, Image. The moment this appeared in the solicitations, it looked like a huge conceptual gamble-- something that would be wonderful or terrible. Certainly the ideas represented were way out of the audience's experience. A detective with a psychometric sense of taste, who can read the past of what he eats? A job that forces him to eat all manner of awful things? A food-themed alternate America where the FDA rules with an iron fist and poultry is banned?

And then you get to the series itself, beyond the first issue. The character designs are extremely bizarre and exaggerated; the character of Mason is described by the artist as " the love child of Orson Welles and a grizzly bear ". The stories involve all sorts of food-themed bizarreness, such as a woman who can empathically influence people with her writing about food. And there's a meticulous constructed plot here about the Bird Flu scare, and the truth about it. Yes, this is an ongoing series with very dark undercurrents about a detective who psychically reads what he eats ( except beets, which somehow block his power ). It would either succeed spectacularly or perish pathetically.

And guess what? It succeeded. So suck it.

BEST MINI-SERIES: Beasts of Burden, Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson, Dark Horse. It's no secret that I love animals, especially dogs and cats. I love seeing comics about animals being animals; anthropomorphized enough to talk, but not enough to stand, wear clothes, or have human-type anatomy ( I'm NOT going any further with that ). Unfortunately, it's hard to find that balance in a way that's convincing. We3 was a triumph in this arena, but beyond that, good treatments of animal characters are few and far between.

Beasts of Burden delivered this. It's a great comic about household pets solving neighborhood supernatural crimes. The series is still relatively new-- it has some backstory as an online strip and only four issues on the stands-- and admittedly many of the characters seem identical. But the dogs and cats are wonderful creatures, who show depth beyond the story structure requirements when given a chance. Here, they aren't animals acting like their human masters; they're animals who have far more going on than their masters assume, but in a uniquely non-human way; the dialogue is in English, but the perspectives feel like they're from a different species with their own religious traditions. There are many stories about evil in suburban backyards, but few where the animals hold the line.

What's more, it's not a simple funny story. It has a strong element of horror, and sadly, that horror isn't always from the monsters-- the worse scenes involve human treatment of the pets. Issue 2, which had a ghostly dog trying to find justice for the deaths of her puppies ( coldly thrown in a lake ), was just brutal. And issue 4 was just as gripping.

They've only begun to scratch the surface of the Beasts of Burden's world, but Dorkin and Thompson gave us so much, that I demand more in 2010.

And the Person Of The Year: Brian Michael Bendis, for New Avengers and Dark Avengers. The series of essays I did for New Avengers' five-year-anniversary illustrate better how I feel about Bendis' work on the Avengers as a whole, but the Avengers books were the comics I followed closest this year. Intellectually pretentious fans may bitch about crossovers, and lord knows I've done it too; however, I can't deny how much I've enjoyed Dark Reign, especially in the aforementioned Iron Man comic and the Avengers books.

Bendis' Avengers have steadily been improving since the rough start of Avengers Disassembled, and really hit their stride when he started writing the second book Mighty Avengers as well. The idea of two duelling Avengers teams was a welcome one, but then the two teams were holding back against each other due to their former friendships. Now, we have the dynamic consolidated, with one book for the heroes, and one book for the newly-marketable villains. The way both of Bendis' books tie into each other is a unique dynamic, and I have to admit, one that could only work in a super-consolidated shared universe.

In New Avengers, we've seen many improvements. The Secret Invasion conspiracy stories are over, so the dangling plot threads have been reduced. The character dynamics have been developed further, with Luke Cage and Jessica Jones really starting to see how impossible it is to raise a child as vigilante metahumans, Clint Barton's nervous breakdown getting more and more extreme, and Captain Bucky joining with the disposition of a kid trying to fit in with his older brother's friends. Also, Stuart Immonen's art has turbo-charged the enjoyment of the book, and the stories have become more focused without the rotations and flash.

Meanwhile, Dark Avengers is just great. Norman Osborn, a complete monster in other comics, actually receives some sympathy in the comic series that is basically his. He's joined by the rest of his EllisBolts buddies, also dressed as heroes and trying/failing to restrain their psychopathic tendencies. The team isn't all evil, as Ares ( more of a Chaotic Neutral figure in the D&D alignment schema ) and the impressionable Sentry are on the staff, but it's still very much a villain book. The entertainment is in watching how long they can keep it up, and from all indications, it's falling apart. Also, Mike Deodato Jr. is on the art duties, and he's the artist who's given us the definitive version of Norman since he drew the guy's sex-face.

I hope that once Dark Reign ends early next year, the two-book dynamic will be kept up, because I've enjoyed it so much this year that reverting to a single Avengers faction with a unified heroic mission would be a let down. Kudos, BMB.

Here's to 2010 being even better.

New Avengers Five Years New Retrospective: Marvel's Wardrobe Malfunction

If there's one moment that I think defines Bendis' New Avengers for better or worse, it's the very first scene of the first issue, where a shadowy figure offers Max Dillion ( a.k.a. the villain Electro ) a job, and tells him that it's up to him how he wants to dress for it; costume or no costume. Dillon puts on his lightning mask, gives us an evil grin, and says " costume ".

This, in microcosm, set the stage for the way Marvel would be doing the next few years of stories, and the way they continue to write. Keep in mind that New Avengers came at a period when Marvel, under the direction of controversial ( and at that point, recently absent ) president Bill Jemas, had rebelled against their roots. Their biggest hit was the Ultimate Universe, which reinvented the characters from scratch in a more realistic and subdued context, dramatically simplifying or removing the costumes ( except Spidey ), largely avoiding stories about magic and gods and grounding everything in either the Super-Soldier Formula or the mutant gene. Many of their franchises had been made over to reject superhero genre tropes; the Grant Morrison X-Men most notoriously, having ditched costumes altogether and explicitly denying their superhero identities. But we also had the Bruce Jones Hulk, who simply wandered the countryside in a conspiracy theory variant of the old TV show; Captain America in the Marvel Knights imprint, spending more of his time fighting Islamic fundamentalists than costumed criminals; even Bendis' Daredevil, which used quite a bit of the old continuity, made the distinction between Matt Murdoch as superhero and Matt Murdoch as pulp vigilante. Marvel was not really publishing non-superhero material, but they weren't comfortable with their old characters.

Whatever your opinion is on this rebellion against Marvel history, it was not obvious in the Avengers of the time, and one has to admit that they suffered for it. The Avengers remained the traditional superhero team living in a posh mansion and fighting costumed criminals. The team had writers who kept them in that status quo, most notably Kurt Busiek, but also Geoff Johns and Chuck Austen. In the meantime, Marvel was also publishing the Ultimates, which gave us a strikingly warped version of the characters. And the market seemed to prefer the latter; Tony Stark as a repentant do-gooder in form-fitting metal tights wasn't as dynamic as Tony Stark as a decadent neo-liberal in a humanoid mech. Regardless of individual tastes, Ultimate-style comics were where the discussion was; to try and ignore it was folly.

So thus we get to what Bendis did, which wasn't to deny the superhero genre's trappings-- but not to embrace them, either. The way Bendis writes the Marvel characters, being a superhero or a supervillain is a statement; you wear a costume as a conscious choice about what identity you're projecting. Electro is a villain who does not need a costume; when he's powered up, he's spewing electric sparks everywhere, so wearing a green leotard with a yellow lightning mask is redundant as well as ridiculous. By putting on the costume, he's putting himself out there-- in that issue, he arrives at the metahuman prison called the Raft, breaks all the convicts out, and stands before them in his costume, dramatically telling them that they owe him. The costume isn't just a fact of the business for Max Dillon, it's an emblem of why he's in this business-- to look, feel, and act powerful. Even though they use their power to help instead of hurt, superheroes have the same motivation.

And this goes not just for costumes, but superhero genre trappings in general. Since New Avengers, Marvel's publishing landscape has swung back towards comics' historical excesses. Shared universe crossover has increased, with New Avengers and Mighty/Dark Avengers being the center and every other comic following their lead. Stories aren't written as much like done-in-one movies in trade paperback form, with long, subplot-filled sagas like the Death of Captain America back in vogue. And history is once more a motivator for contemporary stories, from Bucky coming back from the dead and eventually taking on his mentor's patriotic identity, to Spidey's dead ex Gwen Stacy having been impregnated with Norman Osborn's gobliny children ( the former being a good example, the latter being one of significantly lesser quality ). But they're doing this largely with the awareness that they're working with a very specific genre, and trying to expand or subvert it. I've talked about Bendis' Avengers being very conscious of their image, but even solo books, like Matt Fraction's sci-fi-driven Iron Man or Ed Brubaker's political thriller-inspired Captain America, have made the superhero heritage of their books more deliberate in the new era.

One could say that this mixture of old and new leads to greater work; one could also say that it's a faulty compromise that gets away from what makes superheroes work. But it's the way Marvel's been for years, and Bendis' New Avengers has led the charge.

New Avengers Five Years New Retrospective: My Bottom 10

When I started chronicling the ten things I liked best about Bendis' Avengers, I knew that in fairness, I would have to write a list of things that I thought were mistakes. Earlier I compared Bendis' Avengers to Chris Claremont' old X-Men, and the biggest strength of both is also their biggest weakness; they produce a massive output of writing and take a lot of chances. Not all of these risks will pan out, otherwise there won't be risks. But even though Claremont did many ill-conceived things like a year of stories following the wanderings of the individual members of a disbanded X-Men, he also made the team the It superhero team comic for many years. I feel that Bendis is very similar in the way he approaches the Avengers.

That said, here are the ten things about the Bendis Avengers that bombed, again in no particular order...

10.) The return of the 70's and 80's looks. Since Marvel writers are basically doing professional fan fiction, they're definitely going to bring in the trappings of their favorite eras. In Bendis' case, this is sometimes good, and has resuscitated characters like Luke Cage, Jessica Drew ( at least, the one we THOUGHT was Jessica Drew ), Mockingbird, Namor, Brother Voodoo, and even characters handled by collaborating writers like Ms. Marvel. The downside is that most of them have returned in their nostalgic looks-- looks which were better left in the Bronze Age. Simple looks involving skintight fabric and bright colors in solid patterns worked back then, but the era of hyper-rendering superhero artists has called for more intricate designs, and the era of identity-politics-conscious writers makes the notion of wearing a costume a special statement and not a default wardrobe. . Ms. Marvel, an Air Force woman and outspoken feminist, wouldn't be prancing around in a swimsuit and hooker boots. Namor, the king of Atlantis, should have better fashion sense than a black wetsuit with a disco-style open chest. And there is little to nothing that says " Spider " about Spider-Woman's costume, a rather bland red number. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that Luke Cage isn't wearing the tiara and puffy yellow jacket again...

9.) Jessica Drew's return. I praised the revelation that the Spider-Woman who joined the team earlier was really the Skrull Queen in disguise. I'm not going to praise the return of the original, who has been Lost in Space all this time and is now moping about being usurped by an alien empress. I wasn't terribly fond of the issues of her solo comic which I read, but she's just a waste of whiny space in New Avengers.

8.) Ronin. Bendis and Joe Quesada designed a great superhero ninja look that to this date hasn't found an appropriate character. If Ronin were Daredevil as was originally planned, it would be a great fit. But the changes ended up making the character Maya Lopez with padded masculine muscles, and then proceeded to drop that plot for almost a year. When Ronin returned, it was worn by an even less appropriate character-- Clint Barton, formerly Hawkeye. It's bad enough that a Japanese-style ninja costume be taken by a non-Japanese character ( and seriously, we need more Asian and Asian American heroes and heroines besides stereotypes like Sunfire.. Secret Identities shows us how much potential there is in that identity space ), but at least Matt Murdoch and Maya Lopez have prior background in Japanese culture and ninjutsu. This is a completely different skill set from a backwoods American carny who trained in archery and hand-to-hand-combat, who now is apparently a master of the katana. I buy that about as well as I buy Chris Farley as a ninja, but at least that was meant to be funny.

7.) Secret Invasion-era New and Mighty Avengers issues. I loved the main Secret Invasion series, but it rendered the Avengers books themselves as repositories for tie-in material. Some of this was good work that illuminated the seeds planted for the Skrulls' Invasion. Most of it was, as befits most tie-ins to crossovers, filler material that didn't advance anything dramatically and just served to keep the titles going. I'm glad that for Captain America's book, they're focusing exclusively on the Reborn even until it finishes ( even if it's still looking to replace the improved Cap with the old model...but more on that in another post ).

6.) House of M. I've already mentioned how this crossover kneecapped the X-Books, but it just wasn't good as a story in and of itself. it starts promising enough, with the Avengers and X-Men teaming up to take care of the Scarlet Witch situation ( one way or another, creating an interesting ethical dillema )....but then we go into Wanda's Bizarro world, and the next six issues have the heroes puttering around the alternative universe like fools, gradually regaining their original memories only to completely fail to put the world back. In the end, Wanda causes the problem and Wanda fixes it; everyone else is just peripheral. For the first mega-crossover in years, it was a tremendous letdown.

5.) Dr. Strange. Similar scenario, where the heroes do nothing but hand-wring until the climactic moment where they fail. To this date, Dr. Strange failed to detect Wanda's madness, failed to cure it once it became epidemic, chickened out of the Civil War, and used dark magic to fight the Hulk only to get smacked down himself. As far as Sorcerer Supremes go, he went from being the New York Yankees of magic to the New York Mets. Thankfully, Brother Voodoo has taken his place so he may retire with dignity.

4.) The reasoning presented behind Wolverine's Avengers membership. I actually like having Logan on the Avengers-- he's a cosmopolitan character who can work in a lot of settings, and on a team book the writers are less likely to wallow in his nonsensical spider web of a backstory. But Tony Stark brought him onto the team because he's " able to get to a place where we can't "-- i.e., killing the bad guys. This is really wrong for two reasons; one, because heroes should consider lethal force the last resort, not the pre-emptive one. And two, because neither Tony or Captain America needs to get their new Canadian friend to do their dirty work. Cap had to kill plenty of Nazis in The Deuce, and Tony's origin involved him burning his way out of the POW camp in Vietnam/now Afghanistan/eventually Iran. Neither man likes doing it, but they aren't chicken about it either.

3.) The Hood's return. Because this character isn't the Hood. The Hood we know and love, the one created for the MAX imprint by Brian K. Vaughan and Kyle Hotz, was a realistically dysfunctional young man with a deeply messy personal life, who lucked into magic powers as a means to make something of his life. He was a unique and deep character....the one who appeared in New Avengers is just a Kingpin substitute, with dialogue far more melodramatic than a nineteen-year-old petty crook who never finished school would have. It would have been much better to get a new character, as opposed to taking one who doesn't fit the role at all and diluting him.

2.) The Sentry. Yes, we know he's Superman as a schizophrenic agoraphobe, and I admit that's a really compelling hook...or, at least, WAS a really compelling hook. But in practice he's just been a hindrance, a deus ex machina who occasionally doesn't come into play because he's huddled in a fetal position due to a psychotic episode. His own wife said " find a way to power him down, or kill him before he kills us all ". Now if only someone would GET AROUND TO DOING THAT, that would be a good sentiment.

And the number one worst thing to happen in New Avengers ( which actually IS the worst thing... )

1.) Clint Barton's return. Had Hawkeye stayed dead in Avengers Disassembled, it would have been a satisfying heroic sacrifice. Since he's come back from the dead--twice consecutively-- he's just been a morally defective wanker. He slept with an amnesiac Scarlet Witch, didn't tell her who he really was, then ditched her the next morning-- given her mental situation, an act that could/should get him convicted for rape. He returned in the Ronin costume simply because it was there, and hasn't stopped wearing it despite having no background in ninjutsu. And he's gone after Norman Osborn in the most ineffectual way possible, first by ranting at him on the television with all the airtight debating strategy of a man with a " End of the World " sandwich board, then by trying to pull a hit on the guy, as if murdering an appointed official ( even an evil one ) would solve anything in the long term. I literally laughed out loud when Clint got the crap kicked out of him in his attempt to assassinate Norman; since I used to like the character, I wish I could enjoy him for more than schadenfreude.

One more essay to go, then I'll have five essays for five years...

New Avengers: Five Years New Retrospective-- 10 Things that Worked

( Note; this will be the third in a series of five essays, celebrating five years of New Avengers. I presume I could do more, or less for that matter, but I like symmetry. So there.

A friend of mine, in response to the first Five Years New essay, wrote a thoughtful response onhow New Avengers relates to Avengers history, and how it now IS Avengrs history. Realizing that Brian Michael Bendis has been writing the comic for five years leads me to two conclusions;

1.) I'm getting old, since I remember an era when the Avengers was just called the Avengers, Clint Barton called himself Hawkeye, and we were almost going to call John Kerry president, and

2.) New Avengers has been around so long now that even if Bendis leaves the title, it's still become entrenched in the comic's history, and the book is not going to go back to the way it used to be.

In other words, the people still whining about Bendis being the worst Avengers writer ever had the final nail put in the coffin of their hopes for a retro revival. For many readers, New Avengers IS the Avengers. If they started reading with Bendis, their first frame of reference for the comic is a team with Wolverine and Spider-Man. If they were long-time Avengers fans who have been following the book, they've gotten further and further away from a point where bringing back a team of familiar second-stringers would be a viable choice. This isn't a statement about the New Avengers' quality, so much as an assertion of fact; New Avengers isn't going anywhere.

As for assertions about the book's quality; well, I'm going to do this in two parts. The first part here is a discussion, Letterman-style, of the ten things that Bendis has done right with the title. The second part will be the ten things he's done that I didn't think succeeded. Positives first though, since that's an inherently rebellious act on the internet.

The Top 10 Best Contributions Brian Michael Bendis has made to the Avengers

10.) Veranke. From the start of the reboot, new recruit Spider-Woman's loyalties were in question, and readers were asked to wonder wether or not she was really on the Avengers' side. Based on the information given, the answers available were; no, yes, kind of, and No To The Millionth Power. The latter occured when it was revealed that she was not actually Spider-Woman, but Queen Veranke of the Skrull Empire in disguise. Even if you didn't believe that Jessica Drew was doing things for the right reasons, we were given plenty of evidence to believe that at least she wasn't a Skrull impostor. That she was, and that still it made sense in hindsight, was an impressive feat-- and gives re-readings of older New Avengers issues a really creepy undercurrent.

9.) Bendis-speak. Bendis' unique style of dialogue, admitted by the author as influenced by David Mamet, tends to be polarizing-- you either love his back-and-forths or hate it. I'm in the love category, because he pays more attention to conversational rhythm than most comic book scripters. Individual quotes may not be as spectacular, but dialogues flow marvelously-- and while others have criticized the way he writes characters from a non-American-lower-middle class background, I think it's a strength of his-- characters like Namor, Ares, and even Dr. Doom sound like they're actually engaging with the person they're talking to, instead of just going into monologue and tying it into whoever's nearby.

8.) The Cabal.While a secret society of heroic metahuman kings and visionaries proved to be a huge mistake on the part of the characters ( and IMO, a mistake on the part of the writers ), Norman's own group worked much better. Like Jesus if the Son of God were about sinning in every way possible instead of the other way around, Norman has united many different groups for a common cause-- ruling the world. Of course, the various megalomaniacs in Norman's Inner Circle don't like being subordinate to the once and future Green Goblin, so their secret meetings are always an entertaining display of tension and disdain. Thus far two of Norman's Cabal have betrayed him, and there's three more to go-- and from what the solicitations, Victor's the next, leading to a war of the tin tyrants.

7.) The Luke Cage/Jessica Jones marriage. Amidst the overwhelming darkness of the past few years of Marvel, this has been one of the great bright spots. The fact that it's Marvel's first mixed-race marriage isn't important ( well, it's a great thing for representations, but it's just background that doesn't overshadow the characters' individual depths ), here we have two heroic characters who've had hard lives finding solace in each other. Their marriage has been troubled by the shit they've had to deal with as outlaws, especially with their baby involved-- but they've ultimately managed to become closer due to the adversity, not drift apart. If Spider-Man remembered that he was married at one point, he'd regret selling that to the devil after seeing Luke and Jess as a dynamic and likable 'ship.

6.) Avenging Ares. The moral complications of the Marvel Universe have made it so that a public Avengers team can not only have a villainous God of War on the team, but have him in a capacity where he doesn't even need to feign recriminations. Michael Avon Oeming made Ares a complex character, and Bendis gave him the spotlight-- and in a capacity where his love of battle and gratuitous violence always steal the show. Tony Stark called him a mix between Wolverine and Thor, but he's more like the video game character Kratos-- angry and dangerous but more often than not pointed at people who deserve it ( as opposed to that game's Ares, who's more like the old Marvel Ares )At the same time, he does have redeeming qualities beyond pointing his axe at the right targets-- he's trying to be a good single father and do honest work, even if it's for a reprehensible human being like Norman Osborn. Hopefully when Norman falls, Ares won't go with him.

5.) The Iron Patriot. Say, for a moment, that evil is analogous to sugar content, and villains are deserts. Norman Osborn as the costumed maniac Green Goblin is like a good solid milk chocolate bar. Norman as a more realistic corporate shark is like a Nutrageous, loaded with extra peanut butter and caramel. Norman dressed up in a patriot-colored Iron Man suit and swindling the public into thinking that he's America's greatest hero is a Godiva Chocolate Cheesecake. And that Norman combined with the fact that he now believes he's America's greatest hero without acting any less depraved? That's like getting high fructose corn syrup injected directly into your jugular vein.

4.) Iron Man's rise to power. In recent years, Iron Man has gone from a dependable B-Lister to Marvel's A-List. Obviously the excellent movie and RDJ are the main causes, but he's also gotten a lot of great writing in recent years ( even amidst Civil War, when more than half of Marvel's staff felt that he needed a swastika on his armor ). Bendis may not write Tony's solo book, but he always wrote a dynamic Iron Man in the Avengers-- a character whose mistakes come from the fact that he's trying to do good on a much greater scale than any other hero. One of the best scenes in Bendis' run is the moment in New Avengers where he solemnly addresses Luke Cage's team, asking them if they have a better idea how to help the world than him. Unfortunately for him, they don't/can't answer.

It's also worth noting that Bendis' Iron Man scenes are written with a unique display of Tony in the armor-- they show him as a floating VR self in a womb of monitors. Sometimes artists make it look like he's a little fairy floating in a hollow suit, but overall it's a clever way to display the character's abilities.

3.) Luke Cage. It is a great thing that a hero who started out as a Hero For Hire with a tiara, poofy yellow jacket, and endless supply of stereotypical one-liners ( " Where's my money, honey? " ) could eventually take up the reins of Captain America. Luke 's easily the most heroic of the New Avengers, and he often does so simply through stoicism-- refusing to give in, be it to misguided heroes or outright bastards. In the latest issues, he's stood up to Norman while dying of a heart attack.

2.) The Dark Avengers. A perversely entertaining outgrowth of not only Warren Ellis' excellent Thunderbolts, but the direction of the Marvel Universe in general. In Civil War, the super-villains took an unfortunate backseat to the heroes' petty squabbling. Now they've come back at full force, even stealing their enemies' intellectual properties. Not only is Dark Avengers a great series, but it's helped several characters get a new lease-- it's good to see Bullseye moving his agenda beyond killing Daredevil's girlfriends.

And the Number One Good Thing;

1.) Luke Cage in the Elevator, Circa the Ronin Arc. Thrown out a skyscraper window by ninjas, Luke must get back to the upstairs fight-- but first he must take the elevator and listen to a rendition of Matthe wWilder's biggest and debatably only musical hit, Break my Stride. Normally music flops in comics, but this scene used the lyrics to add insult to Cage's injury.

Okay, it's not in a particular order, but these are still the things I liked.

New Avengers: Five Years New Retrospective-- Avenging killed the X-Book Star



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.

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.