I Got Issues Comic Reviews for 1/15/2014: Velvet, Miracleman, Amazing X-Men, and Ultimate Ultimates

Another week, another stack of comics (though unfortunately I couldn't find a copy of Voice in the Dark #3).

AMAZING X-MEN #3: The art by Ed McGuinness is an absolute dream, full of excitement and energy in every panel. The story is at this point mostly an excuse to give Ed McGuiness exciting things to draw. It's a Jason Aaron X-Men comic, which means it's full of wacky high-concept stuff first and characterization second. The interactions between the characters are perfunctory, especially with the obvious character shipping (and the revelation that Nightcrawler and Storm have always been in love with each other, and didn't Aaron just pair her up with Wolverine? Either she's polyamorous, which I wouldn't mind, or pairing her up is the most interesting thing Aaron has planned for Ororo, which I would seriously mind)At least this doesn't have any overbearingly wacky stuff like the 12-year-old Hellfire Club (literally the most annoying team of villains in Marvel history, from my perspective at least), but it's still a comic about the X-Men joining Nightcrawler in the afterlife to fight Satan and his pirate crew. In other words, it's the Axe Cop of the X-Men. But again, great art. RECOMMENDED.

ULTIMATE COMICS CATACLYSM: THE ULTIMATES #3: The Ultimate comics have stuck around far longer than they should have, the promise of a simpler, more relatable Marvel Universe long since expired in favor of a bunch of earth-shaking cataclysms. Galactus eating the world is the third time we've seen this happen, but this tie-in by Josh Fialkov and Carmine di Giandomenico has been surprisingly entertaining. It takes the rather predictable doomsday set-up and uses it to do a fast-paced, snappily-written story with a snarkier take on the formula. Since the story has Nick Fury's Ultimate Howling Commandos (re: a bunch of second and third stringers, such as Ultimate Stature and Ultimate Hercules) on an essential doomsday mission against a techno-organic Gah Lak Tus cult. The characters are suitably dysfunctional, but there's a bit of pathos too with Danny Ketch's dying words, and his eventual fate. It doesn't really end, but it's interesting enough that I'll actually try the Ultimate FF book that follows. The art by Carmine di Giandomenico is exceptional too, which nearly matches the widescreen detail of Bryan Hitch but has a fluid, expressive line more appealing than the usual "photo-realism" we see in this sort of book. RECOMMENDED.

MIRACLEMAN #1: It's 12 pages of the Alan Moore/Garry Leach run padded out with old Mick Anglo strips for childred and extra material for a price of $5.99. The great lost work of Western comics is why people are here, but it's not even the majority of the product; Marvel's gouging the audience who'd buy this for all they're worth. I'd never read the original Miracleman stories, so I can't really judge the overall story. This prologue is beautifully drawn by Leach, but the script is extremely familiar in its portrayal of the superhero as an outlet for a mid-life crisis-- though that's be due to its influence, both on Moore's later works and the genre in general. Still, this issue itself is an expensive curio, so I'd have to give it a MILDLY RECOMMENDED.

VELVET #3: It's great that Ed Brubaker and Steve Epting, two creators perhaps best known for the Winter Soldier story of Captain America, can now do their thing unfettered by Marvel franchises and apparently make a living at it as well. In this case it's Velvet, a.k.a. "what if Moneypenny went on a rampage to avenge a dead James Bond". It kind of defies belief that Velvet can be such a strong action heroine at her age (at least in her fifties) with her long retirement from field work, but given how my favorite spy story involves a man physically in his seventies fighting against mooing robots and nanotech vampires, I'm in no position to complain. This is the sort of story that seems like a perfectly natural take on the high concept, but still comes across as novel and exciting. Velvet's perspective as a woman offers her a distinct insight in to the Martini-flavored spy game, as she's a PROTAGONIST who uses the Honey Trap techniques instead of a love interest/femme fatale. Everything about this book, from the script to the art to the coloring to the basic magazine design with the white gutters, just works. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED.

New Ultimates #2: Captain America Can't Handle Your Internets

( preview courtesy of Comic Book Resources )



Finding a flaw in a comic written by Jeph Loeb is like finding a grain of sand on a beach. New Ultimates, the third mini-series involving Loeb writing the ersatz-Avengers as bungling morons failing to do much of anything besides indulge their sex addictions, is yet another example. Only two issues in and already it's another instance of a very thin plot, a two-dimensional cast, an extremely adolescent portrayal of adult relationships, and a bunch of action scenes trying to compensate for those other failings. Granted, Loeb is capable of making the action scenes outrageous enough to be entertaining, even if ironically ( see: Red Hulk ).

But what bothers me most about modern Jeph Loeb comics isn't when he's being outrageous, because that's what he does. It's when he's being sincere. It's when Loeb is treating these characters as though their emotions have real dramatic weight, and that we should care about them in a context other than seeing them fight and/or shag. Case in point: Captain America's narration this issue, where he makes the following comment on modern society...

" I grew up in the streets not far from here. Only compared to today, it might as well be a million miles away. We had no iPad, no iPod, no anything. In fact, the closest telephone was down the block in Ed Carlman's drugstore on the corner. And no one complained that life was downloading too slowly. "

As much as it may seem like nitpicking, I'm going to go the three major things wrong with this quote, why it's a microcosm for bad writing at large, and how other writers of the Ult-U version of Cap have expressed the same sentiments better..

1.) Captain America is not at odds with technology. The Super-Soldier Serum not only enhanced his body, but also his mind. This is especially apparent with Ultimate Cap, who was shown to be the super-soldier that everyone else tried and failed to duplicate with his quick-thinking and master strategies as well as his physical strength and fighting skills. Millar even had Nick Fury reference that Cap " learns skills faster than a damn computer ". And in Ultimate Human, Warren Ellis had Bruce Banner say that his failed derivative of the Super-Soldier Serum was meant to enhance his intellect the way the original made a regular Brooklyn grunt into the finest military mind in history ( and yes, we all know that it didn't QUITE work out that way, but still ). Digital technology is not going to be one of the things Steve Rogers finds most objectionable with modern times. If he can pilot an F-16, he's not going to find a mass market entertainment device to be a Gordian Knot for his 1940's brain.

Now, there are plenty of things about modern times that do confuse and bother Steve. Loeb touches on the obvious ones, namely that all his friends and family either died or aged terribly, and that he doesn't understand modern women. But he missed the Civil Rights movement, the removal of the Hayes Code for movies ( and a general darkening of pop culture in general ), several unpopular wars, an increasingly poor standard of American health with an increased complexity to medicine and psychology, and more massive cultural shifts. And the iPod is what's got his knickers in a twist?

2.) Captain America is not emo. Millar had him distract himself from his problems with being a man out of time by throwing himself into his missions. In some cases, we'd get him in quiet moments and see how hard his adjustment was going. But those were glimpses of Steve in his private life, and furthermore, they were emotions that came about through is interactions with others. He broke down in front of his old war partner Bucky because he had been holding in how isolated he felt for so long, and Bucky was the only person he felt safe confiding in. That's why the scene was so great-- because it came as a surprise to everyone, especially Cap. The other scenes had him taking action, even in his personal life ( for example, his arguments with Janet van Dyne as she drifted back towards her abusive ex ).

I've already talked about why first person caption narration is a crutch. It's obnoxious to see it here when previous volumes of the Ultimates ( even Loeb's ) steered clear of it. It's worse because both New Ultimates and Loeb's Ultimate X have taken on this storytelling method, and have done so with all the pathos and nuance of a Lifetime Original Movie.

3.) It's the most obvious and cliche reference. What extra-textual references a writer makes can be a good barometer of their creativity. If they use the most familiar reference possible, that's usually a sign that they aren't trying hard enough. This is why when we see great literature discussed in pop culture, it's very often Shakespeare, and it's either Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet ( more often the latter ). This is why writers looking for a real-world evil will invariably use Hitler, despite so many other complete monsters throughout history whose legacies haven't been trivialized to the point of being internet flame war arguments. And this is why the most common pop culture references we see in fiction are the ones going on right now-- Titanic, the Matrix, Britney Spears, and Mortal Kombat being some of the more brutally over-used examples from the past two decades.

The iPad was announced shortly around the time this script would have been written. If nothing else, couldn't Cap have made reference to a different high-tech gadget or technological process? Perhaps go off on a rant about file sharing, or internet porn, or other modern development outside his experience? He could at least have mentioned that naming a new computing device as though it were a feminine hygiene product would be an affront to Lady Liberty's decency...

In Light of Nemesis; The Blueprint for Pretty Much Every Mark Millar Comic

In light of the Nemesis news, which I hope is not more of the same

After nearly a decade of consistent popularity, Mark Millar has developed a finely tuned formula for what to expect from his comic writings. By " developed ", I also mean " has fastidiously stuck to with little if any deviation ". And I say this from someone who has absolutely loved his work in the past, particularly on the Authority and the Ultimate Marvel characters, and even his year-long runs on Spider-Man and Wolverine. But in the past couple years especially, Millar's comics have become based on a very tight blueprint that's good at the illusion of deep, challenging work. Unfortunately, after many years, it's become apparent how the magician is doing the trick. Again, and again.

For example;

-- The Mark Millar story is a superhero premise with a high concept twist. Emphasis on high concept; the twists are readily apparent and easily digestible. Examples include Wanted ( supervillains secretly rule the world, Joe Schmoe discovers he's heir to the deadliest of them all ), Kick-Ass ( comic book fan tries to be a costumed superhero in a world without powers ), War Heroes ( military develops super-power pills, soldiers use them for massive heist ), and now Nemesis ( Batman figure turns out to have Joker modus operandi ), If it's a run on a corporate-owned franchise, it's less likely to be so obvious, since Millar is putting in a longer story there. But even then Millar tends to write his stories as finite runs with clear premises, most notably with Civil War ( superheroes brawl over thinly veiled post 9-11 issues of freedom vs. security ), but also with Old Man Logan ( shell-shocked veteran Wolverine pulled out of retirement for one last big kill ), 1985 ( 80's supervillains attack real world of 1985 ), and even the Ultimates ( Marvel history rewritten for Bush-era America ). These at first seem like ideas so devilishly simple that you're surprised nobody's thought of it prior. The truth is that people have thought up these story ideas, they just were represented in more subtle and nuanced ways ( JLA villain Prometheus being created as an evil Batman, late 80's fantastic four dealing with superhero registration in a sane and reasonable fashion ). But if you want the blockbuster treatment...

-- The Mark Millar story never has a hero. Protagonists do things that may be labelled heroic, but it's clear that the motivations are never pure, and the results are never wholly successful. The closest character Millar can write to a hero is a character like his version of Peter Parker, who's simply so naive that he doesn't know there's more than a good vs. evil binary to the world. Otherwise, his heroes are zealots for a very fundamentalist notion of justice ( Civil War Cap, Ultimate Thor, Ultimate Xavier, possibly Kick-Ass ), or self-serving nigh-sociopathic individuals who happen to target the right enemies ( Wolverine, the Authority, the rest of the Ultimates, Civil War Iron Man, most of the Fantastic Four but especially Johnny Storm ). Nemesis will probably have the Millar version of the Gotham Police work under a similar paradigm.

-- The Mark Millar story always has a villain. Nobody is 100% good, but there are people who are 110% evil, so vile that they go beyond the normal possibility of 100. Wanted has its protagonist become utterly hedonistic and depraved once he receives power, scoffing about how he can " rape an A-List celebrity and not even have it make the news ". The Wolverine story " Enemy of the State " has the Gorgon, who mathematically disproved the existence of God and works towards the destruction of life PERIOD. The Authority faced a number of genocidal maniacs obsessed with rape. And while Norman Osborn has always been a complete monster, Millar gave him his worst act to date-- upon learning of the chronic illness of his prison guard's wife, made a cure for her, which made her temporarily healthier but then killed her even more painfully. Nemesis should, by the very definition, provide a villain with similar actions ( especially since Millar compares him to the Joker, the worst super-villain since super became attached to villain ).

-- The Mark Millar story almost always has a Morality Pet,a genuinely pure and good character who is there for no reason other than to offset the nihilism everywhere else in the story. Characters like Hawkeye's family in the Ultimates, the Vulture's terminally ill grand-son in Marvel Knights Spider-Man, Dave's hard-working widower dad in Kick-Ass, the kidnapped little Japanese boy in Wolverine: Enemy of the State, Cindy Sheehan analogue Miriam Sharpe in Civil War, and Wolverine's Little House on the Prairie brood come to mind. Toby from 1985 might qualify, because he's got divorced parents ( though it isn't used for much other than stock drama ), but he's a protagonist. These characters tend not to have any agency other than to show that the world isn't all bad. However, they also tend to either suffer or outright die, reinforcing the nihilistic premises. They aren't characters who draw sympathy so much as attempts to show that the worlds Millar writes aren't entirely unsympathetic-- but they're still outweighed by the Wesley Gibsons of the worlds. I'm not sure how this will appear in Nemesis, but I hope that the titular character doesn't justify murder and pillage by being a single father to a child with cystic fibrosis.

-- The Mark Millar story has an extensive amount of conversational dialogue filling in backstory, giving hints to a colorful history and universe-- without actually showing us said colorful history and universe. Professor X will write a book on Mutant Boom and Bust Economics, Tony Stark will have a history of suicide attempts, countless characters will have backstories that make them " cry themselves to sleep every night " ( Bruce Banner, Ben Grimm, Bobby Drake, and more ), and as I said before Wesley Gibson will be able to commit rape without consequence-- but we don't find out anything more about these story threads. It seems like a compromise between having big unique ideas without having to risk them not succeeding-- these asides don't go into Mutant Economics or Reed Richards' 100 ideas for a better society, so there's no chance of failure for expanding on those ideas-- but no change of the success that a really thought-provoking story could offer. They're just expanding on what's already there.

-- The Mark Millar story has a style of dialogue that is universally nasty and insulting. Every character will call someone else an idiot, a moron, a dumbass, a ( R-Word deleted ), or some other insult to their intelligence. Villains are especially insulting, and they relish in exposing their nemeses to depraved monologues. Heroes aren't disgusting, but they do tend to go past witty banter and into outright dissing their opponents. Even nice characters talk with this dialogue rhythm, and tend to sound very condescending as a result ( Aunt May, for example, jokingly chastising Peter at the end of Marvel Knights Spider-Man for his tired " I'm giving up being Spidey forever " monologues ). It's a series of memorable lines, but it doesn't really work as dialogue, and it doesn't show a lot of range; at least in Nemesis, the protagonist is a villain, so this should be appropriate for him.

-- The Mark Millar story is told in wide, letter-boxed panels designed to imitate big budget movies. Many contemporary writers use this format for their scripts, most notably Warren Ellis with his " Authority ", but Millar has made it the key to his style. His scripts are written with big " moments " in mind, massive panels displaying awesome images. Every artist he collaborates with delivers this, and they very from dramatic gestures ( Wesley breaking the fourth wall and addressing the audience in the end of Wanted ) to big action scenes ( Iron Man ripping open Captain America's face and years of borderline homoerotic bonding as a result ). Artists like Bryan Hitch, who are well known for drawing this sort of story, are called to be especially showy; Ultimates 2 ended with an orgy of splash pages as the Ultimates take down their third world enemies. Seriously, they had a six-page gatefold spread. These are most obvious in the endings to individual issues; typically there's a splash page ending with one ominous line of dialogue, like the first issue of Ultimate X-Men ( where we find that Wolverine is introduced as a Brotherhood assassin ).

-- The Mark Millar story has lots of references to pop culture and current events. Millar's stories tend to be very specific to the present ( exceptions occur like the Jenny Sparks history, Red Son, or 1985, but it's clear that Millar's preferred ouvere is dealing with the now ), and deal with headlines as they come up. His superhero comics tend to deal with the War on Terror in a very explicit fashion-- Ultimate X-Men has mutants cast in the role of Muslims ( though I have to give Millar a lot of credit for the fact that he was writing this series almost a year before 9/11, which makes " The Tomorrow People " arc almost prophetic ), Ultimates deals with America's concerns about homeland security, and Ultimates 2 is direct commentary on the " nation-building " tactic of Iraq. War Heroes also qualifies, since it was originally planned for Ultimates 3; Civil War was meant to, though it ends up being more of a really awkward version of the gun control debate. Pop culture also commonly appears; Kick-Ass is heavily influenced by the runaway popularity of internet video sites like YouTube, the fledgling mutants in Ultimate X-Men make constant pop culture references ( like how Iceman " should have been playing Metal Gear Solid like every other kid his age " ), the Ultimates has all its members become celebrity tabloid fodder, and many characters are actually based on popular celebrity likenesses ( most notably Wesley Gibson, based on rapper Eminem ). It's no wonder that the Ultimates had a scene with the characters chatting about who'd play them in a movie version.

I'm wondering if the fact that Iron Man movie actually DID get Samuel L. Jackson to be Nick Fury will further encourage this trend, and not just amongst Millar.

-- The Mark Millar story has blood. Lots of blood. People who watch Saturday Morning cartoons as an adult might wonder why they shoot lasers instead of bullets, why no civilians get hurt, and how someone can survive being hit by Superman. The sheer amount of collateral damage in the Mark Millar story is evidence why kids' versions of superheroes try to avoid that. It's logical, but it means that families in SUVs are incinerated when Electro goes rampaging towards Spider-Man, schoolyards of children are murdered when neophyte heroes screw up in Civil War, and people trying to be heroes without powers in Kick-Ass end up getting their faces worked into the shape and texture of a dog's breakfast. This shows up in Millar's Marvel work, even that which is intended to be towards a more general audience ( like Ultimate X-Men, initially ). His creator-owned work is even more egregious with this, being the " Too Hot for DC " version of his stories with franchise characters.

-- The Mark Millar story never has a happy ending. There's often a big party serving as an epilogue, as we saw in the Authority ( Apollo and the Midnighter's big gay wedding ), Ultimates 1 ( the White House party with Tony Stark about to cuckold George W. ), and the penultimate issue of Ultimate X-Men ( the opening of the Xavier School to the public ); even without the party, there's still always a sequence that indicates that it's not really the end. In Wanted, we get the immortal line " This is the look on my face as I'm fucking you in the ass " addressed to the audience; in Ultimates 2, we get a tragic flashback to the 1940's with Captain America promising his then-girlfriend that this will all be over soon. Civil War has Tony Stark kind-of bringing the world to order, though he does so in a very smug way that seems to invoke Wesley Gibson's parting lines. And while Marvel Knights Spider-Man is one of the few optimistic stories Millar has given us, it still ends on the note that the endless dance between Peter Parker and Norman Osborn is distracting him from doing anything meaningful in the world beyond being a costumed vigilante.

With this all said, I can envision a lot of Nemesis before it happens, and I'm hoping dearly that Millar will expand his repertoire. His formula has more often than not produced entertaining results. However, it's a formula, and it has limits. Many of Millar's contemporaries have their own stylistic quirks, but their stories have more range than this. Grant Morrison can do more than non-linear stories that read like hallucinations; Garth Ennis does genres other than just stories mercilessly satirizing religion, government, and spandex. Millar should be able to go beyond the super-cynical, super-violent, super-"hero" story. I have faith in him having the capacity to do so; I just hope he develops the inclination.

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.