snap judgments

Because New was just not New enough, we’re going to have the Mighty Avengers which looks like more of your casual Avengers team (though something about the lineup and it’s presentation is still getting under my skin. Can’t put a finger on it, so for now I’m not going to say word one until I get the first issue) and a ‘New’ New Avengers team because the first one self-destructed under its own weight.

So before we look at Bendis’s second try at writing a team book, let’s look at what the all new all different Avenging team of Captain America, Iron Man, Wolverine, Spider-Woman, Spider-Man, the Sentry and Luke Cage.

And no, Ronin is not on the list because she appeared in one storyline and didn’t seem to be affiliated particularly with the team. No room in Stark Tower? Not an actual team member. Not to mention lithe chick in a man suit really bad idea.

Anyhow, the first New Avengers got together in the wake of Avengers: Disassembled as after a prison break at SHIELD ‘Raft’ instillation, Cap believed the world needed a collection of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.   Fine idea, right?  Through six issues, they get the band together and find out something hinky going on with SHIELD in the Savage Land and the blonde Black Widow.  Something they never learned about as the nest story arc brought the Sentry into the fold for another three issues, where the team took a backseat to let the Golden Guardian of Good shoehorn his way into the book as a team member.  Next came Ronin’s arc where a lot of ninjas are fought in order to detain the Silver Samurai, something they wind up not doing and taking the Hydra’s Viper instead.  She’s let go by Spider-Woman,  and for an issue they do some roster drama, with Cap calling Jessica out on being a agent of everyone, Ms. Marvel turning down the team and (*gasp!*) some skulduggery by J. Jonah Jameson.  The last four issues of the New Avengers gave us the Collective in which they fought mutant zombies and the splash pages flowed like wine.

All of that was WAY TOO MUCH for the book to handle and we never saw the Avengers together again as Civil War took care of that.  But look at that, they barely accomplished anything during their brief time together.  There’s a dangling plot hook with the whole SHIELD in the Savage Land unless I missed an issue elsewhere that answered why Kyle Lycos needed to be busted out of prison, one of their members was a double agent, the Daily Bugle got the best of them and all of this needed to be celebrated with 10 alternate covers.

But now, all that’s changed.  We have a NEW New Avengers team PLUS the Mighty Avengers both written by Bendis, the man who didn’t seem to get the hang of the first Avengers book he wrote in twenty issues.  Surely, this will solve all our problems.

Hey, remember Echo?

Sure, we all do!  She’s that really cool Native American chick who’s deaf and was intro’d by David Mack and given this really interesting story about identity and overcoming your past and had some fantastic art and oh yeah, she’s Ronin.  Ah well, it was a good idea while it lasted and at the end of her story in the New Avengers, ‘Ronin’ was left to keep track of the Japanese Underground.  It was as if Cap realized how bad an idea it was to have this very lithe and limber chick in a thick padded dude suit and said ‘Wait, just… stay here, we’ll come back, really.’

And they did this very issue!  …. eventually.  It take a ‘Dear John’ letter to Daredevil to remind them they put an agent out the Japan, only instead of a break-up, this a special email sent in the case of her enevitable death.  She rambles, just to make sure the readers caught up on what she’s doing.  She explains the reason for the dude suit, which was an ‘homage’ to Daredevil the first hero who touched her life.  She gets a little smug over how well it worked to disguise who she was.  In a display similar to bickering parents, the Avengers are her friends when they invite her into the fold and Matt’s friends when they abandon her out into the Japanese Underground.

Doing her enemies a disservice and making her job a bit of a joke,  Echo explains that the Japanese Underground consists of slick criminals looking to get high or get laid and a bunch of Paris Hilton types, arm candy airhead heiresses.  So, Echo decides to play the ditzy party girl by day, then dress up as a bad ass ninja dude by night.  Let me say that again:  she pretends to be a stupid woman by day to get info, then dresses up as a man to intimidate and kick ass on the info she gets.  Does that sound a little… odd to anyone else?  Anyways, since she knows martial arts and is in Japan, she’s going to run into the Hand.

This brought about an interesting revelation at work:  one ninja is bad ass.  A bunch of ninjas is fodder.  So the old addage about ‘strength in numbers’ doesn’t work for ninja-ry.

Ronin fights a lot of ninjas.  She fights Elektra and, unsurprisingly, loses.  Because Elektra loves irony, she kills Ronin with a sai through the stomach as Bullseye once killed her.  And maybe to follow through on that irony, Elektra takes her back to the Hand for the resurrection ceremony which suceeds just in time for, your friend and mine, BRAINWASHING!  I thought that was the scene for Hydra right now, but I guess the Hand need all the help they can get.  As they toss the brought-back-from-the-dead Echo into a deep dark hole to face some sort of really scary mystical blue thing, her email to Matt Murdock begs him not to suffer this very fate.  She wants to be… avenged.

Enter the splash page!  Yep, before the end of Civil War, here’s the new guys busting out of the pages to fight ninjas.  Again.  Sadly, my fears are realized as Doctor Strange seems mostly there to wiggle his fingers and play designated driver, teleporting them in and out as Matt Murdock must have forwarded the email to the correct people.  There’s banter as they fight the ninjas and Luke Cage kicks Elektra in the tuna fish for Matt (old times’s sake I guess).  Spider-Man grabs Echo, still wonky from the resurrection and whatever brainwashing that took hold, and *poof* they’re gone.  Elektra swears they won’t leave Japan, making me wonder what would keep the SORCERER SUPREME from going back to his Sanctum Sanctorum.

Details, I suppose.  All in all, it feels like we’ve done this dance before and it wasn’t all that thrilling the last time either.   Don’t waste your money, this was merely filler as we all wait for Civil War #7 to show up.