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.
2 Comments
There is so much potential for entertaining stories in what Bendis has done with New Avengers. SO MUCH PONTENTIAL. Its all good stuff handled very, very poorly.
And I still maintain my opinion that the collective arc was Bendis trying to do Warren Ellis’s Authority.
You know, I’d have to agree with you there. Making the team into a JLA-like equivalent could be kind of interesting, no matter how I’m sorely attached to the original idea of the Avengers. But, and he admitted it from the start, Bendis cannot write team books. He has no pacing for a bunch of characters at once. And look at their track record, the New Avengers barely did anything your local Marvel Knight character couldn’t handle. Feh.
And…. I might not have read enough Authority to find the arc with the gratuitous splash pages and the return of a Grant Morrison character that was pretty much dead twice over. Time to hit the back issues…
(man, I sound bitter…)