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All You Need to Know: New Avengers #35

So, like a lot of you out there, I got horrendously ill this week. Barely made it in on Tuesday to sell some comics, missed new comic day entirely which normally would be a damned shame if it wasn't for the fact I was able to convalesce in peace as I had completely forgotten that New Avengers #35 came out, not to mention having Mighty Avengers #5 mixed in with the preview books. I didn't have to list two bad Avengers books in with the rest of my ails!

But today, despite still being full of meds and unpleasantness, I take the bullet and dive headfirst into both. Do you dare take in what could possibly be the WORST installments of each title? Read on!

New Avengers #35

Look at that cover! Venom and Wolverine, all claws and tongue and totally NOT IN THIS BOOK. Not a lick of it anywhere, but that's nothing new in the world of comic covers so my complaint is pretty weak and we move on. Nope, no Wolverine in this book, but do you know who is? TIGRA! This is going to be great. You see, she's taking down Jigsaw (who's doing much cooler things over in Moon Knight if I remember correctly) and stopping him from the rather mundane crime of robbing a bank. Two cops bust in, assess the situation and begin to freak out on TIGRA despite her clearly stating her name, codename and registration and having JIGSAW ON THE GROUND while other people are withn arm's reach who should have given a little more validity to the facts. The cops fear of furries allows Jigsaw to get away and get his invite to the warehouse gathering of shady criminals and Greer Nelson to get slammed by the Initiative for losing her man and shipped out to Arkansas. That's right. Two inept cops who are never seen again after they discuss how freaky it was to see a furry chick in a bikini completely ruin a superhero who's not only been on two sets of Avengers but is a clearly registered hero, most likely sleeping with Tony Stark (hey! if the characters in the book can make that judgment call, so can I) and has at least been a cover girl for a lot of titles these days as Random Girl Hero to balance out the male:female ratio. One strike, you're out to Arkansas, where I am SURE a furry chick in a bikini will go over a lot better.

Anyhoo, back to the shady gathering of shady figures in a shady warehouse. The Hood has gathered them all there for sale pitch on his new Supervillain Union, saying that by working together they'll never get beaten by losers like Tigra again. Why should we follow you?, ask other more well-established Marvel characters, to which the Hood responds in cash. "Seed money" to get the apparently suffering villains back on their feet. Because they have it so hard. Flash's Rogues under Geoff Johns this is not.

As an extra bonus, the Hood offers to do a little favor for Jigsaw, his 'calling card to the world'. After doing a little research, the Hood tracks Greer Nelson down to Catwoman's apartment and beats the unholy hell out of her while having her mother on a cell phone to prove he's really a huge threat to her and her family. You mess with the Hood's guys (which is... I guess, all the super-villains? Are they going to wear matching biker jackets to prove their allegiance?), you're dead. Your mom? Dead. And then, he adds, you'll have to get all emo and crap like Spider-Man because you're the one who really killed her because you're a 'selfish little pig'. Not an actual superhero with contacts with the government who could hide her mother and go after some retard in a cape in the time it takes to fire up a SHIELD jet-cycle. There's more beating while Jigsaw camcords the whole thing for YouTube, his private late night video collection and ... all the rest of the villains the Hood rounded up last time... at a bar?

So, 25 grand to what is depicted on-panel as roughly 39 guys (and gal!) plus the added benefit of a semi-snuff piece featuring a B-List hero at best who's more known for working with the Avengers than going after any of these guys proper apparently reels the whole crew in. Yay for them. Going back a couple issues, they revisit the Deathlok in a Jar they have on tap and use him to rob a bank under the Baxter Building. Just Deathlok and seven other dudes (and dudette!) break into the joint for a big ol' pile of money. Deathlok 'dies' in the process.

Last couple pages are them dealing with the big Venom event that hasn't even hit the pages of Mighty Avengers just yet, but hey! There are the Mighty Avengers on live TV in a time sequence labeled "Today" and that the Hood guy? This gives him a grand opportunity.

Where do I even start? I tried to hold back through the recap just to get through the damned thing and not throw my copy against the nearest wall in frustration. This is so forced I'm surprised Bendis isn't hovering over my shoulder with every pages going "Huh, didja see that? See that? Didja see it?"

Okay, we know the man has a huge thing for the Hood. I haven't read it, so I can safely assume it's the greatest new villain since the days of Doctor Doom and Thanos, full of passion and pathos, sympathy and madness and this is totally the character the Marvel Universe needs to shake things up. Whatever. I'd just be a lot more fond of some 'showing' and not 'telling'. There is nothing all that inspiring about the Hood recruitment speech. There isn't nothing all that compelling about his leadership. There is nothing all that fearsome about his methods. He's a mid-card crook and could be very interesting there but setting him up as this huge presence amongst characters with more comics and background under their belt than his Spawn cape has little tattery bits to make him more spooky? Not worth, what now, two or three issues? You can't just have a guy barge on scene, announce himself as the baddest dude on the block and then consider the job a done deal. Yeah, I could have read the Hood mini series or the trade to get a better idea of this guy. but you know what? I'M READING THE AVENGERS RIGHT NOW. It's Bendis's job to sell me on this guy and if he's lazy, it's not going to work.

Now, go back to the issue and think about someone like Whirlwind or hell, poor Electro standing up at a villain potluck and screaming "We don't have to take it anymore!!", rallying people he's worked with before and taking advantage of the heroes vs heroes theme that's settled into the ol' MU. There would at least be a little backstory, some tenure so to speak with the guy and it'd be a lot more believable to see one of their own stepping into the role of gang boss. I mean, they don't call them the Masters of Evil for nothing right? It's not like Zemo has the trademark on the name.

Yeah, I can give the story time and maybe he'll turn out to be really cool five issues down the line but I'm not willing. This is a big deal, this is a rally of villainy we havent seen in a long time and I should be compelled from page one, not 'Oh, well, maybe the book will get better eventually and I should give the story time to breathe'- HELL NO! I'm tired of it! If he was going to go to everyone individually, pitch it to them personally, flesh out what he really wants out of the deal, earn some respect, be inventive, sure. I'll give that story whatever it needs to build me a complex and compelling villain (SEE: Alexander Lukin in Captain America). But no, this was a wham-bam-I'm in charge, look at me now and let's get on with a symbiont invasion.

And how does he show off how cool he is in the issue? Well, last issue he kicked Wolverine's butt so I guess that's street cred but this issue, he doles out cash and beats up Tigra, threatening her mom. To use an analogy, there's this term they use in professional sports entertainment called "putting over" someone by "jobbing" to them. Yes, pro wrestling is scripted and if you're booked to perform a match just to lose, you're jobbing. Tigra was brought into the book to lose horribly to the Hood. She got no respect from the police officers at the start of the book, no respect from the people she works for in the Initiative, and was only used in the narrative to show just how ruthless and evil the Hood can be.

But... was it really all that impressive? It was Tigra. While I may have a fondness for Greer Nelson, it's very clear that Bendis only thinks of her as a furry chick in a bikini. Marvel's basically used her as a placeholder in several stories where her characterization is so thin she could easily be interchanged with any other Marvel heroine. So why should I care? It's like beating up the Paladin or Centennial or the J.O.B. Squad. It's cheap and unimpressive. I'd also like to note that after spending four whole pages on beating up Tigra, the really impressive heist of the bank under the Baxter Building (unless the Fantastic Four don't actually live there anymore) is given just one page.

So yeah. Craptastic issue, sorry if you bought it.  But could the next Avengers title actually be worse??