The "New" New Avengers

[CmdrSlack]

Ok, so y'all saved me from a re-entry into mainstream comics (well, Marvel comics) with the civil war thread.  Tell me if I'm wrong here...but is that image supposed to be a red, white and blue Iron Man with Cap's shield?

ETA -- Please to note that I haven't read comics since the early to mid 90s when they had eleventybillion Xmen spinoffs and Jubilee and Gambit were "new" -- there was also a Generation X book (?) with young mutants being taught by Frost and some dude who was either Irish or a Scot.  Also, IIRC, we had the whole Cable is from teh future where shit is crazy and uncool storyline going...so I am admittedly out of the loop.

[Llava]

Banshee was Irish.

He's dead now.

(Which is good, cause if they bring him back in a big OMG REBORN storyline, they can rename him to something that doesn't mean "Fairy Woman".)

[Velorath]

Ok, so y'all saved me from a re-entry into mainstream comics (well, Marvel comics) with the civil war thread.  Tell me if I'm wrong here...but is that image supposed to be a red, white and blue Iron Man with Cap's shield?

Yeah.  It was an image someone found on Amazon.com for an item listed as "Iron Man: Steve Rogers".  However, it's been noted that Cap's shield in that picture is exactly the same as it is on the cover for Civil War:  The Initiative (the holes and cracks look exactly the same and are in the exactly same place) causing people to speculate that the leaked Iron Man: Steve Rogers image was something Marvel photoshopped up to put out disinformation.

[Riggswolfe]

Ok, so y'all saved me from a re-entry into mainstream comics (well, Marvel comics) with the civil war thread.  Tell me if I'm wrong here...but is that image supposed to be a red, white and blue Iron Man with Cap's shield?

Yeah.  It was an image someone found on Amazon.com for an item listed as "Iron Man: Steve Rogers".  However, it's been noted that Cap's shield in that picture is exactly the same as it is on the cover for Civil War:  The Initiative (the holes and cracks look exactly the same and are in the exactly same place) causing people to speculate that the leaked Iron Man: Steve Rogers image was something Marvel photoshopped up to put out disinformation.

Maybe a what-if story that got canned?

[Velorath]

Maybe a what-if story that got canned?

Possilble.  The recent JMS mini Bullet Points (which was more or less an extended What If?) had Steve Rogers as Iron Man, but he had a suit that was like the original clunky grey Iron Man suit.  Whatever it is, the image itself is something Marvel photoshopped together from the sounds of it.

[Velorath]

Ah, New Avengers #27... with all the pointless Civil War tie-in issues I'd almost missed the laughably bad issues that came before.  If this issue is any indication, the Somewhat Newer Avengers should be even worse than the previous team.  So what do we get with this issue?  We get the second battle the Avengers have had with the Hand since the book started, Echo getting killed by Electra and then brought back to life, and Dr. Strange casting spells (in other words standing around with his hands glowing, explaining that he's casting some sort of sleep spell on some of the ninja), while everyone else wades in and starts slugging (as the rest of the Avengers is made up of hand to hand fighters).  Also there's more of that Bendis dialogue I love so much, where the characters actually use the names of the stories in conversations, in this case when Spidey says "Ah Logan, that was before the House of M and our little Civil War".  Yes, that kind of shit really does bother me.

Also it's been made obvious that Ronin isn't Cap (and likely not Hawkeye or Daredevil either), for those interested, through one of the two lines he gets in this book: "Yo Cage, do they always talk this much during a fight?" (his other line is the response of "Not exactly" when Echo asks if he's Matt).

[Llava]

So it's Iron Fist?

Why?

[Velorath]

So it's Iron Fist?

Why?

It's not Iron Fist given that he's also on the team.  Unless someone else is pretending to be Iron Fist and Iron Fist is dressed up as Ronin.

Edit:  If I had to take a guess right now, I'd say it's Dakota North in the man-suit.  Or possibly Blade since before New Avengers ever launched Bendis talked about using Blade in the series at some point.

[Llava]

If I was Blade, and someone asked me if I was Daredevil, I wouldn't say "Not exactly."  I'd say "Fuck no.  Not even a little bit."

[Nevermore]

Maybe it's Daredevil's clone!

[Llava]

Maybe the doppelgangers are back.

[HaemishM]

God that sounds fucktastically awful.

[Velorath]

If I was Blade, and someone asked me if I was Daredevil, I wouldn't say "Not exactly."  I'd say "Fuck no.  Not even a little bit."

Yeah, but I just chalk that up to a lot of Bendis dialogue being clunky.  But then I only think it could be Blade due to the fact that Ronin is only seen using a sword during this fight, and because he seems to know Cage better than he knows the others.  Dakota North is still my first guess though as she's an obscure character who has teamed up with Cage in the past and has recently been empolyed by Daredevil's law firm as a bodyguard.

[HaemishM]

She's also never worn a costume before, and wouldn't really have a need to start now, I don't think. Of course, Blade wouldn't need to wear a costume either.

Trust me, whoever it is, it will be stupid.

[Velorath]

She's also never worn a costume before, and wouldn't really have a need to start now, I don't think. Of course, Blade wouldn't need to wear a costume either.

Trust me, whoever it is, it will be stupid.

Oh, I'm sure it will be.  I'm just trying to figure out in advance exactly how stupid it will be.  Bendis had this to say about Ronin:

"Once Echo is done in Japan, there will be no need for her to be Ronin
anymore. The suit – the identity – will have served its purpose. There will
be another person in the Marvel Universe without a theme… without a motivation …
or who may have lost their desire to wear the costume they were wearing, and
this person will don the costume as the masterless samurai of the Marvel Universe
for the time to come... It’s someone with a long history in the Marvel Universe. There
are quite a few people it could be, and it’s not necessarily the person you immediately
go to, but it’s someone I have an affection for who also has a history of donning a guise
that best suits his or her mental tone. And this is his or her mental tone right now. And
it just so happens there is a costume that needs filling and a person who can fill it, and
so it’s taken."

That would seem to eliminate Blade and Dakota as they aren't really known to change costumes.  It could be Baron Zemo going by that information as he has changed costumes a few times, he does know how to use a sword, and the fact that this is supposed to be the team that Cap chose and Cap and Zemo did recently bury the hatchet between them.  Personally I'd hate for Bendis to get his hands on Zemo.

[HaemishM]

Zemo? I really need to go back and read the rest of the Thunderbolts series then, because I didn't realize he'd become a non-villain. But it's been since around the 40's that I've read Thunderbolts.

It would still be a BAD choice.

[Velorath]

Zemo? I really need to go back and read the rest of the Thunderbolts series then, because I didn't realize he'd become a non-villain. But it's been since around the 40's that I've read Thunderbolts.

It would still be a BAD choice.

Zemo more or less became good during Fabian's last arc on the original Thunderbolts series, where he was stuck on Counter-Earth with the rest of the original team (minus Songbird).  At the end of Fab's run on the current series, Zemo used the moonstones to absorb a bunch of power to keep the Grandmaster from getting it.  Songbird, not trusting Zemo to get rid of the power like he agreed to, shattered the moonstones, creating a rift and sending Zemo back in time, where Fab will be picking up the story with the Zemo:  Born Better mini.

[HaemishM]

Just finished reading Avengers #27. It was as bad as you said and more. There's no reason for this team to be together. It's even more stupid that Captain American isn't with this team, since he'd be first in line to do a rescue of Echo. After all, he put her in that mess. Either he's dead after Civil War #7 (impossible) or horribly incapcitated or something even worse. The banter on the fight scene page was fucking awful, especially the whole "I didn't know there'd be banter" thing. It's just so intentionally cute, and even Spider-Man sounded off.

Echo is so wrong for the Avengers, but then so are Wolverine and Spider-Man. Please tell me Ronin isn't someone like Misty Knight or the other chick from Heroes for Hire. Whoever it is, it'll be truly awful.

[Velorath]

I don't know why but: New Avengers/Transformers mini.  If nothing else, at least Bendis doesn't seem to be involved in any way.

[Velorath]

Having read the first issue of the Mighty Avengers now, I can at least say it's better than New Avengers.  At least Bendis manages to gather up the full team, not to mention have them all fight as a team.  Ares and Sentry are the only out of place members on the team, with everyone else being long time members.  If it wasn't for Bendis' habit of completely changing characters' personalites this would be a perfectly ok superhero book.  The most glaring example was Ms. Marvel saying in regards to the Wasp: "Are her and her loser husband together or--?".  But people will buy up this shit up anyway, because apparently they'd rather hear the writer's voice than the characters'.

[HaemishM]

The first issue of Mighty Avengers was certainly better than the New New Avengers. Loads better. It still was half-suck though, mostly the half that was trite, shitty conversations between Ms. Marvel and Tony Stark. Those were painful, especially the thought balloons. Now, I miss thought balloons in comics. But they mostly were used to actually give us thoughts. These were retarded bad and added nothing to the story. The villain reveal at the end was interesting, but really just shows why Stark being head of SHIELD is clown shoes. He's already shown his circuitry can be infiltrated by a 15-year old. WHAT GOVERNMENT WOULD TRUST THIS FUCKER?

[gimpyone]

http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=104938

Punisher America!

[HaemishM]

That is retarded on so many levels.

[Lantyssa]

*snicker*

[Bunk]

Please note that I am chiming in here having not read a new comic in over ten years, but that description above of someone who keeps wearing disguises based on what he feels like actully made me think Marc Spectre - damn, it's been so long I can't even remember exactly how he spelled his name...

Mind you, they already gave him a run in the Avengers at least once, and I have no idea what they've done with the character in the last ten years.

This thread is not exactly inspiring me to go start buying comics again, by the way.

[HaemishM]

Marc Spector (think that's how it's spelled) is back in a new Moon Knight series. The series is decent, drawn by Bryan Hitch, and hasn't really paid much attention to the Civil War stupidity.

[Bunk]

That's why I always liked Moon Knight - they tended to ignore most of the rest of the universe. Also really loved Sienkiewicz's gritty style.

[Llava]

Moon Knight is a favorite of mine as well, and I've been following this new run from the start.

There was actually a brief bit in which Civil War shows up at the doorstep, with Cap appearing in Spector's home.  Bit of a twist on it, though, since Marc tells him he's not interested in being recruited, that the whole thing is stupid and he should go fuck himself, and Cap says he's not there to recruit him anyways, just dropped by to say "I don't like you, I don't like your style, you almost make me think registration is a good idea, stay out of this."

[Velorath]

Well, New Avengers 28 shows that the whole thing about Cap being kept alive on the Raft was just a ploy by the Mighty Avengers to draw out the New Avengers.  Did we really need another way to make pro-registration heroes look like complete dicks?

[HaemishM]

Goddamnit. What a retarded fucking plot device.

[HaemishM]

I've read it, and it makes me even more stabby.

First off, Yu's art looks ok sometimes, then sometimes it goes way too wacky one way and guys have chins that they trip over. He did that with Iron Fist repeatedly. The plot device about Cap was just as retarded as I thought it would be.

But the real shitty part of this issue is how Bendis can't resist trying to tell 3 separate story lines in one story without resolving ANY of them. Like he's following the Memento backwards storytelling only he's not even going linearlly backwards, he's just jumping around. Right in the middle of springing the Cap trap, he switches back to present time and resolves neither story. And do we have to have two full splash pages of NOTHING in the book other than posing superheroes? Fuck.

This book still sucks ass.

[Velorath]

So I picked up Avengers: The Initiative (the Avengers mini that turned into an ongoing series before the first issue hit stands, as opposed to Omega Flight, which was planned as an ongoing and then got scaled back to a mini).  On the one hand, it's a decent book.  On the other hand though, it doesn't really have any justification for being called an Avengers book, although that does seem to at least be consistent with the other books.  This book is more like a superhero boot camp, which is a decent premise in and of itself, even if it does reuse a plot device from Starship Troopers (the movie) near the end, in a scene where one of the trainees is blasted in the head during a training exercise gone wrong.

The book stars a mix of new characters, obscure characters (Thor Girl, Komodo, Gauntlet), War Machine, Justice, and Hank Pym, and cameos from characters like Triathlon, Rage, and Slapstick.  The downside is that with the book juggling so many characters, many of the new ones don't get a chance to get fleshed out in this issue, and most of the obscure ones don't really get any sort of introduction for people who aren't familiar with them.  The book is still readable without knowing who a lot of these characters are, but the first issue of a new series should find a way to get the reader somewhat invested in the characters.  Slott has a good opportunity here to finally have a good selling book, simply by it carrying the Avengers name, but this issue doesn't have much to hook the readers and keep them coming back, especially since Slott seems to understandably leave he's trademarked humor out of this book.

Stefano Caselli does a good job on the art here.  It seems to have a manga style influence at times (especially when he draws Cloud 9 and War Machine), but it's used sparingly.  The coloring is also well done for the most part, although there are some panels where either the pencils, the inks, or the colors have ended up muddying up the facial features of some of the characters.  Not a huge problem though overall.  At the very least I'll be coming back for the second issue.  Of course, as seems to be the way with this book, for every upside there is a downside.  In this case it's the fact the judging by the solicits for the next few issues, this book seems to be trodding some of the same ground as the Thunderbolts in that it has the characters hunting down non-registered heroes.  Not exactly fresh territory, and it's a plot device I expect to see reused many times in the near future.

[HaemishM]

The Avengers: Initiative was nothing special. It just highlighted what's wrong with the post-CW Marvel books, they ignore everything in the past. Gyrich being put in charge of new recruits? Are you fucking kidding me? Stark would never work with that man, especially not allowing him to have such a vital role in the process of bringing up new recruits.

And let's just whack a character right off the bat. WHY? He might actually have been interesting, but he's dead, Jim. The whole book was /meh.

[Velorath]

The Avengers: Initiative was nothing special. It just highlighted what's wrong with the post-CW Marvel books, they ignore everything in the past. Gyrich being put in charge of new recruits? Are you fucking kidding me? Stark would never work with that man, especially not allowing him to have such a vital role in the process of bringing up new recruits.

Using Gyrich isn't too out of character.  Cap and the rest of the Avengers (including Iron Man) gave Gyrich a second chance during Geoff Johns' run on the book and he's was given a bit more of a sympathetic side to his character.

[HaemishM]

After reading Avengers #29, New New Avengers, that is, I can safely say I really dislike Yu's art. It's ugly. It tries some Klimt style hatching, but it doesn't work very well. It's mostly his shapes that bug the shit out of me.

And the whole scene at Doc Strange's old house is just annoying. Bendis still just refuses to tell a story in a linear fashion, so he tells 3 stories in chopped up form as if ANY of them other than the main one were important. It's frustrating as hell.