Avengers 12.1
Reviewed by Martin Skidmore 05-May-11
This is a rarety, a .1 issue that not only stands on its own and makes for a genuine jumping on point but also introduces a big plotline for the future, as well as being a pleasure to read on its own.
This is a rarety, a .1 issue that not only stands on its own and makes for a genuine jumping on point but also introduces a big plotline for the future, as well as being a pleasure to read on its own.
Spider-Woman, who as well as being in the main Avengers team is also an agent of the extraterrestrial threat agency SWORD, is lost when checking on an alien energy signature, having been captured by a bunch of mad scientists – the Wizard, the Mad Thinker, Modok, Klaw and the Red Ghost. A team of Avengers drawn from the different groups goes after her. This part may be a mistake, in that it thereby gives no room for certain core members (Hawkeye in particular) and spreads things a bit thin for others, but the team they pick for the purpose looks a logical one. I guess since this Avengers title is all the big guns (Spider-Woman and Hawkeye are the only two not among Marvel’s hugest stars), there’s probably not a great deal of need to introduce the characters with any care, and Bendis is so good at dialogue that if you don’t know Steve Rogers, Spider-Man, Wolverine and so on, their basic personalities and positions are instantly clear and vivid anyway.
As my pal Mike Teague pointed out against my review of Secret Avengers 12.1 recently, a lot of these .1 issues have seemed like mini-annuals, and this was seeming rather like that for a while – a special cross-team group, a new grouping of major villains, something from space as a wildcard. The extra space would have allowed some fighting with the Super-Apes and the Thinker’s android and so on, which is entirely omitted here, but I didn’t mind that. The thing that really pleased me is that this starts what will undoubtedly be an enormous story in future issues of the Avengers; but the problem with that is that it doesn’t start in Avengers 13, which seems to be a Fear Itself tie-in issue. This surely should have been scheduled so that readers can jump on with the next regular issue, as I think the comic does an excellent job of encouraging that – I don’t understand why this comes out now rather than at the right time.
We know what to expect from Bendis by now: I love his dialogue, and although this has too much going on for any long conversations with just a couple of characters, it offers its usual such pleasures, particularly in the Avengers reactions to SWORD’s request for help and where Spider-Woman is held captive by the Wizard and the Mad Thinker. We also know what we get from Hitch and Neary: this is kind of in their FF style, with gutters but no panel borders, slightly less big and glossy than on the Ultimates. Hitch is one of the most reliably very good regular artists at Marvel, giving us good faces and solid storytelling and making plenty of the big moments.
So this is pretty close to being a model .1 issue in quality and approach, for me, but it should have been scheduled differently, as it’s no good giving a jumping-on point leading directly into a big story then not starting that story for a while. “Hi reader – thanks for jumping on as invited, now if you could just jump off again for a bit, and we’ll probably let you know when we’re ready for you to jump back on.”
Tags: Avengers, Brian Michael Bendis, Bryan Hitch, Marvel, Paul Neary
Despite Martin referring to me as a brand of dog food, I am going to agree with a number of his points, but nevertheless I found this issue a bit of a muddle, with good and bad points.
With regards to this being a jumping on point, it failed miserably. If you are a new reader, you are not going to know who the regular team is. The cover and the picture on page three reflect the line up as of #1 of this run, but not that from the end of #12. Bucky-Cap has been absent from the Infinity Guantlet story due to events in Cap’s mag; whilst the Protector accepted membership into this team in c.#7 (having been in Norman Osborn’s Government sanctioned Dark Avengers) and at the end of #12 Red Hulk was offered membership – we didn’t see whether or not he accepted, but the cover of #13 suggests that he’s still around. The first scenes with the Avengers show Bucky-Cap still in residence, as well as the Protector, so I place this at just before the events of #7, especially as Red Hulk is nowhere to be seen in the entire issue. Then the action involves a selection of members from the three Avengers teams currently in action. So you ask someone who has not read any Avengers mag for about two years to read this (and not look at the cover preview of #13 at the back) and determine the current line up for this title.
And then at the end, as Martin points out, this doesn’t even lead into #13, but somewhere in the (near ?) future !
I recently saw a solicitation for the inevitable collection of the Infinity Guantlet story stating that it contained Avengers #7-12 and 12.1. Shouldn’t 12.1 be the lead in to the next collection ? Says it all really. More of a jump-off point.
As for the comic itself, I have mixed feelings which are strong considering both good and bad points. One of my longer term gripes with Marvel has been the lack of continuity between titles (Moon Knight #1 vs the latest Thunderbolts issue is a classic example) and it seems that when Tom Breevort is editor this is more likely to happen. As a fanboy, this sloppiness annoys me. However here we have a continuity clash within the same title. This has often been the case over the decades with the Avengers, when a fill-in writer has a different line-up to the regular issues / storyline. But in this case it is the regular writer who is responsible ! This is referring to the above comment that the line-up does not reflect the end of #12.
On the plus side, whereas I criticised it from the POV of a jump-on point, I did like the use of selecting appropriate members from each of the three teams for the mission concerned – but let’s use this idea sparingly, please ? This also saw one of the few times when Wolverine’s talents have been put to good use in an Avengers line-up (off hand I can only think of one other instance).
I liked the line-up of villains, especially as MODOK has always been a favourite of mine, but was surprised to see Awesome Andy has returned to the dark side (poor continuity again, or did The Thinker just build a new one ?). I actually liked the fact that the big punch up was over relatively quickly, ie all in the one issue, which gave the impression that Bendis might actually be writing a self-contained story, but no, right at the end there’s the lead into the next saga, but one that made me sigh “not (yet) again !”
But was I the only one fooled by the red herring hinting that the item everyone was fighting over was connected to a licenced property Marvel used to have rights to ???
Oh, and nice art, by the way.
Of course, having slagged off the lack of continuity, the regular creative team should be applauded for not having Bucky-Cap in the previous storyline for the reason mentioned above.