Avengers 7
Reviewed by Martin Skidmore 24-Nov-10
You can’t deny that at times Bendis is keen on LONG conversations with very little happening. He defines the tendency towards ‘decompression’ – which means telling stories that in years past would have taken one issue over six issues.
Will was pretty scathing about Bendis in his Pet Avengers review, and you can’t deny that at times he is keen on LONG conversations with very little happening. He defines the tendency towards ‘decompression’ – which means telling stories that in years past would have taken one issue over six issues. Or even more extreme: reread the first two pages of Spidey’s origin, and you know that now Bendis would stretch that to a few issues. In the hands of most, this just makes the comics more boring, and waters down the thrill power to sometimes homeopathic levels. Thing is, I really like Bendis’s slow comics, and it’s directly because of the tendency Will mocked: I love his dialogue. I think that he generally writes sparkling and spot-on dialogue, and has great timing, dramatic and comic. Here’s some dialogue from one panel, over a third of a page in size, at the end of this story:
Hawkeye: Who the hell IS THIS?!
Iron Man: The Red Hulk. Noh-Varr, you probably want to get your girlfriend out of here!
Hawkeye: There’s a red Hulk?!
Thor: Make no movie, vile one! Or I will smite you with the power of the mighty Mjolnir!
Spider-Man: He will, too. I’ve seen it.
Now I think the Thor line is rather stiff and a touch off, but the rest is excellent. We can pick up plenty about Hawkeye, Iron Man and Spider-Man in those few lines, and it’s fun. This also shows something about why I have enjoyed his Avengers so much: his strengths before then had been low-key solo books – Daredevil, Alias, Powers – with characters on the fringes of the superhero world. The Avengers were right at the heart of their world, massively powered, needing big menaces and exciting plots. I didn’t know if he would be an embarrassing failure. There’s plenty of scope for a detailed analysis of his time on the title, the different eras he has put the team through and their political reflections of aspects of the real world, but here and now I am just reviewing this. As well as throwaway enjoyable exchanges like the above, we get an interesting conversation between Thor, Iron Man and Wonder Man – the latter thinks there should not be an Avengers any more, because of the lives it has cost. This is insufficiently worked through at the moment, which may be down to Simon Williams never being an especially sharp or sophisticated thinker, but I imagine there is more to come.
But we also get the start of a big new superhero plotline. The Red Hood has been bouncing around these titles for ages now, gaining and losing power. This time he gets his hands on a couple of infinity gems, which are cosmically powerful – it’s down to him that the Red Hulk, who the ‘story so far’ page tells me is actually Thunderbolt Ross, ferfucksake, ends up flung into the Avengers’ base. Bendis has done well with the big plots, both the huge crossovers like the Secret Invasion and more contained stories like the recent time travel one with Ultron and Kang, among others. He’s accurately identified key enemies, especially in Ultron.
On the other hand, the Wonder Man bit felt underdeveloped, and does highlight that he does write for collections, which I rather disapprove of, since I love buying superhero comics every month. And the finding of the first gem made no sense to me, but I guess it may be that some past comic established it was so lamely protected.
The art is excellent here. Romita has long been one of the most reliably first rate artists in mainstream comics. I really like the variety and expressiveness of his faces, which have an almost cute likeability as well as a ruggedness, which is helped plenty by Janson’s strong inks – he of course has been one of the best for even longer than JRjr, partly because he adjusts his inks perfectly to the artist. Romita’s storytelling is firmly compelling, and the Dean White colours are particularly well judged too, varying the palette cleverly for the different scenes without ever becoming intrusive.
So I’m sure Will completely disagrees with me, but I enjoyed this, and I look forward to the rest of the story.
Tags: Avengers, Brian Michael Bendis, John Romita Jr, Klaus Janson, Marvel
Umn, that’s “make no move”, not “make no movie”. I surmise. Unless Thor was just really ticked off at Ang Lee….
haha, whoops
And, well, no. Of the lines you quote, three out of the four characters named could have delivered any one of them, given a slight change in the plot. Every character, Thunder Gods aside, has the same voice, the same intonation, the same attitude. The personalities are shaped to the situation, rather than the situation being shaped by the characters. And frankly, on this showing, the Infinity Gems should have been left in the rather more competent custody of the pet Avengers…
I think all four characters sound entirely distinct there!
Oh, so the Hood is back, *again*? I made the right decision to drop this book when the first arc concluded.
Re: Bendis on Spidey’s origin – yep, the whole first trade of Ultimate Spider-Man reprises those two pages, pretty much. But then Ultimate Spider-Man is the best Spider-Man run ever, and the one Bendis comic I still reliably love every month, precisely because he feels free not to have anything happen and just to write dialogue and character interaction for whole issues at a time.
I did read lots of his Ultimate Spider-Man, and to be fair the first trade does include more than just that. I found it hard to unconditionally enjoy the title because of Bagley’s nasty art (I guess I read the first dozen or so trades anyway), and haven’t read any since he left.
Unless an artist is truly incoherent, then while they don’t enhance my enjoyment they won’t spoil it either. I know plenty of other people who felt that way about Bagley, though – Hell, one of them has since contributed to the title! But Immonen and LaFuente are both much, much better.
I found Bagley’s work really ugly. I don’t know LaFuente, but Immonen is certainly in a very different league from Bagley. I should probably catch up on the series – I must check how far I read before.
I think this is LaFuente’s first big gig. Try the first post-Ultimatum collection, The New World According To Peter Parker – it was a relaunch and renumbering, so’s a good place to drop in.
Whilst it took me a while, I really enjoy Bendis’ Avengers now, with Avengers being my favourite of the regular titles at present. I love Brubaker’s writing in general and Secret Avengers does have Ant-Man in a decent costume and the Beast is back, but nevertheless.
When Dark Avengers started, I had hoped that the three ongoing titles would go the way of Spider-Man with one title three times a month (but without the massive retcon) and when Siege was announced along with all Avengers titles being cancelled I thought that someone had listend to me ! Alas no.
Bendis could quite easily have written all three issues every month, which would at least have meant that he would be able to complete a tale in two months (just like the old days !); and yes you would probably need a different artist for each six parter, but that tended to be the case on a monthly series anyway.
The plus side of having three teams is having Ant-Man, Beast and the Thing being active members.
It is not a perfect world though, and I am one of those who believe that Spider-Man and Wolverine should not be in the Avengers – and they certainly shouldn’t be in two teams !!! The Beast did the decent thing by leaving the X-Men beforehand.
One reason I like the Avengers most is because the art is done by JR jr and Klaus Janson, who are old school. Yes, I’m sure the new artists are more realistic but I am old fashioned and to me a comic should look like a comic and not something you’d see hanging on the wall of a stately home.
Regarding #7 in particular, I find the potential inclusion of Red Hulk interesting – and another reason for Wolverine’s exclusion, as they don’t want more than one grumpy pants. Yes, I know, General Ross, but that’s Jeph “interesting” Loeb for you. I often wonder how much DC are paying him.
I particularly liked Jarvis’ comment alerting the team to the crimson one, but surely Jarvis had too much hair ??? Plus the picture of Wolverine laughing heartedly with Thor didn’t seem right.
Regarding the Wonder Man segment, I suspect that is part of a longer thread, as this is the second such instance, and look how long it took for us to find out who hired Electro to fuse the Raft.
I also really like the Hood and that he is always trying to reclaim his former glory so yes I did find this an interesting and enjoyable issue.