New Avengers 7

OKAY,  YOU HAD ME AT ‘SQUIRREL GIRL’…

There’s a lot to be said against Brian Michael Bendis’ writing, and I’ve said most of it already; his overrated, sprawling style has become the industry standard, padding out storylines endlessly to fill the all-important Trade Paperback, with a multitude of costumes all saying the same ‘cool’ things in exactly the same voice, characterisation being subverted to a plot point or a ‘witty’ punchline.

It’s overplayed, pretentious, repetitive, and repetitive.

His most recent attempts at the Avengers franchises have sported most of these flaws at their most egregious, with a shocking amount of space wasted before coming to anything like a resolution, and the resolution, when it comes, leaving the reader thinking; “That’s it? He’s finished?”

And yet, every so often, he actually makes me remember how good he used to be, and how much I used to enjoy his work.

New Avengers has been marginally better than the flatulent train-wreck that is The Avengers, but only fractionally until now. With this ‘breather’ issue, the team decides to do some literal and figurative housecleaning, and we get a chance to see personalities emerge from the morass of snappy one-liners and sitcom put-downs.

And it’s a treat; we see the criminally-underused Damage Control organisation again, and discover that their boss, Annie Hoag, has had, like most straight gals in the Marvel Universe, a bit of a thing with Luke Cage. There’s a splendid scene where Spider-Man and former Norman Osborn henchwoman Victoria Hand have a set-to, and actually manage to resolve it intelligently while remaining on opposite sides of the dispute. Doctor Strange gets a grounding, and starts to form some relationships with mortals again. Jessica Jones gets an all-too-rare chance to shine, reminding her husband Luke firmly of his responsibilities and coming to terms with the fact that he’s had a looong history of being man-candy to the Ladies of the MU (surely Jessica didn’t think she was the only one he’d taken ‘up the Putney Towpath’ for all those years?) and the crucial dilemma of the issue – who’s going to be the super-powered nanny to Luke and Jessica’s baby – is charmingly dealt with, in a manner that’s funny and appropriate without breaking the reader’s trust in the dramatic narrative. The interview scene, a two-page spread of talking heads with some characters so obscure they even defied Ubergeek here, is delightful.

Plus; Wong! After so many years of seeing Doctor Strange’s non-romantic life-partner as a silent minion, it’s a hoot to find him speaking out against the role the fates have cast him in – “I prayed that one day I would grow up to be a second-rate Jarvis for a second-rate pile of Avengers.” –  while clearly embracing the task.

Stuart Immonen’s contribution cannot be underestimated here, as he’s come such a long way from his beginnings as a competent-but-dull Alan Davis/Adam Hughes wannabe. He’s still hugely variable – when he’s bored with a story and just crapping it out to top up the pension fund, it shows – but with this issue he seems to be having great fun, pulling out all the stops in terms of body language and facial expression to augment the story, making it one of the most unexpectedly enjoyable reads I’ve had from a modern comic.

Which of course, begs the question; if Bendis can still do work of this calibre – why does he so frequently now settle for doing so much less?