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Marvel is Putting Together Yet Another Avengers Team
Because why not?
Apparently Marvel took a look at their exhaustive Avengers comic book franchise – Avengers, New Avengers, Dark Avengers, Secret Avengers, Uncanny Avengers, Avengers Assemble and Avengers Arena – and realized that they don’t have a comic using the adjective ‘Mighty’, which is the classic Avengers adjective. So faster than you can say “give me another Avengers comic”, it seems that Marvel is going to do just that.
All week long, Marvel has been unveiling the lineup for a new series that so far is only titled ‘Mighty’. But why else use that adjective if you’re not then going to combine it with ‘Avengers’? The new comic isn’t going to be called ‘Mighty Heroes 4 Hire, that’s for sure’. That would never sell. The concept for the team is going to revolve around the upcoming series Infinity, Marvel’s next Big Event comic. While the normal Avengers are out in space dealing with Infinity, Luke Cage is going to remain on Earth and assemble a new team. I guess that’s a good enough reason to pop out yet another Avengers comic.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t care less about the characters on the team.
We’ve got Cage, She-Hulk, Superior Spider-Man, White Tiger, the new Power Man and Adam, the Blue Marvel, a character you’ve probably never heard of before because he only ever appeared in a single mini-series several years ago as a Superman-esque hero.
Are you kidding me!? Brian Michael Bendis is taking an obscure, Superman rip-off who only ever appeared in a single old mini-series and turning him into an Avenger? Does he live in some kind of fantasy land where he thinks people actually liked the Sentry? The Sentry was terrible. How could Marvel possibly think the Blue Marvel could be any better?
Alright, enough angry ranting. I just wish I knew what rules are in place when a writer puts together a new superhero team. How many times has this been done before? A writer creates a new comic and throws in a bunch of random characters to make a team. Bendis himself does it at least once a year. His original New Avengers reboot was that exact thing. As was every iteration of the Avengers comic that Bendis ever wrote. What about Matt Fraction’s Defenders series from a few years ago? Or any of a bajillion different X-Men comics?
I just don’t think team membership means anything to anyone anymore. Where are the days when team members actually meant something to one another? When they could actually build bonds and stick together for awhile? Why are these characters so utterly interchangeable, and why does Marvel feel the need to just keep cranking out random assortments of superheroes and calling them Avengers?
Anyway, that’s my rant for today. Take it for what you will.
Age of Ultron Will Make Us All Believe Again
Believe that Brian Michael Bendis can write a good Event Comic, that is. Marvel and Bendis finally got around to revealing the worst kept secret in comics: that his time on the Avengers will end next year with a 10-part Age of Ultron!
Looks like Ultron also gets a fancy new suit
In good news, Bryan Hitch will be drawing the first half. And Bryan Hitch is amazing.
So basically, based on this interview, Age of Ultron is a story where the evil robot Ultron finally achieves world domination. Pretty fun, right? And from what I can tell, a few heroes like Spider-Man, Hawkeye and Moon Knight (of all people) are left to figure out how to save the day. Because Bendis absolutely loves Moon Knight, even though he couldn’t get his Moon Knight comic series to sell. The series is going to ship between March and June next year, so another quick event, similar to Avengers vs. X-Men. This is a smart way to do it. We don’t want Event Fatigue.
Bendis is definitely excited about it.
“I couldn’t be more excited for this book to hit the stands,” Bendis says. “Literally not a day has gone by that people haven’t asked me about this online. I know that people are looking forward to this, and have voiced so to me, so to finally debut it, and for it to be, I imagine, much more than people thought it was going to be, is very exciting for us. It takes one of Marvel’s classic villains to a level we’ve never seen before, and it pushes our Marvel heroes into a place that they’ve never been before, and gets us to a place in the Marvel Universe that you won’t be able to guess.”
Personally, I’m luke warm about this idea. I’ve never been a particularly big fan of Ultron, and he was already the major villain in Annihilation: Conquest a few years ago. He was defeated then too. However, considering how lame the Serpent turned out to be in Fear Itself, perhaps going with a known villain as the big bad is a smart way to go. Plus it’ll be a relief to have the heroes fighting a super-villain for once, instead of each other.
I’m also not a big fan of Bendis’ events. House of M, Seige and especially Secret Invasion were bollocks. They all basically amount to a lot of pointless build up, all leading to just a giant fight at the end where somebody shouts ‘Avengers Assemble!’ That’s how it always goes. So I don’t have much faith in him to pull this off.
But I can hope…
I Want to be Brian Michael Bendis
Bendis, for those who don’t know, is one of the most popular comic book writers working today. Not only is he the long-time mastermind behind the fantastic Ultimate Spider-Man series, but he has spear-headed the entire Avengers franchise since 2004. Next year’s The Avengers movie owes part of its existence to Bendis’ pen, as he almost single-handedly catapulted the Avengers to their current heights of popularity. Which is why it was pretty big news yesterday that Bendis is going to step down from the Avengers franchise in 2012. The man is walking away at the height of his power. He has the entire world of comics to choose from as to what he wants to write next.
I wish I was Brian Michael Bendis.
Though I draw the line at having his bald babies
Being a comic book writer is my dream job. So Bendis is pretty much the role model in the world of comics. His writing is fantastic, I’m a huge fan of a lot of his stories and he gets to work with the best in the industry. Bendis and artist Mark Bagley hold the record for one creative team working on one single comic the longest, when together they wrote and drew 110 consecutive issues of Ultimate Spider-Man. Bendis has also written over 200 issues of the Avengers and their various spin-off titles, making him the creator who has spent the most time with the team. Bendis is a comic book god!
Bendis got his start writing some independent titles of his own creation. That’s how I plan to break into the industry. His work got him noticed, and he got more and more job offerings from professional companies. Eventually Marvel Comics found him and put him to work on Ultimate Spider-Man. The rest is awesome history. He’s exclusive to Marvel Comics, so he won’t be writing Batman anytime soon, but Marvel has a pretty big toy box to play with. Bendis didn’t announce what he’s going to write next in an interview with ComicBookResources.com, only that he’s got huge plans for ending his run on the Avengers.
“I’m going to wrap up ‘Avengers’ and ‘New Avengers.’ At the same time the first storyline of ‘Avengers Assemble’ will be done,” Bendis told CBR. “It’s a good time to move on to other things. Before I go, though, I’m ending things big. I’m in countdown mode…I’m very, very proud of that, and what we have coming up this summer gives me the opportunity to go out on a high note. I know enough about showbiz to know that’s a great time to go.”
Though frankly, I’ve never been a big fan of Bendis’ work on the Avengers. I’ve bought a few issues here and there, and followed side titles like Mighty Avengers and especially Dark Avengers, but I’ve just never much cared for his work on the main series. Bendis started writing the Avengers by breaking the team apart in 2004, in a story called ‘Avengers Disassembled’. For years, the Avengers had mostly been their own little corner of the Marvel Universe, with traditional characters like Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and the usual rabble. The Avengers kept to themselves in terms of heroes on the team. And for whatever reason, I was never big into the Avengers. I was more of a Spider-Man or X-Men guy.
Compare this to DC comics and their main superhero team: the Justice League. That team is composed of all of DC’s biggest heroes, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, etc.
Well under Bendis’ pen, he changed the Avengers to be more like the Justice League. After he broke up the team, he started a new series called New Avengers, in which he added Spider-Man and Wolverine, Marvel’s most popular characters, to the team.
Wolverine and Spider-Man solve everything
I’ve never been comfortable with that, and I’m still not. I read comics for the characters, and it just never fit, in my mind, to have Spider-Man and Wolverine as Avengers. Let alone having them on multiple Avengers squads, all in the name of getting the popular characters to sell as many books as possible. But hey, everybody else loved it and the Avengers quickly rose in popularity. No longer hiding in their own little corner, the Avengers were soon the franchise in comic books. All because Bendis is a great writer and really got to spread his wings in terms of writing.
Bendis also got to add his fan-favorite character, Luke Cage, to the Avengers, so that was pretty cool. Cage was always an incredibly minor character, but Bendis was a big fan and so he brought Cage with him when it came to writing New Avengers. Now Cage is one of the main players in the Marvel Universe.
Anyway, so since 2004, Bendis has been the main architect of the Avengers franchise. He’s played with hundreds of characters, written dozen of Earth-shaking stories and has led the entire Marvel Universe through some of its biggest, wildest adventures. So it’s going to be a shame to see him leave the title in 2012…but at the same time, it’s going to be awesome! Not only will we get to see someone new writing the Avengers, but Bendis will now get to write somebody else.
I can’t wait to see what he’ll do next. I just wish that was my job.
Henchman-4-Hire 