Heroes Reborn
…was the name given to the 90’s era initiative that saw Marvel hand over some of its most prominent heroes — the Fantastic Four, Captain America, Iron Man, and the rest of the Avengers — over to Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, and their studios to remake in their image (or Image, if you will). The fact that this happened, and that Liefeld’s contract was cancelled halfway through with everything being handed over to Lee, is the most memorable thing about it. Everyone remembers this event because of the business dealings and talent involved, and not because of the stories that came from it. By that standard, Jason Aaron has a relatively low bar to clear as he repurposes the “Heroes Reborn” name for an event series that’s spinning out of his “Avengers” run.
This actually makes recommending this series pretty easy as you’re likely going to enjoy it if you’re a fan of the writer, and of his current “Avengers” run, specifically. The setup for the series is simple as all of the familiar Marvel heroes are either nowhere to be found or relegated to some ineffective status. To give a few examples: Thor is a hopeless drunk, Carol Danvers is “just” a fighter pilot, and Captain America is still stuck in an iceberg. The one exception here is Blade who, for some unexplained reason, remembers the world as it was.
This leaves the Daywalker to start working to restore the Avengers and save the world from the real protagonists of this event: The Squadron Supreme of America. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, they’ve been working as Agent Coulson’s lackeys in “Avengers” and have been otherwise blind to his devilish manipulations. While that’s who they are right now, the other thing you should know about the Squadron is that they’ve always been Marvel’s version of the Justice League. So when I say that Hyperion is a super-strong individual who can shoot lasers from his eyes and is powered by the sun, or Nighthawk is a rich crimefighter who works under the cover of the night, you should have a pretty good idea who these characters are meant to be.
Does that make them any more interesting here? Not really. The Squadron’s members are ostensibly heroic characters stuck upholding a world that was unjustly remade to suit them. It’s clear that Aaron wants there to be some tension from two morally righteous teams fighting each other for the sake of their worlds. That doesn’t happen here because one of these teams is the Avengers and the other is Not The Justice League. If the writer really wanted to generate some tension from this conflict, then he should’ve either made the Squadron unrepentantly, ridiculously evil, or given us a world that was clearly better off than the Marvel Universe is right now.
Based on what some of the Squadron either yell or moan about at the end, the implication is that we’re meant to interpret that the latter case has come to pass. That’s not true as the stories which make up the bulk of this volume give us the impression that this is just a different Marvel Universe, and not necessarily a better one. Doctor Doom with the power of the Crystal of Cyttorak, a.k.a. Doctor Juggernaut? The Red Skull with a symbiote, a.k.a. The Black Skull? Bruce Banner as a Bizzaro Hulk? Does a world with villains/antagonists like these really sound like it’s that much better off?
There’s also the idea of seeing Aaron write familiar DC characters via the members of the Squadron. Again, this is something which is perfectly fine without feeling all that imaginative or compelling. The writer’s approach here is also diluted in each issue as he spends time both having the character address the present-day threat, while repeated flashbacks show us how familiar Marvel events turned out differently due to the Squadron member’s participation. Some of these are kind of surprising, such as Hyperion’s zero-tolerance approach to dealing with Galactus, but the majority of them offer little more than a cool visual.
Which is something that this version of “Heroes Reborn” has in common with the first Marvel event to bear this name. This event series is a great showcase for all of the artists involved. Ed McGuinness contributes most of the work here, illustrating the first and final issues, as well as the five-page shorts from the intervening seven issues that show how Blade goes about recruiting the rest of the Avengers. McGuinness’ big, bold, slightly cartoonish style is a great fit for a series that demands fresh new takes on familiar heroes, and then demands that they fight each other out in the end.
In between McGuinness’ work are some very strong contributions from Dale Keown (with Carlos Magno), Federico Vicentini, James Stokoe, R.M. Guera, Erica D’Urso, and Aaron Kuder. There’s not a bad contributor among them, though longtime readers will likely be able to guess which two stood out the most to me. For those of you who can’t, that’d be Stokoe and Guera. The former brings his insanely detailed style to a story about a one-eyed Rocket Raccoon and his tree-gun Groot being hired by a blind Watcher to kill Doctor Spectrum, and he makes the proceedings as entertainingly over the top as that summary sounds. Guera handles the adventures of Nighthawk as he handles a breakout at Ravencroft Asylum, and his grim and gritty style is perfect for that adventure.
All of this means that there’s another reason for people to pick up this collection: If you like quality superhero art. I think a lot of the stories here are elevated by the artwork they have, which is something I wasn’t expecting to write when I picked up this volume. The main reason I did that is because I figured it was going to have some significance to Aaron’s “Avengers” run, and I wasn’t wrong. However, it’s hard to say whether or not this is going to be a pivotal chapter as the important plot elements will likely be spelled out by the heroes in passing in a future issue. This means that Aaron, McGuinness, and company did manage to clear the low bar set for them by the original event. Mainly by just stepping over it.