New Avengers by Bendis vol. 5

The reason this is coming so late is because I somehow missed this when it showed up on Diamond’s weekly shipping lists.  There was this nagging thought on my head, “When is this volume going to come out in paperback?” that I didn’t get around to checking out until this week.  Imagine my surprise when I saw that this came out back in the beginning of September.  So, issues with acquiring it aside, the real question here is whether or not it provides a better wrap-up to Bendis’ tenure with the “Avengers” franchise.  While the story he goes out with isn’t anything special, it still provides a nice reminder of what has made his an entertaining run.

In a bit of art imitating life, one of the main threads in this volume involves Luke Cage’s retirement from being an Avenger.  The man wants to raise his daughter with his wife, Jessica Jones, away from all of the superhero craziness that has defined their lives for these past years.  Just as they’re loading up the U-haul, the FBI and Maria Hill of S.H.I.E.L.D. show up to arrest the team’s liaison, Veronica Hand, on suspicion of murder.  Seeing as how the opening issue shows her murdering two notable members of Marvel’s mystical side, they may be justified in doing so.  Of course things can’t ever be that easy, can they?

That this is the work of some mind-controlling fiend can pretty much be taken as read from the very beginning.  Though it’s likely you won’t be able to guess who the culprit is before Bendis gives you the big reveal, I liked how it effectively brings the close of his run full-circle with the recent relaunch.  There’s a whole lot of fighting, lots of quipping and some quick-thinking on the part of Doctor Strange to save the day.  Familiar stuff, but rendered with the typical zest that the writer has always brought to this title.

Yes, one of the oft-repeated criticisms of his run is that the characters tend to spend more time standing around talking than actually doing things.  I can understand that to a certain extent, but one of the main advantages to reading his whole run in collected editions is that you always get a sizable chunk of story to go along with the talk.  You can actually see that stuff actually happens in his stories.

There’s also the fact that Bendis still writes some of the best dialogue in the business.  I’d love it if he could get back to focusing on his creator-owned work so that he wouldn’t have to worry about catering to the needs of a fictional superhero universe, yet there’s still plenty of fun to be had here.  You’ve got the good-hearted camaraderie from their lunchtime get-together.  The beautiful moment of meditation between Strange and Iron Fist where the latter works through his issues with Cage’s decision and ends up offering to buy the sorcerer a car.  We also get a tense-back-and-forth between Strange and Victoria in the astral plane as things rapidly deteriorate with the FBI in the real world.  There’s also Cage’s final heartfelt conversation with his wife that wraps up the series.

I didn’t have a whole lot of experience with the franchise prior to Bendis’ involvement, and that’s probably why his approach didn’t irk me the way it did for longtime fans.  Yet when I went back to read some of the older runs in the series, such as Kurt Busiek’s take that re-energized the title post-”Heroes Reborn,” they felt like chores to get through.  There was a density to the action, but the dialogue was so bland and functional that it bled a lot of the excitement out of the proceedings.  Going from that to the first volume of “New Avengers,” things got a lot more decompressed and fun to read with some real energy on the page.  Even when the book was forced to adapt to the latest crossover time and time again, it still maintained the same feel that Bendis brought to those opening issues.

It certainly hasn’t been smooth sailing the entire time:  The attempt to address the “Xorn” mess in vol. 4 of the original run only compounded the problems from undoing it in the first place.  The “Secret Invasion” tie-ins were only memorable for the issues of “Alias” that were snuck into them.  Vol. 2 of the relaunch could also be characterized as “mildly disappointing.”  That being said, out of the many “Avengers” titles that Bendis has written during his tenure at Marvel, this has always been the most consistently entertaining one.  It certainly has in the wake of the relaunch, as the writer’s attempt to write a more traditional version of the team in the “adjectiveless” title started off strong but became increasingly uneven as time went on.

Now the franchise is in the hands of Jonathan Hickman, whose work feels as rigorously plotted as Bendis’ does loose and free-flowing.  Hickman’s style is decidedly different from his predecessor, and that kind of change is what the title needs after being defined for so long by one man.  Will he leave things in better shape than he found them as Bendis did?  Given the state of the market I’m not optimistic, though I’d like to be proven wrong.

I do have more to say about this particular volume, as the four issues collected here feature art from four very different artists, and then some.  Michael Gaydos’, Bendis’ collaborator on “Alias” does the opening issue, and while they’re not sneaking another issue of that title in here, the artist ably handles the superhero action even if the conversation scenes are his forte.  We get a jarring style shift in the next issue with Carlos Pacheco, who turns in some capable but unsurprising superhero work here.  Another regular Bendis collaborator, Mike Oeming, gives us another wild stylistic change when he brings his “Powers” style to the book.  I liked it, even if his work does not mesh at all with the previous two artists.  Mike Deodato brings things home and after the constant shifts in style from the previous three issues, it feels good seeing the artist who has come to define the relaunch return to send it off.

There is a brief jam session showing us Strange’s battle against the team with art from Chuck BB, Farel Dalrymple, Ming Doyle, Lucy Kinsley, Becky Cloonan and Yves Bigerel.  They’re all great artists on their own terms, but the way they’re used here feels completely arbitrary and really takes you out of the action.  Even so, you still have to commend the writer for his taste by choosing these artists to work with.

The volume ends with Cage finally following through on his decision to leave the team to be with his family.  It’s a nice way for Bendis to wrap up his run as the character has played a fairly prominent role throughout the run and had the biggest character arc as we see here.  Even if the story he exited on is a fairly standard superhero run, it proves to be a far better capstone than what he gave us in “Avengers.”  “New Avengers vol. 5” reminds us of what was best about his tenure and gives us some closure on things in the process.  There may have been an unnecessary wait in the process, but I’m glad I finally got to read this.