Dark Avengers vols. 2 & 3: Molecule Man & Siege

There’s still some fun to be had from reading these volumes, as the core idea of Norman Osborne leading a team of supervillains posing as the Avengers is a lot of fun.  That is, if your idea of fun is seeing a group of anti-social manipulators, crazies, and outright psychotics try to work together as a team and put on a good face for the public.  (Well, it’s my idea of fun at least…)  You’ve also got typically strong writing from Brian Michael Bendis and art from Mike Deodato (with Chris Bachalo handling the “Annual” in vol. 3) in these volumes as well.  However, my issues with these volumes come in forms that are of the creative team’s own making (The Sentry) and outside their control (the price).

Way back when “New Avengers” was announced, I and a lot of other people couldn’t believe that Bendis was going to have The Sentry as a team member.  He was created by writer Paul Jenkins as a hero who was once everybody’s best friend in the Marvel Universe, yet was completely forgotten about for unknown reasons.  The original mini-series had a clever marketing campaign as the character was hyped as a forgotten creation of Stan Lee, and the end result was a compelling, creepy look at the history of the Marvel U with some fantastic art from Jae Lee.  However, the mini-series was set up to be a very self-contained endeavor and The Sentry wasn’t meant have any further interaction with the Marvel U.  So when Bendis says he’s going to bring the character into the mainstream continuity, you’d imagine that he’d have a VERY GOOD reason for doing this.

I’ll give the man this:  The use of the character in these two volumes is handled very well.  I like how his powers are (finally) given some sort of clear definition in the fight against the Molecule Man, along with the explanation of how he keeps coming back from certain death.  Then, in the “Siege” tie-in issues, we get an in-depth look at his psychosis as Bendis successfully builds on what Jenkins revealed about the character in his second Sentry mini-series (that he’s a junkie who will do anything for his power fix) and shows us how Osborne is able to keep the character in line by “sympathizing” with his madness and instability.  Osborne’s speech to the Sentry when he’s bringing a biblical plague down on New York is a great bit of writing and the best example of the appeal of seeing him put in a leadership position like this.

The problem is that up until this point, there really hasn’t been anything that’s justified the use of the character.  Bendis and everyone else at Marvel were banging the drum for the longest time about how he was such a great character and how they were going to do such great things with him, and outside of his appearance in “World Wark Hulk,” that really didn’t happen.  I don’t know if the man’s plan for the character was to eventually turn him into a villain, but it ultimately turned out to be a huge case of wasted potential.  His work with the character here comes off as less the culmination of a years-long plan than cleaning up the mess he made.

Though The Sentry dominates these volumes, there were still plenty of things I liked about these volumes.  The ongoing relationship between Osborne and Victoria Hand, his last link to sanity, is one as is Hand’s development as a character.  Though she wholeheartedly believes in the man’s agenda, she’s not evil or dumb and her willingness to stick to her principles is rewarded in the end.  There are also lots of fun character bits ranging from Hand’s disciplinary measures against Hawkeye and Moonstone, Daken’s escape in the aftermath of Siege, and Osborne’s concluding monologue — which almost makes you feel sorry for the man.  I’d have liked to say that the issue focusing on Ares’ relationship with his son was one of these.  While it was a good depiction of showing us a father incapable of relating to his progeny it misses the point of how their relationship was presented way back in the “Ares” mini-series, which showed them to be the opposite of this.

I know it’s a continuity issue, but if you’re reading a series as tied into the ongoing narrative of the Marvel U as this is, then I’m willing to bet stuff like this matters to you.  As does the price of these volumes.  Picking up these two volumes, collecting nine issues total will set you back $36, roughly the price of buying them as single issues.  Price doesn’t normally factor into my reviews, but it was high enough here that I was conscious of it while I was reading these volumes.  Granted, I found these two on sale, but even with their merits, I don’t think that they’d be worth picking up at full price.  They’re definitely two to consider if you find them in a bargain bin at a con, though.