New Avengers vol. 2
“Mild disappointment” seems to be the theme for the second volumes of Brian Michael Bendis’ two “Avengers” series. Where adjectiveless “Avengers” stumbled in trying to top itself, this second volume of “New Avengers” actually gets off to a great start by having its team decompress from the world-threatening assault of Agamotto in the previous volume. The majority of the first issue takes place around the dining table of the still-standing Avengers mansion and manages to cover a lot of ground just in the way its characters sit around and talk. From addressing Stephen Strange’s status and getting him on the team, to Spider-Man having it out with former aide-to-Osborn Victoria Hand, Luke Cage and Jessica Jones addressing the ethics and reality of getting a paycheck as Avengers, it’s an action-free scene that works beautifully thanks to Bendis’ dialogue and Stuart Immonen’s grasp of nuance in his characters’ body language. The hiring of a nanny for Luke and Jessica’s kid was also a blast, and now that I’ve read some of the comics that featured him back in the day, I can say that D-Man thoroughly deserves the trashing he gets here.
The second story will warm the hearts of “Alias” fans as it’s a character piece between Luke and Jessica as the married couple meet up for dinner in the city. Freed from parenting and superhero duties (or so they think) the two enjoy a quiet moment for themselves, and conversation which centers around Luke bugging his wife to be a superhero again. Seeing as how Bendis built this relationship from scratch, it’s no surprise that it reads like two mature individuals having a believable conversation. Even Luke’s “Power Woman” bit comes off as an endearing bit of cheese. Naturally a crisis pops up that the two have to get involved in, but it’s a minor hiccup in an otherwise stellar issue that also features art from Daniel Acuna working at the top of his game.
Though these two issues also draw a line under a lot of what fans dislike about Bendis’ take on the “Avengers,” lots of standing around and talking, very little action, they also show why his approach also works. The man creates believable, and likeable characters with his dialogue that works on more than a surface level as their hopes, fears and ambitions come through loud and clear in the subtext. It’s this level of skill that helps salvage the main arc in this volume — a five issue mini-epic that spans two eras, needlessly.
After the team is tipped off by Victoria Hand about Dr. Deidre Wentworth, a.k.a. Superia, gathering a crew of former H.A.M.M.E.R. agents to set up a high-tech base of operations, they head over to its location in Rhode Island to shut it down. What should be a simple mission of “beat up the bad guys and smash their stuff” quickly takes a turn for the serious after Mockingbird is severely wounded in the course of the fight. Though everyone quickly gets their heads back in the game in order for some payback, some are wondering whether or not Ms. Hand has really disassociated herself from her old crew.
This story is intercut with scenes from 1959 where we see Nick Fury assembling a proto-Avengers team made up of Sabretooth, Namora, Kraven the Hunter, Dominic Fortune, Silver Sable, and Ulysses Bloodstone to stop the Red Skull from establishing the Fourth Reich. What does this have to do with the present day story? Pretty much nothing until the very end when the arbitrary MacGuffin from that era shows up again just in time to save Mockingbird. It’s not that these flashbacks are bad, per se, but they come off as thoroughly unnecessary. Much like the arc in “Daredevil” where Bendis told the story of the man who was Kingpin before Wilson Fisk, it feels like an inessential continuity patch. Was anyone dying to know about the secret roots of the Avengers before the real team came together? Not really, and the story itself is competent, but not much more.
Splitting the story into two eras required two artists to pull it off. Freed from having to draw a full issue each month, Mike Deodato turns in some of his strongest work in recent memory as the detail he brings to the present day sequences remains strong and consistent throughout these five issues. I can’t say the same about Howard Chaykin, who does the 1959 sequences, as his contribution starts off strong and then becomes sketchier and less-defined as things go on.
If nothing else, the present day sequences do a decent job of re-establishing H.A.M.M.E.R. and setting up threads to be picked up on for future storylines. However, the whole arc is dragged down by the unnecessary and ultimately arbitrary nature of the flashback story. Much like its sister title, future arcs look to be full of promise, but the here and now could’ve used some better planning.