Tag Archives: Avengers

Please be Sentry…

…please be Sentry, please be Sentry…

FALLEN (Not Final Title)
Written by To Be Announced
Art by Tom Raney
Cover by Leinil Yu
The SIEGE has ended and taken its toll on both sides of the battle field. The event seven years in the making has claimed many lives, and in this, its final chapter, a universe comes together to mourn (CLASSIFIED). The shocking death that ended the fight and gave birth to a new Heroic Age is remembered as a writer (CLASSIFIED) returns to lead the farewells.
32 PGS./One-Shot/Rated T+…$3.99

..because honestly if its not the Sentry (and writer Paul Jenkins) then there’s no justice in the world.

Never have I seen a character with some potential screwed over so badly. Written out of every fight by silly plot devices as he’s too powerful, a poorly defined power set, saddled with a ridiculous, mutable origin and a villainous alter-ego who appears to have biblical connections – there’s just no salvaging this character.

What I don’t understand is why any of the heroes that you see there (Spidey, Thor, Black Widow, Iron Man, maybe Spider-Woman…, Mr Fantastic) would even bother mourning this waste of narrative.

No ‘I’ in ‘Team’

Yesterday Newsarama ‘debuted’ an X-Men teaser for post-Second Coming, the latest in the X-universe shake-ups that have been prevalent for the last few years.

Of course, it would have been a more effective debut if the ad hadn’t shown up in some of last week’s Marvel Comics…


Anyway, also yesterday, Marvel released yet another ‘I am an Avenger’ teaser – this time spotlighting double-duty pulling Luke Cage in an outfit best described as minimalist – on the oddly named relaunched New Avengers:


That got me thinking: I wonder if there’s a concerted push to differentiate the Avengers and the X-Men these days at Marvel. After all, under Bendis the Avengers have become arguably the biggest franchise at the company, knocking the X-Men into second place – and you may have noticed that I’m not a huge fan of what’s going on in the X-books right now.

Still, I look at these ads and I see the collective ‘we are’ X-Men while ‘I am an’ Avenger. I suppose that’s the way it’s always been; the Avengers were originally formed of characters all strong enough to hold their own features due to the limitations placed on the number of comics the company could distribute at the time. The idea was if you like Thor, you might pick up Avengers in addition to Journey into Mystery and then would be tempted to check out Ant-Man and the Wasp in Tales to Astonish, or Iron Man in Tales of Suspense or so on.

That pretty much went out the window early on when Cap joined with #4 – his first Silver Age appearance after a dry run in with an impostor in the Human Torch feature in Strange Tales #114.


By the time Avengers #16 rolled around, Cap was the only member with a co-feature, but the limitations on the number of books had begun to ease, so it no longer needed to be the cross-pollinating book that it started out as, but the original idea is still right there in the masthead (or used to be back when every Marvel book came with a masthead):

And there came a day, a day unlike any other, when Earth’s mightiest heroes and heroines found themselves united against a common threat…

These guys aren’t a team, they’re a collection of individuals who get together to fight big threats.

The X-Men on the other hand have always been a team first, individuals second. The original roster’s closest thing to a breakout star was the Beast, who bounced into his own feature in Amazing Adventures, over a year after the X-Men were effectively canceled and put into reprints.


It wasn’t until the advent of the new team of X-Men that Wolverine became a hit character – and even then it would take an incredible amount of time after the book relaunched before he got his own mini series (7 years!) and even longer before he got his own ongoing (11 years!).

I think this distinction has been lost over the years, but when I see these ads I kind of hope it represents a refocusing on what always differentiated the two teams.

And, if at all possible, an end to this island nation nonsense…

Avenger #6

Because some things never get old.

Thanks to The Weekly Crisis

Avenger #5

Well so far I have to say that there is nothing unexpected about the line-up for the new bright and shiny Avengers that we’ve seen.

Boring…

Avenger #4

Not entirely unexpected that Clint Barton should be returning to his classic Hawkeye costume in order to redeem it after Bullseye’s actions in it, or that Clint will be on the team, given his recent prominence in New Avengers…

…but somewhere, Kate Bishop is weeping.

Avenger #3

I have to say – so far this Avengers line-up is pretty uninspired.

Where’s the shock character? The character that will cause friction and shake things up?

Iron Man, Cap and Spider-Woman?

Hoping for more wildcards soon…

Avenger #2

As with Captain America, no real surprise since Spider-Woman has been one of Bendis’ pet character since he started on New Avengers (and was originally meant to be the lead in Alias).

What this image does tell us is, firstly, that the Avengers roster isn’t necessarily limited to the number of letters in the word ‘Avengers’ (as some people thought yesterday with the large ‘A’ behind the Cap image) – probably a pretty good job given the plethora of characters running around currently claiming Avengerhood.

Secondly, it suggest that the Heroic Age teaser that was released a couple of weeks back -

- is just that, a teaser, and not a roster for the team. That in itself suggests that the Agents of Atlas will be around in some form or another, since Gorilla Man is so prominent in the image.

I’m also taking away from this that the Thing isn’t going to be an Avenger – which relieves me greatly as quite honestly, the Thing as an Avenger just doesn’t work.

West Coast Avengers excluded, natch.

Avenger #1

No real surprise there – but I’m still glad that Bucky’s appears to be the one who’s carrying the shield post-Siege (eye color notwithstanding). I can only assume that Steve will be running an entirely different kind of SHIELD…

I just did a girly ’squeee!’ in my head

Posted via web from Comic By Comic’s Wonderous Posterous!

The reason for the girly noise was, of course, the echo of this:

Like father, like daughter!

Why are you hitting yourself? Huh? Huh?

So let me get this straight: Eternity contains everything, including Hank Pym.

And because Hank Pym thinks everyone hates him…

Yeah, okay. I can live with that.

But really, Eternity loves Hank Pym!

Why? Because he’s Scientist Supreme!


Er…well, the title feels a little forced, but I guess I can live with that too. After all, it’s not like Hank’s the smartest guy in the room; Eternity admits that Reed Richards is a lot smarter but an explorer (presumably the Explorer Supreme!) and Stark’s an Engineer (Supreme!). I have a hard time thinking Stark’s brighter than Pym though, and Eternity doesn’t say he is – it’s just that these are the guys that Pym compares himself to most.

The fact that they’ve both been massive dicks to him in this series is probably another reason that Eternity calls them out.

Tangentially, you know who Pym doesn’t see as his equal?


That’s right, baby. Because Pym knows that no-one is equal to Doom.

Anyway. So it turns out that while Reed and Stark have the role of Explorer and Engineer locked down, Pym’s the Mage.


Er…like magic? He uses science like magic? So he doesn’t have to explain how he does what he does, kind of like how Forge could make anything before Warren Bloody Ellis blew him out his glory hole?

You know what? I like Hank Pym. I always have even with his many, many, many flaws – so I’m okay with this new role and the new-found confidence it instills.

You know what I don’t like?

Creepy ‘that’s-the-brain-patterns-of-your-dead-ex-wife-in-a-robot-your-robot-son-built-for-a-mate-you-weirdo-perv’ Pym-Jocasta moments.

At least Speed doesn’t like it either…

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