NEW AVENGERS BY BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS VOL. 3 (Marvel, 2012; Hardcover)
Collects
New
Avengers
(Vol. 2) Nos. 16.1, 17-23 (cover dates November, 2011- May, 2012)
Writer:
Brian Michael Bendis
Artists:
Neal Adams and Tom Palmer (16.1), and Mike Deodato with Will Conrad
(17-23)
Bendis
is the luckiest son of a bitch on Earth. Never has so little talent
gone so far. I mean, he gets to do an issue with Neal Adams?!? Come
on! Adams and Palmer are Avengers royalty, having worked on
countless classic issues way back when, and it's Bendis that
gets to drag them into the 21st century?
 | ||
| Bendis writes fanboy tripe. Wong vs. Jarvis...that Bendis is SO witty. |
Bendis has turned Norman Osborn into Lex Luthor, which is just stupid. Osborn is the Green Goblin and has always been a businessman, but for him to suddenly (and by suddenly I mean since Secret Invasion) be able to pull off capers of this caliber is silly. The New Avengers and The Dark Avengers are both stupid Bendis team names, but now we get The New Dark Avengers. Kill me. What's next? The Ultimate New Dark Avengers? Come on, man.
There are some pretty sweet battle scenes, which is where Deodato and Conrad shine. It is pretty lame how they tried to “cast” Tommy Lee Jones as Norman Osborn, though. Any time comic book artists try to “cast” actors by drawing their likeness it pisses me off. The artwork as a whole is what saves this book from getting a 1.5 rating, as Bendis' dialogue is terrible. I also dislike how Bendis has made being an Avenger meaningless. Spider-Man is on both Avengers teams and is a member of the FF, The Thing is doing double duty on The New Avengers and the FF, and now even Daredevil, the ultimate loner, is an Avenger. This is completely dumb and completely unbelievable. Thank Godzilla that Bendis' reign of terror is drawing to an end.
Junk
Food For Thought rating: 2.75 out of 5.
The
OCD zone- Typical Marvel Premiere Edition Hardcover, with the
same production values, advantages and shortcomings that the format
has to offer.
Paper
rating: 5 out of 5. Nice thick coated stock, perfect for this
material.
Binding
rating: 4 out of 5. It's glued, but it's a thin hardcover, so
it's no biggie. It's not like it's going to fall apart or anything. I
normally lose sleep over books with glued binding, but not with these
Premiere Hardcovers.
I wonder how your outlook on Bendis would be different if you'd first been exposed to him via Daredevil or Ultimate Spider-man. Have you read either of those? I'd say they are by far his strongest Marvel work, whereas his Avengers, House of M, Secret Invasion stuff was night and day bad in comparison.
ReplyDeleteMy first exposure to Bendis was Ultimate Spider-Man, and I loved his writing back then. It had a fresh feel to it. He devolved with The Avengers though, becoming more snarky and "clever", stretching stories out to pad out trade paperbacks.
DeleteBendis has had some great ideas with horrible execution.
I enjoyed House of M because it got rid of all of the crappy mutants that people like Grant Morrison cluttered up the Marvel Universe. Mission accomplished.
Secret Invasion was a great idea with terrible execution. What could have been a clever reboot of the Marvel Universe instead became the Norman Osborn show. We could have eliminated every single continuity gaffe with Secret Invasion. Undoing Spider-Man being married? Skrull! Daredevil's identity exposed? Skrull! So on and so forth. Plus, Bendis' Avengers crossover issues were among the laziest writing that I've had the displeasure of experiencing.
I don't hate Bendis per se. He's probably a stand up guy in real life. Probably takes his Mom to church on Sunday and out to lunch afterwards. Who knows? I'm just tired of his Avengers run and all of the Avengers titles. Time for some new blood.
I'll bring over all of the Powers OHC's. It'll only take you 4 days to read them.
ReplyDelete