NEW AVENGERS #9

Review by: Lotuslaw

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Avg Rating: 3.6
 
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Story by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Mike Deodato & Howard Chaykin
Colors by Rain Beredo & Edgar Delgado
Cover by Mike Deodato & Rain Beredo

Size: pages
Price: 3.99

Don’t care. 

That fairly well sums up my feeling about these characters when they’re in the New Avengers.  Don’t care about them.  Don’t care about their witty banter.  Don’t care when they get shot, blown up or otherwise disassembled. It’s like a bad episode of Seinfeld, except with world threatening menaces that I also don’t care about. 

Avengers Prime, for my money, represents Bendis at his best when writing the Avengers.  I cared about the big 3 a little then.  That was good.  Not great, but good.  And even there, the action never quite meshed with the dialogue.  Indeed, it never does.

I’m not sure if it’s a personal issue with Bendis’s style, or if there is a real storytelling flaw.  It’s all too clever by half and never resonates.  And while he writes great sitting around the table scenes, I’ve still never connected with the characters.  And every time we have big action sequnces or dire threats, the drama isn’t there.  This is not the fault of the artists; its in the pacing of the plotting and storytelling itself.
 
It’s not long plots that take time to unwind.  I’ve loved Hickman’s FF as well as Bru’s Cap.  Nor is it smart banter and taking time character development stories: Peter David is a master of this and I never tire of it.  And Heinburg’s Young Avengers is pure gold.   But for some reason, after years of reading Bendis’s Avengers, nothing satisfies, nothing connects. 

Don’t care.  Dropping.  Took me way too long to do so.  I’m out.

Story: 2 - Average
Art: 3 - Good

Comments

  1. I really enjoyed this issue, I am hoping the story doesn’t become anti climatic like Avengers Prime. I felt like the big three for Avengers Prime were easier to write because of their history. Although New Avengers has some popular guys, they haven’t been the focus which has worked for me. I agree with you about Peter David though, Most guys can take a page from his book on character driven story telling.

  2. While I don’t agree, I see some valid criticisms residing in concerns about “witty” banter and a real tone of danger. Bendis tries to combine the two and they are pretty much mutually exclusive, even for a character like Spider-Man.

    When Spider-Man is on the verge of tragedy, he often stops talking or is just angry.

    So I hear you.

    But Bendis has done some excellent character work with almost all of these characters at some point in his run.

    Think Luke Cage

    And if you deny that, I think you are too biased to write a balanced review.

  3. @ScorpionMasada:  I’ve followed the whole run, and while I can agree his work with Luke Cage has been extensive, I still have not connected with the character.  This, however, may have a lot to do with the fact that his treatment of the characters *surrounding* Luke (and Jessica) have been so off that it undermines the suspeension of disbelief.  Looking back, I recall the same phenomona with Iron Man.  He finds a voice for certain characters (which are remarkably the same save for certain puncutations), but others are so weakly or poorly drawn (his BuckyCap, Ms. Marvel, Mockingbird, Wasp before he offed her, his nebbish version of Spider-man) that I can “see” the attention being lavished on the ones he is devloping.  This goes back to the issue of balance.

    In a way, I never feel like i am reading the character’s voice so much as I am reading Bendis’s voice thrown into the characters.  Don’t get me wrong; I have enjoyed issues and moments in his run.  But in the end, if Kang came and wiped Luke and Jess from the timestream, I wouldn’t care.   

  4. @ScorpionMasada:  Also, I disagree about witty banter and real danger being mutally exclusive.  Again, Peter David is a master.  For a more recent example, look at Abnett and Lannig over in the Cosmic corner.  As for seeing how to use Spider-Man, Busiek’s “Untold Tales” is top notch, as is the excellent work done during the “Brand New Day” period.  Also, PAD did some good work writing Spidey during that whole Spider Totem garbage, but this was because he really got the character. 

    You may be right, this may be a style issue.  I have liked Bendis’s work in other comics.  But I just never have found myself caring about his Avengers. 

  5. This sums it up quite well. Bendis imposing his style so heavily on almost everything he writes makes it almost impossible for me to look beneath it and see a character for itself, and not filtered through Bendis writing. Thats why I keep disconnected, too.

  6. @Bendrix  Agree.  That’s why I reluctantly dropped this book.

  7. And can we finally omit Wolvie and Spidey from this team, they just seem so out-of-place to me, and I for one like it when characters are in continuity, just doesn’t make sense Spidey is there with all he’s got going on in Big Time, and never made sense to me why Wolvie would even care about being an Avenger when those who really know the character knows his heart is always with the X-Men.

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