REVIEW: New Avengers #1

As Marvel‘s new Heroic Age continues to unfold, we’ve turned our attentions to the relaunched New Avengers #1 by Brian Bendis and Stuart Immonen. Issue #2 ships today and I’m not so sure it will be staying on our pull lists.

PTB: I really like the art in this book, but I’m not sure how I feel about the content. Where this team fits into the new status quo is interesting since they’re using the old mansion and free from Iron Man and Steve Rogers, but  I don’t like that there’s overlap with this line up and the Avengers title.

KevinMLD: Yeah to me this is a really redundant title. It almost seems like it should have been a miniseries that ends with Spider-man, Wolverine, Cage and whoever else learning to trust Stark again and rejoining the main team.

PTB: I’m tempted to say that this team doesn’t really thrill me, but I’m glad to see Ms. Marvel included here. I also like Hawkeye and Mockingbird and if they’re going to be there every month I feel like I have to choose between this and their new title.

KevinMLD: Mockingbird’s new costume is cool, but I could care less about any of these characters.

PTB: Victoria Hand is a character i enjoyed reading in Dark Avengers but I don’t know that I can justify continuing at this point.

KevinMLD: Again she’s meaningless to me as I didn’t read Dark Avengers.

PTB: The Thing… Yeah, this is another move in the vein of adding Wolverine and Spider-Man to the Avengers, but it’s so much less organic than the way those characters were introduced.

KevinMLD: Have I ever mentioned to you how lame I think both the Thing and the entire Fantastic Four are?

PTB: No, but I can see why you would. That’s a title that hasn’t really grabbed my attention much over the years I’ve been collecting comic books.

The supernatural story with Doctor Strange, Daimon Hellstrom, Brother Voodoo is a bit of a hold over the previous New Avengers series and I’m not sure how interested I am in it.

There was a demon invasion hinted at in some of Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa stuff and some other books (like the Nightcrawler series, Marvel’s Mystic Arcana LS, and then in X-Infernus), but I don’t see that being incorporated here. If it were I’d be totally into it.

KevinMLD: I do like Doctor Strange but he’s not enough to keep me interested in this book. There are just too many Avengers titles at this point.

PTB: There are absolutely too many and they’re less diverse than they were before Siege. Makes it really hard for me to justify sticking with all of them.