Comic Info
Comic Name: New Avengers (Volume 1)
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: David Finch
# of Issues: 6
Release Date: 2006
New Avengers (1) #2
Reprints New Avengers (1) #1-6 (January 2005-June 2005). The Scarlet Witch has destroyed the Avengers from within, but when a series of criminal escape from the superhuman prison called the Raft, a new team of Avengers must assemble to stop them. With Captain America and Iron Man at the helm, Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, and Wolverine find themselves in a race against time to recapture all the escaped criminals before more deaths occur.
Written by Brian Michael Bendis, New Avengers replaced the second Avengers series which ended with the Avengers: Disassembled storyline and followed House of M. The series featured art by David Finch and was also collected as part of New Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis: The Complete Collection—Volume 1.
I was pretty psyched for New Avengers. I had read the collapse of the Avengers (along with a lot of the second Avengers series run) and loved Bendis’s work on series like Daredevil, Alias, Ultimate Spider-Man, and Powers. While New Avengers started out rather strong, the early volumes present some of the problems that ended up making Avengers not enjoyable for me for years.
The Avengers started out as Marvel’s biggest characters that sometimes struggled in their own titles (Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Ant-Man, Wasp), it evolved into a top team book that was capable of having strange and unusual members to develop. Here, Bendis returns to the original idea with the heavy hitters of the Marvel Universe (Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Wolverine) and then does add Luke Cage and Spider-Woman.
New Avengers (1) #5
While I like the addition of Luke Cage and Spider-Woman, I really don’t like Spider-Man or Wolverine on the team…it feels like pandering and I don’t see them as team players (at least Avengers team players). Spider-Man works better solo and team-ups and Wolverine is just oversaturated in the market. My only problem with Spider-Woman is Bendis felt it was necessary to rewriter her origin (in Spider-Woman: Origin) to smooth out aspects of it…because half of the Marvel Universe’s origins don’t make sense.
Finch’s art is solid in this outing. It is pretty dark and inky, but the story is dark and inky. He has some good designs for the characters and doesn’t try to revolutionize them. Everyone pretty much keeps their traditional costumes (except Wolverine and Luke Cage who are generally costume-less).
New Avengers starts out strong, but it quickly goes into problems which are set up in this issue. While I truly enjoyed The Sentry limited series, it was a finite character and the decision to add him to this series not only tarnished the original series but also hurt later volumes of this comic. In addition, the series begins to set up Civil War which ruined much of the Marvel Universe for me for years. New Avengers 1: Breakout was followed by New Avengers 2: Sentry.
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