Comic Info
Comic Name: New Avengers (Volume 1)
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Stuart Immonen
# of Issues: 6
Release Date: 2010
New Avengers (1) #56
Reprints New Avengers (1) #55-60 (September 2009-February 2010). The Hood is having an issue with his powers, and without his leadership, his gang is going rogue. As the Hood takes a desperate measure with Loki to restore himself, Norman Osborn finds dealing with the Hood’s lackeys could have its advantages if he plays it right. The Hood’s gang gets control of a device capable of depowering superhumans, and the New Avengers could be in trouble…especially Luke Cage.
Written by Brian Michael Bendis, New Avengers Volume 12: Powerloss is a Marvel Comics superhero team book. Following New Avengers Volume 11: The Search for the Sorcerer Supreme, the collection features art by Stuart Immonen and was also collected as part of New Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis: The Complete Collection—Volume 5.
I had fallen off of New Avengers by this point in its original run. I stuck with the series a long time, but Bendis seemed to be taking the story nowhere. Reading this volume of the series, I still have that argument…this collection is a lot of standing around and little action.
New Avengers (1) #57
The story (and the cover) implies that it is primarily about the Hood and his quest to regain power. This is barely a side story. Though it has bigger implications, it isn’t much of a plotline. Instead, you have the supervillains playing hardball with Osborn (who they learn they are already working for) and it of course results in another generic battle with the New Avengers (like every storyline).
The other thrust of the story is Luke Cage suffering a heart injury. While this poses interesting problems with his diamond hard skin and the fact that the Avengers are on the run, it isn’t that different than the storyline that Bendis already wrote in the dull and plodding Secret War. There Cage was injured and special doctors had to come in to try to operate on him due to internal injuries…and it turned out about the same. It feels like really lazy writing. Even if Bendis had made it implicit that it was a result of the previous surgery, it still feels like it has been done before.
New Avengers really isn’t very good at this point, and I could argue it wasn’t very good before (but at least it had a few “ok” storylines with interesting characters). The series really feels it has run out of steam and the characters always just happy they survived at the end of the story and questioning what they are going to do next is getting old…New Avengers needs more direction. New Avengers 12: Powerloss is followed by New Avengers 13: Siege.
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