Comic Info
Comic Name: New Avengers (Volume 1)/New Avengers: Most Wanted Files
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Steve McNiven
# of Issues: 5
Release Date: 2006
New Avengers (1) #8 Variant
Reprints New Avengers (1) #7-10 and New Avengers: Most Wanted Files (June 2005-February 2006). With the breakout at the Raft, a new team of Avengers has formed at the hands of Iron Man, but now Iron Man realizes he could have a problem with the return of everyone’s favorite hero the Sentry…who no one remembers. As the mystery of Bob Reynolds unfolds, the danger of the Void could destroy the New Avengers before they even begin…and the world could be next!
Written by Brian Michael Bendis, New Avengers Volume 2: Sentry is a Marvel Comics superhero collection. Following New Avengers Volume 1: Breakout, the collection features art by Steve McNiven and includes the “dossier” file issue New Avengers: Most Wanted Files (February 2006). The issues in this collection were also included in New Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis: The Complete Collection—Volume 1.
The New Avengers was an exciting premise. Brian Michael Bendis was hot with his series Powers, Daredevil, Alias, and Ultimate Spider-Man (all of which I really enjoyed). New Avengers promised the same Bendis wit and fun, I hoped. As the series goes, this volume wasn’t too bad, but it also started the problem with Bendis’ run in general.
New Avengers (1) #10
The collection attempts to streamline the Sentry into the canonized Marvel Universe. If you read Paul Jenkins’ clever limited series The Sentry (September 2000-January 2001), the Sentry was already technically part of the Marvel Universe, but he was intentionally erased due to his dangerous side persona the Void. His return in the first volume was a surprise, but attempts to make his story fit in with this comic book just turned out confusing and feels almost shoehorned into the series.
The Sentry’s problem is that he’s too powerful so he has to be flawed (aka the Void). Unlike Superman, the Sentry is emotionally shattered, but without a Thor character on the Avengers, they needed the Sentry. Bendis “fixes” the situation with a confusing story with the Sentry projecting his origin into Paul Jenkins and that Jenkins’ stories aren’t necessarily true (all figured out by the White Queen). The collection just forces you to go with it to get Sentry on the team (and leads to the second Paul Jenkins Sentry series which was really poor in comparison to his original).
With most of the New Avengers now on board, New Avengers 2: The Sentry feels like it should be the springboard to a great new Avengers series…but instead, Brian Michael Bendis begins to show his flaws as the writer of a team book. The series seems to get really hung up from this point on and continuously dragged in to “Big Event” series that make the storytelling even more illogical and unreadable as a stand-alone book where either nothing happens or too much happens. New Avengers 2: The Sentry is followed by New Avengers 3: Secrets and Lies.
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