Goodbye, New Avengers

Robot 6 reports that Marvel Comics, following the events of Siege in April, will be canceling all four of its key Avengers books: New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Dark Avengers, and Avengers: The Initiative. Some of this isn't a surprise: Dark Avengers, in particular, seemed like a concept that would have to reach its end, given that Norman Osborn's exit from the big picture is basically a foregone conclusion at this point. Still, New and Dark Avengers are Marvel's bestselling books, I think, and basically ending a chapter of Marvel's greatest and most successful franchise of the past decade seems to confirm that Bendis is changing the game, once again (cue Internet haters).

Siege is to be followed by something called the "Age Of Heroes," which no one really knows about, but it seems to signal a return to a less interconnected and more upbeat Marvel universe. My impression is that Bendis is capitulating to the haters complaining about heroes beating on each other as opposed to villains (I thought Secret Invasion was supposed to be the answer to that problem, but somehow it seemed to cause even more complaining--imagine that). New Avengers is to end with a big 64-page New Avengers Finale, which I'm really looking forward to, mainly because it is 64 pages long. There also seem to a be a series of one-shots that suggest...hey, is Spider-Man going to die?

(Might as well make my predictions as to who I think is going to die this time: I'm going to guess the Sentry, Mockingbird perhaps, the Hood maybe, Maria Hill, and Ms. Marvel. Maybe some of the utility Thunderbolts. Then again, I've consistently predicted that Maria Hill will die and she hasn't, yet).

I am as far from a Bendis hater as you can imagine: I think his run on Daredevil exceeds the best of Frank Miller, I love his Ultimate Spider-Man, and to a degree his Avengers runs as well. Plus his non-Marvel work, which is uniformly high-quality and funny stuff. I credit Bendis with really pushing the envelope forward as far as dialogue goes, injecting a natural, easygoing demeanor to his characters that made the Avengers more fun to read when they were sitting in their hideout hanging out than when they were out fighting evil. If Alan Moore was the writer who injected poetry into the staid expository dialogue of Stan Lee and co., Bendis is the first guy to come along whose dialogue sounds like the way real people would talk. If those people were superheroes.

Nevertheless, I read Siege #1, and it pains me to say it isn't very good. A lot of the problem is that there was a lot of setup, as is generally necessary, but more importantly there doesn't seem to be any comfortable vantage point by which we can view the action scenes: if this were an issue of Dark Avengers, we could look at it through their point of view, but since this is a company-wide crossover it seems as if a lot of pieces on the chess board have been moved, with no real focus. I also have no idea what Thor's deal is these days, as I haven't been keeping up with his title. There's still hope for this one, though, and I have been loving "Dark Reign" as a whole, even more than Civil War or Avengers Disassembled.

I hope the new, adjective-less Avengers title still has Bendis writing it. He's really emerged as a natural leader in terms of moving Marvel's classic characters in unexpected directions: who else could have imagined, ten years ago, a government-sanctioned Avengers team headed by Norman Osborn in an Iron Man suit, featuring the former Scorpion-turned-Venom masquerading as Spider-Man, plus the psychotic killer Hawkeye dressed up as Bullseye? If someone had told me, as a 13-year old, that this would someday happen, I would be even more diligent about reading the comics that I read.

Of course, no matter what Bendis does, some people just crave the heyday of Kurt Busiek. Let's just hope Siege gets better.