A Storm's Not Coming - Review Avengers #21

I don’t often write negative reviews.  Usually if I am willing to take the time to write something, it’s mostly positive with perhaps a few specific criticisms.  Not this time.  I was so wholeheartedly disappointed by this issue that it spurred me to write a full review on it.  

First, let’s start with something general.  The general sloppiness of the writing and the handling of the team’s character itself.  Like, Hawkeye and Spider-woman’s “relationship” for example.  This couple got together hot and heavy during the Fear Itself crisis and we wondered “Where is this going?” and “How will Mockingbird respond to this?”  Well, to be honest, I still have no idea where this is going because they never show us anything!  But yet we are lead to believe (mostly through the snarky comments of other team members) that they are still going strong and have a somewhat serious relationship.  As for Mockingbird’s reaction, well aside from the fact that she’s in a whole other book entirely most of the time, again, we only get a sense of how she feels when her team member jab at her about it.  Not a great way to start a relationship, even in comic books.  I’m also still somewhat irked by the way the entire roster change went down.  All of a sudden, without warning or even being informed, Spider-man and Wolverine were just dismissed from the team while Storm, Vision and Quake are brought on to replace them.  And as if that wasn’t bad enough, these newly recruited Avengers are dragged into a too-long battle against Norman Osborn’s forces that so far has resulted with most of the team getting their butts handed to them.  If it weren’t so sad, I am sure Spider-man and Wolverine would be laughing right now.  These are just two examples of the mismanagement and sloppiness plaguing this book right now.

Another problem I had with this issue was the very cover of the book.  As a die-hard X-men fan, despite not liking how it was done, I was really excited to see that Storm was joining the Avengers.  Now I feel like they solved Wolverine’s bi-coastal problem only to foolishly put Storm in the same position, but still I was excited.  I was even more excited that two issues after joining she seems to be getting an entire issue centered around her, this one.  Unfortunately, this turned out to not be the case.  After plugging the cover of this issue, with the tag line “Storm joins the Avengers”, Ororo appeared in exactly 4 panels of this entire issue…and she was unconscious for all of them!  I’m so disappointed in Marvel for so blatantly misleading the reader this way, and if I was someone who ONLY collected X-men and picked this issue up expecting some big Storm issue, I’d be pretty angry about it. With all the attention they’ve given Red Hulk since joining and the way that they are over doing the Norman Osborn storyline in both main Avengers book I feel like they easily could have squeezed in a Storm-centric issue to give Avengers readers a great introduction to this classic X-character.

There’s not really too much else to say about this issue.  As I said, Osborn’s storyline has gotten too big too quickly and is going on for much too long already.  Dark Reign is an entire year of Marvel Comic books that we will never be able to get back and now they are dragging us back in the madness.  Add a few lame Hulk knock-offs and some co-opted Starktech (again…), not to mention the shoddy writing and bad publicity stunt, and this issue really was such a letdown.  Here’s a clue for the writers, if the same battle from last issue still doesn’t end by the end of this one, and no storyline progression has occurred…then you haven’t really written anything.  Luckily for Marvel, this title been pretty good lately otherwise because that means they can bury one bad issue.  But get it together!

Starting All Over Again With the Avengers!!

So back in 1991, a friend of mine came over with his latest pack of Marvel Universe Series II trading cards.  At the time all I knew of comics was Spider-man (who I assumed was on a team with Iceman and Firestar) and the Hulk, because they both had had awesome cartoons that I had watched as a kid.  Well I quickly got sucked in to this madness and HAD to have my own.  So as I started to collect the trading cards, I noticed that the backs of the cards had all kinds of information on them!  First appearances, major storylines, crossovers, battle issues, and all kinds of stuff that I would never otherwise have known…and so it started…

I began by picking up 1^st appearances because I knew that these characters looked cool now but how much cooler would it be to see when they actually first showed up right!?  Well from there I also got into other big issues: epic battles, death issues, major change ups on a roster that sort of thing…  And then I got to the new comics and it all got a little dicey from there.  1^st appearances turned into recent appearances, major storylines turned into current crossovers (at the time it was Rise of the Midnight Sons and X-cutioner’s Song), and whatever “milestones” were happening (as luck would have it, the Mutant Milestone issues of X-men had just recently happened).  And so began my obsession with collecting comics, almost exclusively X-men, but I was also dragged into the entire Midnight Sons line and I wasn’t exactly kicking and screaming. 

Since then, as many of your will already know, my X-men collection has taken on a life of its own.  I have full sets of many (if not most) of the X-related series that Marvel has ever released.  I have limited editions, signed issue, comic cells, doubles and triples, and god knows what else X-related I can dig up in my piles if I really looked.  But then came a new problem…what do I do now?  Half the fun of collecting is getting all the issues, finding the good deals on the great issues, and the search in general, but I now have most of what I set out to collect with just the odd limited series or gap of issues to fill in.  The chase was done, for the most part.  The only thing stopping me now was money, I know where to get everything I want if I feel like it.  Enter: The Avengers.

I will be the first to admit that, as a die-hard X-men fan, I wrote off the Avengers YEARS ago.  Something about mutants being born with powers, and the struggles they endured really grabbed me in a way that old war heroes, billionaires in iron suits, and a crack shot marksmen simply didn’t.  So I stuck with my X-men and remained polite rivals with the OTHER TEAM.  Until Avengers: Disassembled, House of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Siege happened!  I was actually on a break from collecting comics during much of this or I may have missed it to be honest.  I came back to collecting comics during the opening parts of Dark Reign (which didn’t affect X-men much so I didn’t collect it as I was coming back) and I realized that between House of M, Messiah Complex and everything else going, I had missed a lot so I set out to get everything I missed.  Thanks to the magical miracle of eBay I had great success!!  I managed to get the entire storyline for House of M (including Disassembled and all the HOM tie-ins) and Decimation (including spin-offs like Son of M/Silent War and Deadly Genesis/King Vulcan), Civil War, and Secret Invasion. 

                              

Now maybe it was the lack of X-men comics to buy, or maybe I just needed to read about them all in one big lump, but I was suddenly DRAWN to the Avengers comics.  Tony Stark’s alcoholism (which never really went away), Steve Rogers’ constantly struggling to uphold an ideal that many people feel is antiquated, or Carol Danvers’ inner turmoil as she struggles to be the best superhero she can be.  These were all real issues and problems that I had felt was missing from Avengers earlier years while the X-men were rife with strife and fighting the world and sometimes each other.  But here they are!!  So I never bothered to get on board with Dark Reign, but, thankfully, Marvel gave us all a very convenient jumping off point for new reader: The List.  You didn’t have to read Dark Reign to understand the general ideas of what was going on in The List and the status quo that it was trying to set up.  This lead right into my first major company crossover since Onslaught (I touched on Maximum Security but it didn’t really have the all-encompassing scope or the infinite tie-ins that most crossovers have), which was Siege.  Siege came and went, and thus began the new Heroic Age!  I instantly jumped on the 4 main Avengers books, and I was hooked! 

                                

Well from reading the beginning of this article, you can guess what happened next…  I instantly got right on eBay, hit the 50 cent bins, raided some old back issue racks, and whatever I could to start up my new Avengers collection!  So now I have a whole new arena of comics to fill up and feed my insatiable obsession, and unlike with my X-men collection, where I am down to needing the odd issue here and there, there’s huge selection of issues that I still don’t have yet!  Unlike Uncanny X-men, the number of Avengers issues I’m missing still numbers in the hundreds!  So in a way it’s like I’m starting all over again.  I remember getting my random back issues back 1991 and how exciting it was to get an issue here or there and then get the middle ones to have the whole story come together.  As of now, I have about 30 or so individual Avengers issues (and a major lack of money) not including anything after Onslaught with my oldest issue being #193.  I still have almost no idea what going on with these characters at this point, but it’s going to be so fun to fill in the blanks and see how they became the heroes that I buy every month now, whether they ended up Avengers (old or New), teachers (like in Academy), or secret operatives (shhhh no one knows about Secret Avengers).  Avengers Assemble!!!

next Big Thing: Shattered Heroes Interview with Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction

WARNING: Read the interview before you read my write-up!

Interview with Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction - at IGN

Time for Marvel's Next Big Thing - Shattered Heroes!  Much like Dark Reign and Heroic Age, this won't be one big sweeping storyline, but instead just a general tone and direction for a many (or most) or Marvel's books...but that means its JUST like Dark Reign AND Heroic Age.

Fear itself has been very exciting with a lot of action, character developments, and more then one pointless tie-in series, but its also coming off the Heroic Age where Marvel swore to us that they were done with large sweeping crossovers.  Let's also not forget the Heroic AGE only lasted a year.  It was supposed to be the new status quo for the Marvel Universe but at most it was about 12 issues in each of the Avengers books and the first 4 issues of many other books (and one Uncanny X-men special).  Personally, I was just getting really comfortable with the current teams and now it seems that anything and everything is changing...YET AGAIN.  Are we going to get a slew of new #1s also??

And there is at least a small chance that Thor will be dead by the end of Fear Itself, again, and that leaves me wondering what are we going to get in Fear Itself 7.3?  Are we getting a new God of Thunder (much like the old new Captain America and the new Ultimate Spider-man)? Or will it just be a depressing mourning issue showing the reaction of the other Asgardians?  Didn't they just make a big deal about Cap, Iron Man and Thor being back together again??? I guess people got bored with that.

Now I am very intrigued to see where Iron Man goes from here.  He, in my honest opinion, that voluntarily gave up the most.  I understand that Captain America lost his best friend, and Thor is either dead or possibly at odds with all of Asgard, but Tony had to make the conscious choice to leave his friends and comrades in the midst of a war. He also had to sacrifice his hard earned sobriety in the hopes that All-Father Odin will not only choose to NOT incinerate him on the spot but also will listen to him and help him save the planet that Odin is ready to raze...

Now if Shattered Heroes ends up just being Fear Itself 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, Battle Scars and the Fearless then I'll be ok with that.  However, if it turns into Dark Reign year of fallout and backlash from the even then I'll honestly be more then just a little disappointed.  I just don't think that every big event needs to be followed by a company reset of the status quo in order to keep it interesting.  I mean really, after only 1 year of Avengers stories, they can't possibly have exhausted all the angles from these groupings of characters, and if they think that they have then they just aren't trying hard enough. 

I'm definitely going to read Shattered Heroes, and I definitely want to know what happening to everyone afterwards.  I just wondering if it needs to be a huge storyline that covers every book.  I remember years ago after Onslaught, which covered basically every Marvel book, they didn't follow it up with a huge storyline covering every book.  It led into Heroes Reborn (which only included 4 books) and everything else had an issue or 2 to just show the fallout from the storyline.  I think that this should be more like that rather then drag out a big Dark/Heroic Reign/Age.  I don't want to see the Shattered Heroes banner all the way until next Summer.