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Ummm….what?

So, uh…. comics should be good.

I’m such a sucker for the Black Knight/Sersi/Crystal/Herc/Vision line up.

It’s the ballsiest thing ever.

A team with Wolvie, Spider-Man and Echo isn’t my Avengers. Doesn’t mean they’re not over 100,000 others’ though, I guess.

was ist das?

Were not Hercules, Quicksilver, The Vision and Giant-Man considered “classic” Avengers characters? Thunderstrike used to be Thor for a little time and Black Widow had already been a member.
The only new members were Crystal, who was Quicksilver’s wife and Deathcry.

The only member of the New Avengers who was related to the team before Bendis took care of them (and when I say took care, I mean killed some and ruined some, and make the rest act out of character) is Hawk… I mean Ronin, and he did not reveal his identity for like 4 or 5 issues.

When you consider that Dr. Strange, Luke Cage and Clint Barton were all members of the Defenders, a team that used to hang out in Dr. Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum out of all places, that Wolverine and Spider-Man were “Secret Defenders” (like a lot of other Marvel characters I must concede) that kinda changed the related to the avengers/non related to the avengers character ratio, did it not?

If I put a team made out of 6 X-mutants and a “classic” avenger, would it be reasonable to you to call them New (or Mighty, or anything) Avengers?

You also have to consider that the 1965 change was Marvel trying to find some identity to the Avengers.

forgot to add, why not call them Defenders? After the related to the Avengers/not related to the Avengers part.

Who is the Kevin Maas of the Avengers?
What about Ed Whitson?

Well, not being a Yankees fan, I have to disagree with your paralell quite a bit. I think I know what you were meaning, though.

The Avengers are basically this: “In brightest day, in darkest….” No, that wasn’t it. “For Truth, Justice, and th…” Hold on a sec. What the heck ARE the Avengers about, anyway?

Throughout their history, they’ve had a number of different motivating factors. For the first 16 issues, it was banding together in a kind of clubhouse. After the lineup change in #16, it was about redemption for past sins: the reformed criminal’s crimes and Cap “letting” Bucky die. For a long time after that, it was heroes grouping together because the threat was too great to handle alone. By the end of the Korvak Saga (180ish), they had become government sanctioned. They later became UN sanctioned as a world peacekeeping taskforce. After Disassembled, it was about banding together because it was just the right thing to do.

At this point, the two teams have very different agendas, but they’re both historically accurate Avengers reasons for being. The “Defenders” team are together because they feel they have to be – it’s the right thing to do. The “official” team is a government backed peacekeeping force.

So, while I disagree with any similarities to a baseball team, much less a New York team, both current teams ARE Avengers teams.

That 1994 team… the less said about that era the better.

I’ll always carry a special place in my heart for the Black Knight/Sersi/Crystal Avengers, ridiculous 90s-style leather jackets and all…

“forgot to add, why not call them Defenders? After the related to the Avengers/not related to the Avengers part.”
____

Because they’re the Avengers.

Why couldn’t we have gotten a chase figure with the jacket when they released the Dane Whitman toy.

@avengers63:

That 94 Yankees would have played Les Expos in the World Series if not for the strike… so I don’t see the problem.

Oh wait, you meant the Avengers. Yea, that team sucked.

My question, Brian, is are you contesting that fan perception of what a “Real Avenger” is similar to fan perception of what a “True Yankee” is? And basically judging who/what is good by some abstract qualifer is dumb? And what’s dumber is labeling the people who don’t meet those expectations as somehow not being adequate to the standards of an organization?

Or, are you simply saying that just being part of that group makes you a “Real/True”? Because I would be incline to think that you’re “realness” is only relative to what you are remembered for. Crystal will always be associated with the Inhumans, despite her status of being in the Avengers books. Since she will always be thought of as an Inhuman, she would not necessarily be a “Real Avenger.” Ditto for Denny Neagle, a man who won a World Series with the Yanks, but will most be known for being a steroid abuser/prositutue solicitor, I mean, Atlanta Brave.

I know exactly what you’re talking about, Brian. I have similar arguments with my friends. I was saying how the NY Yankees doesn’t have great discipline in that it’s people mouth off to the press all the time about grievances while the Patriots coach will not allow that. My friend said it wasn’t true about the Yankees and asked me to name one Yankee who aired out his grievances to the press. I named Gary Sheffield and some others. He said they didn’t count because they weren’t “True Yankees.” I said as long as they’re on the payroll and wear the uniform and are called Yankees, they are Yankees.

What about the Great Lakes?

Ummm….what?

It’s a response to complaints about the current Avengers teams not being the “real” Avengers.

I’m guessing it was brought on by one of the dumber threads on CBR’s Avengers forum. Someone asked if the aforementioned “real” Avengers would “come back” when Joe Quesada left.

Did you hear about the new FF?

It’s going to have Wolverine, Storm, Cyclopes, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Rogue and Shadowcat. Instead of the Baxter Building they are going to be HQed in Xavier’s mansion.

Yes the 1994 line-up didn’t have Cap, Thor and Iron Man but the characters you mentioned were generally longtime members. Your baseball analogy is interesting. It reminds me of a Sienfeld episode. During his stand-up he refers to Darell Strawberry returning to NY. He goes on comment on how we really only cheer for the uniform, not the players. If both teams switched uniforms halfway through the game we would cheer whoever wore our uniform.

I’m hoping that the current Spidey storyline is going to be enough to create a change in Marvel hierarchy. They are so focused on getting new readers they are losing old ones. I’ve dropped every Marvel title (Exiles was my last one) and I’ve been buying for 33 years.

Spoiler- Thor is going to be the new Invisable Woman.

We are all harping on the 1994 Avengers. However, I think the rue ow point was around issue 300 when it was Mr. Fantastic, The Invisible Woman, Thor, U.S.Agent, and Gilgamesh. Ummmmmm, that was NOT the Avengers. They were so NOT the Avengers that the line-up only lasted about 4 issues before they started adding characters (I think Quasar of all people was the first one added).

Given Cronin’s assertion that the original avengers were formed out of the headliners of Marvel’s (second) most popular books, I guess it serves that the Avengers that were formed post-Disassembled serve the same purpose (again culled from Marvel’s second most popular books).

Now, however, it seems like the members are pulled from Bendis’ favorite characters. Spider-man (Bendis book), Powerman and Iron Fist (both Bendis’ favorite characters), Echo (created in the interim of Bendis’ run on Daredevil), Hawkeye (yeah, Bendis killed him off. I know. But this gives him a way to show that he actually liked the character), Dr. Strange (another favorite of Bendis), Spider-woman (the only character that Bendis has been attached to as long as Spider-Man. He has wanted to do a Spider-woman comic for quite a long time.), Jessica Jones (he created her in Alias), and Wolverine (is there a Marvel comic he is not appearing in?).

So really, this is the Bendis Avengers. I don’t think the line-up will change if Quesada were to leave (as was suggested on the other thread). I think the only way for the cast to change is for Bendis to leave the book. And, as Marvel’s top selling title, that is not going to happen or quite a while. Who knows? Maybe he will have a run like he has had on Ultimate Spider-man. 100 plus issues of The Avengers. Can’t decide if that is a good thing or a bad thing. He drops more sub-plots than Claremont.

ouch. I meant “true low point.” must edit before posting!

It was the Captain aka Steve Rogers, not USAgent, who formed that group of Avengers that featured Gilgamesh, Thor, Mr. Fantastic, and the Invisible Woman. D-Man was asked by Cap to be a part of that incarnation but he disappeared in Cap 349 before that could happen.

That team was incredibly odd. In their short time they fought demons, Super-Nova and brain leeches.

never a truer word said

I agree completely. A lot of superhero teams sometimes end up getting locked in peoples’ brains with a single line-up (The Avengers has to have Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Wasp, etc. The Justice League has to be Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, and Green Lantern.), when these teams are always more about the mission of doing good than they are about who’s sitting around the meeting table.

Sure, there are some teams that are so strongly built around a certain line-up that it’s hard to change it much (The Fantastic Four is the obvious example, but I’d add in the Metal Men, the Doom Patrol, and Gen 13 as other teams that always revert back to the same core cast). But teams like the Avengers, the X-Men, or the JLA work great with a rotating cast. As far as I’m concerned, an Avengers line-up made up of Captain America, Mr. Fantastic, the Invisible Woman, and Gilgamesh has as much right to the name as Cap, Iron Man, Thor, Ant-Man, and Wasp.

Personally, I’ve always been more fond of the teams with eccentric line-ups. My favorite Justice League is the JLI and my favorite X-Men incarnation was the Outback team. And as far as the Avengers go, I still tend to prefer the more minor and obscure characters.

The best Avengers team was the one is issue #398.

Jarvis. Just Jarvis versus a giant robot…

Jarvis is the original B.M.F. He can boss around Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor at the same time: “Get out of my kitchen!”

The thing is, the teams write now aren’t *written* like the Avengers. Because while the Avengers isn’t about living in a mansion or having a charter, it *is* about a tightly-organized team of top-flight heroes saving the world from massive threats on a daily basis. It is, in short grand heroic opera. Neither of the Avengers books right now is about that. One of them is about a group of government agents who fight crime in the state of New York and sleep with each other. The other is about Luke Cage and his Amazing Friends fighting ninjas.

Before that, the Avengers were a bunch of people who lived in Tony Stark’s penthouse and either lost every fight they were in, or had their butts saved by a guest star.

So, in short, call me when the people calling themselves the Avengers start acting like it again.

Michael,

GREAT RESPONSE! I tried … I really tried … to enjoy Bendis’ Avengers, and his first story arc was pretty good. When people complained about the choice of characters I thought “ha, these are probably the same folks who had or would have had a problem with the new team Stan introduced wayyyyyyyyy back in Avengers 16.”
But it wasn’t long before I became disillusioned with Bendis’ writing. Look, I don’t need MY Avengers to be a retro tribute book, sort of like what the Busiek/Perez era was. Cover some new ground for crying out loud! But at the same time I just don’t feel like Bendis’ teams are “heroic”, especially The Mighty book which I take it is supposed to echo the original for fans.
I don’t get a thrill reading the title. If anything the characters are all kind of annoying and shadows of what they used to be.
Bendis appears to have jetisoned any development the characters might have had and cherrypicked what he likes from the past Avengers volumes. So people STILL have not gotten over Hank Pym hitting the Wasp, even though it happened in the 1980s and there have been about two dozen story lines redeeming him and repairing his relationship with the Wasp and the team.
And the Wasp, a one time leader, just seems sort of immature and snarky.
Carol Danvers is kind of a bitch and Black Widow, another one time competant leader, does little. They’ve all become unlikeable characters.
Ares is fine with me, but he’s pretty much a clean slate anyway.
And don’t get me started on Sentry. I don’t have a problem having him in the mainstream Marvel U, but his seven year old origin has already been revamped like, what, twice, and turned the character into a total mess.
And then, as someone pointed out, there’s New Avengers which, despite the presence of Dr. Strange, seems confined to fighting very earthbound threats. Even the prospect of a Skrull invasion comes off more like a shadowy episode of the X-Files than some fantastic romp that Stan Lee and Kirby could or Roy Thomas or Roger Stern could have pulled off in their Avengers runs.
It is a shame to me because I grew up loving the Avengers and, although I’m now more of a DC fan, would happily buy a monthly Avengers book by another writer. But as long as Bendis is at the helm, I want nothing to do with the titles.

The pre-Civil War New Avengers were more fun, more interesting, and more commercially viable as a lineup than pretty much any Avengers team in history, including the ‘originals’.

This article clearly shows Brian Cronin isn’t a real comic book fan.

Before that, the Avengers were a bunch of people who lived in Tony Stark’s penthouse and either lost every fight they were in, or had their butts saved by a guest star.

So basically Bendis was doing a tribute to Wolfman’s New Teen Titans with that run?

I could see having either of the classic Avenger lineups, the originals and Cap’s group (Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Vision) or almost any combination thereof. The original lineup was like the JLA, the asskickingest asskickers, the guys who take on Ultron. Cap’s Avengers are the guys who take on the not so big threats.

I’m pretty open to any character as an Avenger, but it’s when heroes with strong group affiliations show up as Avengers that makes me shake my head. Crystal? Wolverine? Mr. Fantastic? Spider-Man? They can show up in as many Avenger comics as they like, they are not Avengers.

“The original lineup was like the JLA, the asskickingest asskickers, the guys who take on Ultron.”

And when New Avengers began, people criticized it for having a JLA-like lineup (which is what it was in the first place, as others have noted). (Then again, all the powerhouses were gone from the team by the time Ultron actually showed up–when he first appeared the heaviest hitter was Goliath–so I’m not quite sure what your point is.)

In response to :“forgot to add, why not call them Defenders? After the related to the Avengers/not related to the Avengers part.”

Jake said:”Because they’re the Avengers.”

________________________________________________________

They only think they are. They were not Cap’s secret Avengers during the Civil War, they were not sanctionned by Cap, as Luke Cage said. Luke Cage, Wolverine and Spider-Man were New Avengers, Echo appeared in a couple of New avengers issues in the Ronin disguise, Iron Fist and Dr. Strange just came out of nowhere, and Ronin/Clint Barton was Bendis’s way to apologize fo killing him stupidly and has not acted even remotelyt as Clint Barton.

@Doug:I think Beta Ray Steve was trying to say that this team was the who could handle the big threats wwhile Cap’s kinky quartet was not so powerful a teaam.

Anyone remember when The Avengers were Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, The Captain, and Gilgamesh?

If that team can be the Avengers, any team can.

There is no current team of Avengers, not in Marvel Comics anyway.

A real Avengers roster is defined by its attitude; it is a group of superheroes joined together by a nearly unspoken ideal of making a positive difference to the greater people, even at a personal cost.

Early (pre-Civil War) so-called “New Avengers” do not qualify, for much the same reasons why Force Works did not back in the day: it is a team of Iron Man colaborators with no idealistic goals to speak of. The same applies to the Mighty Avengers.

A better case can be made for the current New Avengers. Or could, were it not for the fact that they are barely a team at all; they look more like refugees trying to turn the opressive tide of the current MU.

A good concept (not necessarily a good book) on its own way, but not the Avengers.

*goes and points to his “Storytelling Engines: Avengers” column, to save himself time typing*

And that’s why you’re wrong.

Belatedly, I realize I can sum up my previous post with one question: When’s the last time the Avengers saved the world?

As a Yankees fan, I have no idea what’s being said here. How do the Avengers and the Yankees compare?

In New York Sheffield isn’t really considered a Yankee because of his attitude and because of how he viewed Torre viewing him. Though he will go down as a member of the Yankees (the point about anyone being on the Yankees payroll being a Yankee is very much true) there are people on other teams who were members of that team for a brief period but moved on. What is called a “true” member of your favorite team is someone who is the epitome of what you want to represent with that team.

I guess in some respect I can see the Avengers parallel with Captain America. You look at Cap and you see a star-spangled hero, but also a leader. You see something in someone and you want that to reflect your team. So in some respects, you’re on to something.

I always love when people argue that Spider-Man shouldn’t be an Avenger solely because he wasn’t in the Avengers before. That arguement could be used for any member of any team ever.

Does this make Tony Stark George Steinbrenner?

Belatedly, I realize I can sum up my previous post with one question: When’s the last time the Avengers saved the world?

Ultron in MA, and probably the Collective for NA.

And I think “saving the world” is a bit too specific a criteria. The “real” Avengers fought the Masters of Evil and the Wrecking Crew on the streets of New York as often than they fought invading intergalactic armies of Kang and the Kree.

So how is the New Avengers fighting a supervillain breakout in their very first story arc not Avengerly? Who’s to say they didn’t save the world by battling the Void a few issues later?

The Mighty Avengers in particular have gone from fighting a monster invasion to an Inhuman invasion to a (small) Atlantean invasion, to two different alien invasions.

Harras’s AVENGERS might have had its flaws in terms of storytelling–he emphasized concepts (the Dane Whitman-Sersi-Proctor storyline, for example) over characterization, and didn’t do enough to make readers sympathize with the heroes (his Hercules-Hera storyline, for example). However, he did bring back SF-type plots, which had been missing since Englehart’s runs on AVENGERS and WCA, and as editor, he produced the 30th Anniversary magazine, which described the team concept in detail.

Basically, the Avengers at any given time have heroes who are the best at what they do (Pym, Hawkeye, Stark, et al.), are unique (Vision, Wanda, Wonder Man, et al.,) or are on a higher plane (Thor, Gilgamesh, Sersi, et al.) in addition to the various second-tier heroes and heroines who are there for subplots and to fill out the roster. It’s really not difficult to identify the “classic” (the term Marvel Editorial uses) Avengers from the others; just count the number of appearances over the decades. Some characters obviously served the writers’ needs for subplots and team-oriented tactics better than others did.

Bendis’s “Avengers” titles have none of the qualities of the classic “Avengers” titles because he doesn’t write superhero fiction. He adapts plot material from crime fiction and action/adventure stories and goes to great lengths to avoid having to show characters using anything more than very basic powers. His dislike for superhero fiction elements, and problems writing fiction well, couldn’t have been more evident than in the recent MIGHTY AVENGERS arc, when the storyline had various real-world elements (EMP, hacking into (impossibly) launch control centers, Pym’s computer virus) and depicted all those elements incorrectly, because Bendis evidently didn’t read enough about any of them to understand how they work in the real world.

Just who is in the Avengers at any given time is far less important than the presence of an able writer who will depict the heroes being heroic and using their powers skillfully to meet challenges. Again, Bendis does none of that; it appears he would rather write about the Hood and the Wrecking Crew than about any Marvel hero. Writers write about what they know, they see, or what they read. Bendis, it appears, writes mostly about what he sees and reads.

SRS

As a Yankees fan, I have no idea what’s being said here. How do the Avengers and the Yankees compare?

In New York Sheffield isn’t really considered a Yankee because of his attitude and because of how he viewed Torre viewing him. Though he will go down as a member of the Yankees (the point about anyone being on the Yankees payroll being a Yankee is very much true) there are people on other teams who were members of that team for a brief period but moved on. What is called a “true” member of your favorite team is someone who is the epitome of what you want to represent with that team.

That’s the point of the parallel. By Brian’s logic (and mine too) if the powers that be hire Sheffield as a Yankee, call him a Yankee, he’s on the Yankee payroll and wears the uniform and plays the games…he’s a TRUE YANKEE! Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t act in the ideal way fans would like, he’s a Yankee. Same with the Avengers. Marvel owns the Avengers, if they call a group of heroes The Avengers, than that’s what they are.

8.avengers63 said …

The Avengers are basically this: “In brightest day, in darkest….” No, that wasn’t it. “For Truth, Justice, and th…” Hold on a sec. What the heck ARE the Avengers about, anyway?

Assembling!!

“By Brian’s logic (and mine too) if the powers that be hire Sheffield as a Yankee, call him a Yankee, he’s on the Yankee payroll and wears the uniform and plays the games…he’s a TRUE YANKEE!”

That’s also flawed reasoning. Bendis’s characterizations and plots bear no resemblance to what a superhero comics fan would expect to see in an “Avengers” comic, because he does his darndest to write characters taken out of crime fiction. If a book packaged as a formula fiction romance was a series action/adventure novel, would you say it was just an offbeat romance? Bendis fails at storytelling in very basic ways, which is why he aggravates some readers so.

SRS

Real Avengers are like True Yankees

Say what???

(Man, feels like happy-hour came early today!)

In any case, I think that the current Avengers roster looks more like the cast of “Joes vs. Pros” than the “Damned Yankees”.

And to use your own analogy, having Wolverine or Mr.Fantastic as an Avenger is like having A-Rod play for New York, Boston and the Rangers at the same time.

If anything, I would make the argument that Super-Heroes are like Musicians!

And you can have solo artists, and bands, and jam sessions …and something like the Traveling Wilburys.

But the Avengers???

Hmmm….

In that case…

the Avengers

…Spinal Tap!!!

(Hell, If you can think of another band that has had 24 drummers, 9 keyboardists, 6 bassists, 2 horn players, a lead guitarist, a lead singer and one tambourine player; then I’ll give it to you.)

If Bendis’ Avengers aren’t the real Avengers in the same way that any Superman published after, say, 1942 isn’t the real Superman.

(Both are silly to argue, but I agree with both a little bit.)

Bah. Forty years of them feeding me the Avengers trademark as representing this particular collegial superhero tradition, and now it’s my fault they’ve decided to blow up the brand-loyalty they so lovingly fostered? I bought their whole line, right down to “once an Avenger, always an Avenger”. Don’t blame me because they can’t be bothered to redirect my reader loyalty by knocking my socks off. Instead they’re knocking them back on, and you know how many times that’s happened in thirty-five years of hoovering up even the bad comics?

It’s not me. Steven R. Stahl is dead-on, and so is Black Manta. The real Avengers — I can’t speak to that, but I can tell you Marvel’s lost my real Avengers-buying dollar. So which “real” is the most important, there?

It’s just that Brian has removed any foundation from the Avengers.

Let’s see: destroyed the mansion, killed or removed the stalwarts, all-new all-different cast, little relation to previous sagas…

That Avengers junior title with Black Widow, Ares, et al. comes closer to being the Avengers, which makes me wonder if this is Marvel’s plan — have the new Avengers fail disastrously and Ms. Marvel’s B-Team rides into save the day and show us what real Avengers are all about.

If you build a loser team, you have two directions to go; either they prove themselves losers in messy defeat,or they rise above their deficiencies and become heroes. Both lend themselves to dynamic storytelling.

And no, I don’t mean to say Wolverine or Spider-Man are losers, but they do not have what it takes to be Avengers, and thus must fail if they take on Avenger-level threats, and this is due more to the group dynamics than to individual power-levels.

If nothing else Brian seems to see the long story, and we shouldn’t be short-sighted and think we see the whole story, yet. Still, fans buy what they like, and don’t always wait for the third act.

I guess what Brian is saying is “stop whining about the New Avengers not being Avengers!”.

And he’s right, of course.

“Still, fans buy what they like, and don’t always wait for the third act.”
Sort of off topic, but I find it kind of amusing that recently both Bendis, who is clearly guiding Marvel’s future, and Dan Didio over at DC parrot the same talking points. “There’s always been a plan. Yes, it’s been tweaked here and there, but there’s always been in a plan.” In Bendis’ case he’s trying to explain how stories from two or three years ago, like Avengers Disassembled and Secret War, sowed seeds that will I guess pay off during the Skrull Invasion.
And Didio is referring to the time period stretching back to Identity Crisis and all of the events in between leading up to Final Crisis.
On the one hand there is part of me that finds nothing wrong with this. I mean, you go back to the 1970s and Steve Englehart clearly had long and drawn out plotlines for his Avengers book. And as a fan of the Bob Harras run who re-read those issues recently, Harras certainly took a good year or so to conclude certain subplots.
BUT I also can’t help but wonder how much of this is just Didio and Bendis covering their asses.
DC saw how successful Infinite Crisis and 52 were, and decided to keep the “event train” rolling. But instead of just admitting it, Dido now says it was all part of a plan. So really, three, four, five years ago, Didio and Morrison and everybody sat down in a conference room and said “okay, we’re going to reintroduce the infinite earths in a mini-series, then follow that with two years worth of weekly series, then, Grant, you get to blow it all up again in a FINAL Crisis”?
As for Bendis, no matter what he says, I can’t shake the fact that Civil War threw off his plans. C’mon. I mean, he had just barely established the team. Echo had just joined after all the “Who is Ronin” teases and Sentry was also just becoming part of the group. I think Bendis had a whole different idea for what he wanted to do, and then Civil War hit and he had to shift gears and put off some subplot reveals.

I think Bendis had a whole different idea for what he wanted to do, and then Civil War hit and he had to shift gears and put off some subplot reveals.

Has he said different? Specifically?

“So how is the New Avengers fighting a supervillain breakout in their very first story arc not Avengerly? Who’s to say they didn’t save the world by battling the Void a few issues later?”

The fact that they didn’t stop the breakout, or beat the Void.

I figure if Cap and Iron Man are involved it’s still the Avengers. If that doesn’t work for you there’s nothing I can do about it. I still enjoy the books. Seems like plenty of other people do too.

Nope, Sean, he hasn’t said different. I just find it hard to believe that Civil War did not interrupt his plans.
Part of it, I guess, is pacing. Bendis is a slllllllowwwwwwwwwwwww writer who, in my humble opinion, really drags out his stories and plots unnecessarily.
He started New Avengers with some mysteries – What’s up with SHIELD? Who’s Ronin? Who caused the Raft break-out? All of these were compelling … for a while. But as the months dragged on and there were no answers I lost complete faith in the guy. For a time I even wondered if HE’D forgotten some of the plots he’d begun, which is not a good thing.
My theory – and it’s only a theory – is that Bendis might have addressed ALL OF this stuff already if not for Civil War and the Death of Cap. Or at least he would have had the opportunity to do it.
I think that those two events evolved well AFTER New Avengers was launched, and required Bendis and Marvel to rethink what he was doing with New Avengers.
And then somewhere along the way somebody said – Hey, let’s blame everything on the Skrulls.
I’m a newspaper reporter. And something I would really love is to one day see a comic website like Newsarama actually do a thorough behind the scenes story on how these “events” at Marvel and DC are generated. I want Bendis and Quesada to show us the memo from four years ago that mapped all of this out – Avengers Disassembled, Secret War, New Avengers, Civil War, World War Hulk, Secret Invasion.
Or have Didio hand over something dated 2002 or 2003 that maps out Identity Crisis through Infinite Crisis through 52 and Countdown to Final Crisis.
Too often editors and writers are allowed to get away with “trust us, we’ve PLANNED all this for the last four, five, six years”. I just don’t buy it. I think they just keep finding ways to “link” storylines together, hoping readers will never want to get off the ride.
I mean, yes you have FINAL CRISIS but didn’t we just get an issue of Green Lantern talking about how in 2009 the “Black Lantern Corps” is coming and the “Dead Shall Rise.”? Something tells me that the only thing Final about Final Crisis will be big DC events with the word “Crisis” in the title. And how much you want to bet at some point Didio will claim that the idea for the Black Lantern Corps was pitched at an editorial meeting in 2002 and “it’s all part of the plan”…
I’m just tired of it.

So Paul O’Neil is Hawkeye, and Jose Canseco is Gilgamesh, right?

So Paul O’Neil is Hawkeye, and Jose Canseco is Gilgamesh, right?

Ha! That would be the popular take on them, yes.

I think alot of the success they have been having sales-wise is that Wolverine and Spidey are in the book. They are popular. Remember the sales on the FF issue when the membership was them Hulk and Ghost Rider?

And off topic but is Spidey still an Avenger after BND? I don’t think I saw anything explaining this but in the latest preview of Avengers I think he was still in his black costume and in BND he’s in his original. (Ohhh, maybe’s one’s a clone.)

Wow, an article combining my favorite Marvel comic of the 70s and my favorite baseball team…ingenious! I too agree that the current overindulgence in Avengers titles is too much for even the most dedicated follower. They need to get back down to one Avengers team, and then there would be the rest of the Marvel Universe.

For something a little different, check out the “Second Chance Squad” on http://6gp.blogspot.com

Rich

This entry feels like it’s missing a paragraph or three. What are we saying here?

Great analogy, I must say, and a good lead-in for next year’s summer crossover event: Which Avenger is on Steroids?!?! Guest-starring George Steinbrenner going head-to-head with Tony Stark in a boardroom brawl, whilst on the field Roger Clemens battles the Mighty and New Avengers as the new Ultron. We’ll get to see another Suydam zombie homage, this time the cover of Green Lantern/Green Arrow with Speedy shooting up.

“And off topic but is Spidey still an Avenger after BND? I don’t think I saw anything explaining this but in the latest preview of Avengers I think he was still in his black costume and in BND he’s in his original. (Ohhh, maybe’s one’s a clone.)”

The Hood story probably takes place before OMD.

Zeb Wells and Chris Bachalo’s story features the Avengers in issues 555-557. So I say yes. I think Bendis is doing a Spider-man spotlight New Avengers issue during Secret Invasion.

“Nope, Sean, he hasn’t said different. I just find it hard to believe that Civil War did not interrupt his plans.”

Sorry couldn’t post the rest of your post.

I can buy that some things are planned in advance. I don’t see how Civil War alters the basic concept of Secret Invasion.

Either way the Skrull thing makes sense so far. So I buy the fact it was there from the beginning. I don’t know how much it changed the story but Civil War actually makes the Skrull subplot more interesting to me. The two opposing Avengers teams and the lack of Cap raises the stakes. So maybe it’s for the better.

I think fans kind of over analyze the concept of planning when it comes to serialized fiction. There’s isn’t a detailed point by point blueprint. There’s going to be changes along to way. There’s stuff the tv shows like Battlestar Galactica and Lost that was planned from the beginning. And there’s stuff they made up at the last minute. It’s the way it goes.

Anyways you don’t know and does it even matter if it was planned from the beginning. Lot of people loved Sinestro Corps. Does it matter if DC had it planned since 2002 or came up with a few months before? If the story is good who really cares?

Grant: the editors and writers make a huge show of it all having been planned in advance. I’m not saying that makes the stories suck. But THEY SAY it’s all planned out in advance. I didn’t make tham say it.

Let them hang (or be set free!) by their own words. THEY never have said “oh, this is like Battlestar Galactica”…,rather, they’ve said “every step of this is according to a well-thought-out plan”. Let them hazard the dice they roll.

Eh. It’s funny to see RM talk about an overindulgence of Avengers titles when I don’t think there is any at this current time.

“When Paul O’Neil throws his mighty water cooler, all who oppose pinstripes must yield.”

Grant: the editors and writers make a huge show of it all having been planned in advance. I’m not saying that makes the stories suck. But THEY SAY it’s all planned out in advance. I didn’t make tham say it.
Let them hang (or be set free!) by their own words. THEY never have said “oh, this is like Battlestar Galactica”…,rather, they’ve said “every step of this is according to a well-thought-out plan”. Let them hazard the dice they roll.

Even well thought out plans can change especially if they don’t work out. But again who cares? If it’s good it’s good. If it isn’t it isn’t.

Either way Dan Didio’s or Brian Michael Bendis idea of a well thought out plan could be different from yours. It could be simply various plot points they want to hit in the next couple of years.

Considering the arguments I’ve seen among Dr. Who fans about whether or not certain characters can REALLY be considered “companions,” I’m not at all surprised that different people have different definitions of what constitutes a “real” Avenger. In a way, it seems like an extension of the same principle that makes readers debate whether certain stories are “in continuity” or “canonical.” We all know it doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, but some level we like to feel comfortable with what is and isn’t “official.”

As for the Avengers thing: yes, if someone appears in a book with “Avengers” in the title as a member of a team that calls itself the Avengers, they are, technically an Avenger, if that’s how you define “Avenger.” But what about the Young Avengers? And the Great Lakes Avengers? Some people would say “of course they’re Avengers” (making Iron Lad an Avenger, making Kang an Avenger, but that’s not really pertinent, just amusing). But the “official” Avengers would disagree. It reminds me of the status of the Thing towards the beginning of the run of the old West Coast Avengers series. He was on a leave of absence from the FF, went on several adventures with the WCA, and Hawkeye was constantly trying to convince him to join. But he never accepted membership and never drew a paycheck. At the time, all the readers considered him a member, and he even appeared on the team roster in an Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe entry for the team, but nowadays no one considers him an “official” Avenger.

Comics in general have a long, proud tradition of characters who may-or-may-not-be members of various teams: Captain Britian and Meggan with the X-Men, Red Tornado with Young Justice, Ratman with the Elementals, Caledonia with the Fantastic Four, Bird Boy and Gossamyr with the New Mutants, Silverclaw with the Avengers. Some were members in all but name, others just tagalongs or supporting cast that happened to have powers, but there was always some criteria by which the charactes in the book didn’t consider them “real” members of the team.

By the same logic, if the people SHIELD and the government and the general populace of the Marvel Universe consider the “real” Avengers insist the New Avengers aren’t Avengers, and the New Avengers don’t get paid or carry Avengers Priority cards or have a copy of the Avengers Charter hanging on the wall of their headquarters, it’s not too big a stretch of logic to say that the New Avengers are wannabes, or posers, or pretenders to the throne, or whatever term you prefer. For that matter, isn’t the group of pretenders claiming they’re “the REAL (name of the title team here)” while the regular cast stare in bemusement a comics staple? It’s happened to the X-Men several times. The wannabes just don’t usually get their own book.

Or, to use the baseball analogy, if the Mets decided to change their name to the “New Yankees,” would you expect Classic Yankees fans to root for them?

Oh, I don’t think I buy that, Grant. These guys are quite capable of speaking clearly for themselves, I don’t think anyone can be accused of overreacting just by taking what they say at face value. And who said anything about the books being good, or not good? I’m just pointing out that when you’re making all kinds of noise about how great your roadmap is…well, that’s what you’re doing. Whether it’s true or not, whether the books are good or not, this is not about some guy working on his comic quietly in a corner and being hassled by fans, this is about holding press conferences and giving interviews where you take the time, over and over, to hammer the point home that you’ve worked things out in advance in an unusually exhaustive way. Which is all pretty clearly just spin, anyway: telling the fans that if they come across something that seems lousier or sillier than expected, if they’re freaked out by drastic, seemingly unwarranted changes in tone, don’t worry and sit tight, we’ve thought of everything, you won’t be disappointed, just keep buying.

Not a bad strategy, when you’re planning to massively overhaul the tone and direction of your entire line. I mean you’d be stupid not to warn everyone there’s going to be a little turbulence ahead, even if only so you can reassure them that it’ll all be okay in the end. If you think about it, Marvel and DC are taking substantial risks with their huge never-ending mega-maximum crossover strategies…what if it all sucks? If it all goes like they hope then they’ll bump up their bottom line in a big way, but if it falls apart they’ll have mired practically all their books in a years-long story that people don’t want to read. If it were me, I’d be putting as much spin on that situation as I could…and I would definitely be intending people to understand that everything, everything, has been thought out very responsibly years in advance, and that the roadmap’s being adhered to, and nobody’s being a cowboy.

Anyway, that’s what I’m getting from them. But, as a side note, I actually don’t think most of the stories are very good.

And as far as the Avengers go, I still tend to prefer the more minor and obscure characters.

Yeah, I agree. I’m quite fond of Black Knight, Mantis, Swordsman, Black Widow, Crystal, Thunderstrike, Century… okay, he was on Force Works, but it’s close enough for me.

On the one hand, yeah, most of the characters Bendis is using in the Avengers titles nowadays just don’t really seem like “real” Avengers to me (but I’m thrilled he added Spider-Woman to the team). On the other hand, fifteen years from now, when whoever is writing the series at that point brings in a bunch of new characters, at least some readers are going to be saying stuff along the lines of “These guys don’t feel like real Avengers, not like Luke Cage and Spider-Man and Doctor Strange and Ares did. I miss those guys, and want them back.”

Besides, considering I really liked Deathcry on the book, while most other Avengers fans hate her with a passion, I can’t really start making smart-alec remarks about readers who like that Bendis had Echo join the team

One of them is about a group of government agents who fight crime in the state of New York and sleep with each other. The other is about Luke Cage and his Amazing Friends fighting ninjas.

While both of these titles might not be traditional Avengers stories I don’t see anything wrong with Luke Cage and his Amazing Friends fighting ninjas, Sweet Christmas!

Actually, I think a lot of fans and even writers believe that The Avengers is defined in part by the fact the group lives in a mansion.
The JLA has had how many different HQs? – The original cave, the Satellite, the Detroit HQ, the moonbase, now the Hall of Justice and another Satellite.
The Avengers for most of its run had a mansion. And even when they were moved to Hydrobase they moved the mansion there.
If you go back to after Avengers mansion was destroyed in Stern’s classic run, the writers didn’t make too big a change – they basically had a new ultra modern, concrete building constructed on the same site for the Avengers.
But it was still treated as a “mansion” even though it looked more like a federal office building. In fact during the Harras/Epting run, I think Epting intentionally drew interior shots as if they were taking place in the original mansion of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The rooms he drew certainly did not match the new exterior of the building. And after a while Harras even brought back the original mansion at the beginning of the Crossing saga. So yeah, I’d actually go so far as to say the Avengers as a group is kind of defined by the mansion headquarters. And when that is no longer part of the book, it just feels “off.”

One thing that’s fascinating to me is that people often think of the “Big Three” (Cap, Iron Man, Thor) as “essential” to the Avengers, but they were only together for a fairly short time in the Silver Age before the “Cap’s Kooky Quartet” setup. And after that, as long as Stan Lee was writing or actively editing, he was dead set *against* having Thor and Iron Man in the Avengers lineup!

It’s unclear exactly why – seems like some combination of the “Superman in the JLA” problem (too powerful to challenge?), “they have their own titles,” and/or Stan’s belief that the ideal size for a superhero team was four. Roy Thomas kept *trying* to use the “Big Three,” but wasn’t able to do so regularly until Stan wasn’t actively editing anymore.

Grant and plok, I think you’re missing the boat on what the Avengers are about. The team is built on the premise that anybody can be a member of the team: the only “real” Avenger is Tony Stark, since he is the team’s corporate sponsor -most of the time, when the team isn’t under government mandate. Identifying a “real” Avenger is the same as asking who are “real” Marvel superheroes, since every one is eligible to try out for the team. It’s part of what makes the Avengers so great, and distinguishes it from the JLA.

Interesting comment about whether Spider-Man, Wolverine, etc are “avengerish”…they’re in the Avengers Adventures title, and seem perfectly Avengerish. Maybe it’s because they’re actually doing heroic things there, unlike the NA book.

Oh, and brian lockhart, I don’t think you can in one paragraph say that Bendis is masterminding everything happening at Marvel, and then in the next say he was caught off guard by Civil War and Death of Cap, etc.

Did I say that? I’m not being argumentative – I just don’t see those exact words.
Let me clarify my point.
Do I think Bendis is helping to steer the Marvel ship? Yes. He wrote Disassembled, he writes the two Avengers titles, he wrote House of M and Secret War, he is writing the Skrull Invasion. But these all developed over time, and in the midst of it fell Civil War.
So, do I believe that when he wrote the first story arc in New Avengers he knew that Civil War was a few years away, along with a split in the teams’ ranks and the death of it’s leader (Cap)? I don’t know. Part of me says yes, and part of me says no, but Bendis will never admit it.
But you know what? I’d love someone to at least ask: “Hey Brian Bendis – Clearly from the start of New Avengers there was some shadowy conspiracy hinted at. Did you at the time know this was the Skrulls? Did you at the time know that you would have barely established your New Avengers team and direction, only to have it shaken up by Mark Millar’s Civil War? How much of what we’re reading in New Avengers now was scheduled for the book two years ago and had to be delayed because of Civil War?”

In one of Bendis’ marathon Word balloon interviews, he states quite clearly that he’s had New Avengers planned from the beginning, but then Civil War came about rather abruptly and threw a wrench into the machine, as it were, forcing him to adapt his story.

I can’t remember what interview it was, but I’m pretty sure it was well before the Mighty Avengers book was even announced.

Yeah, it’d be really weird if Civil War was planned when Bendis began New Avengers, as it really doesn’t fit in at all.