Mighty Avengers #6 Review

[goldenfist]

Here's the review for Mighty Avengers #6 from ign.com

Mighty Avengers might not be the most delayed book at Marvel these days, but it's easily one of the biggest series to suffer from them. 2007 is more over, more or less, and I can't help but notice that Marvel managed to ship twice as many issues of New Avengers as Mighty during the year. More than any other Initiative comic, Mighty was supposed to define the pro-Registration side of the Marvel universe. Instead we got excessive butt shots, excessive thought bubbles, and excessive delays. But hey, at least this arc has finally come to a close.

Actually, Mighty Avengers #6 is a fairly pleasurable experience, at least relative to the other five issues. As slow stories have a tendency to do, the action ramps up considerably as the Avengers reach the climax of their first mission together. While I personally felt little reaction to Brian Michael Bendis' Mighty lineup, I'm pleased that he was able to give every character their moment to shine. Well, maybe not Black Widow, but I have her pegged for a Skrull anyway. Everyone else has at least one memorable scene during these six issues. This is true for Ares and Sentry especially, both of whom practically carried the arc during its second half.

No doubt many of you are wondering about the status of the thought balloons in this issue. Thankfully, I think Bendis finally wore himself out with this literary novelty. The balloons return to nearly derail the issue in its early pages, but they finally start to disappear as it wears on. Towards the end of this issue, Bendis writes an amusing scene that could have been easily and absolutely ruined by a hastily-inserted thought balloon. Instead, this scene serves as a testament to Bendis' sense of comedic timing. I hope we can expect more comedy of this caliber in upcoming issues, because it just might be enough to get me excited about the series again.

As for Frank Cho, you know what to expect by now. As much as the delays might be Cho's fault, I have to say I enjoyed his work quite a bit. Not naked female Ultron so much, but his bombastic style gels perfectly with the larger-than-life story Bendis is trying to tell with this arc. That said, I'm more than ready for Mark Bagley to whip this series back into shape.

So I have a lot of nice things to say about this finale issue, but I could throw out at least as many complaints. I'll keep them brief for fear of sounding like a broken record. Basically, this book in no way lives up to its sister series, New Avengers, which has its own fair share of flaws. The team dynamic isn't nearly as interesting, the types of threats they face pale in comparison to Skrulls and The Hood, and the overall execution is just disappointing. While Bendis makes some inroads into rectifying these problems, it may come as too little, too late for readers who have been hanging on since March.
Review Score 6.8 Passable

So who here agrees or disagrees with the review.

[Doctor Doom]

Firstly, I was very happy with this issue. It's easily the best yet from this series, and hence the best Avengers issue I've read from Bendis in some time. Every character has their moment to shine- Ms Marvel, Wasp and Ares stand out in this issue, Iron Man had his in 1, Sentry has had his throughout, Wonder Man had his last issue and Black Widow back in 4. Mighty Avengers really got a running start, flying headfirst into the action and showing exactly why these guys are on the team.

The action was exciting, and well done. Carol's big return was excellent, the Sentry took steps to being slightly more interesting and it was all big scale. The Wasp's moment of glory was the coolest thing I've seen Jan do in some time and shows exactly why I like her so much. Even Hank Pym got his chance to shine, and didn't come off like a total not a very nice person- in fact, his confrontation with Jan was actually a fairly believable portrayal of strained relationships between an ex-couple. There was also the really cool touch of Ultron morphing half back into his normal form just before the big kaboom.

The end was pretty good as well- I actually laughed out loud at Tony's classic reaction to being told he was turned into a girl, it was good to see Reed there, and some of those final scenes were well done in general. Wonder Man has been too much of a bit player in my mind and I'm rather terrified he's a Skrull, but Bendis does a really nice one page scene with him where he's back to being my Simon again! The "big cliffhanger" was quite well done even if we knew it was coming for some time. Oh, and Cho's arc is, as always, beautiful.

The negatives? Delays. Any and all momentum this series had is dead. This issue is FOUR MONTHS LATE and the 6 issue storyline was already far too padded. It would have been a great 4 issue arc, at 6 issues, it went on for far too long. The ending was spoiled long ago, and it was cringe-inducing to see it end with "Tomorrow is your first official day as Avengers" when we've seen them appear as Avengers in half the Marvel Universe already.

The issue had other flaws. Despite being ridiculously long, the story still has some pretty big loose ends. What the hell ever happened to the Mole Man after Ultron destroyed his creatures? Who knows!? Where WAS Reed and why didn't he help during the crisis? Again, not mentioned. Biggest of all, why the HELL did Ultron turn into a girl? I assumed there was a reason, I can only hope that we get one in Annihilation Conquest because otherwise it's the most "What the hell???" thing I've read in some time. There are also some other flaws- what's with this sudden "Nick Fury was a phenomenal leader we should all live up to (When he wasn't blackmailing us and turning on us)"? Could it possibly be because Bendis is bringing back Fury next year and wants everyone to hero worship him in the meantime? I think so.

Still, a solid 8.5/10. Many flaws, but they were more due to the arc than the issue- as it went, this issue was pretty d**n good.

I also have to totally disagree with almost everything IGN said in their last paragraph. A less interesting team dynamic? Let's see, Ms Marvel, who is actually being interesting these days, Iron Man- the most complex character in any comic universe right now, Ares- a former villain, Wonder Man and the Wasp- two Avengers veterans, then we throw in the mistrust between Iron Man and others, the tension over leadership, the intra-team relationship, the Sentry's problems etc.... and this blows New out of the water in terms of character relationships/dynamics. And I have absolutely no idea how they feel THE HOOD is a bigger threat than an Ultron about to scourge the Earth clean of, y'know, people, not to mention that BOTH books are dealing with Skrulls now, not just New.

[goldenfist]

I agree with ya Santa Doom but don't forget that Mighty Avengers
and the New Avengers will be in the Avengers/Invaders crossover
coming out next year.

[starfoxxx]

Not bad, not great, but definitely better art than New Avengers or Avengers:The Initiative. The thought bubbles are really lame. There seems to be a lot of plotlines for one book.

[spiderwasp]

I actually thought it was pretty good. Obviously I can find flaws, but in all fairness, there are very few books in which you can't find flaws. Ironically, if there were a book that I considered perfect, others would find tons of flaws in it. Overall, the issue had a pretty decent Avengers feel to it and the arch started the book off on a positive note, although, if it had been told in three or four issues, it would have been much better.
Here's my breakdown of the whole arch by character:

Ms. Marvel- I'm not sure she's ready to be a leader. I saw Ironman, Wasp, Black Widow, Hank Pym, and even Ares make more leadership decisions strongly. Carol did fine when it was time for her to jump into the action herself, but as a leader, she lacked the confidence to do much. I think that's actually why Stark picked her. He wants someone else to be the leader so that it doesn't look like he's controlling everything when that's exactly what he plans to do. That was very clear when picking the roster.

Ironman- He almost has to be a part of the team since most of the more recognizable Avengers can't be used right now because of the various reasons they wouldn't easily fit into the book (Cap, Thor, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Hawkeye) but I'd still be happier to see him out of it. I'm feeling overexposure that rivals any I've ever seen with Wolverine for this character, and unlike many of you, I was never a big fan to start with. Luckily, after the first issue of this story, he was out of commission. I did like his reaction to learning that Ultron had made him into a girl though.

Wasp- I thought Jan was handled fairly well as the story moved along and I liked seeing her pull Ares' out. I'm glad Bendis' isn't portraying her as a complete ditz but I didn't really like her scenes with Hank. She served on the WCA with Tigra and they were close friends. I realize seeing him with anyone else, even when she's the one that broke it off, is tough but her acting like the idea of it being Tigra was repulsive was a little out of character. Of course, then again, Tigra is covered with cat hair so maybe she has a point. I don't think I'd want a girlfriend who sheds either.

Black Widow- She's always just seemed pointless to me as an Avenger and, aside from her one take charge scene, that was true here too. She should be working with the team as a SHIELD laison rather than as a core member.

Wonderman- I'm a big fan of Simon but he seemed rather useless in this arch. I'm hoping that the scene between him and Carol at the end was an indication that that's going to be changing in upcoming stories. This character has way too much potential to be wasted.

Ares- I'm actually surprised to say that the character worked better than I had expected. I'm not sure how he'll do in the long run and his acceptance into the team after some of the things he's done in the past seemed like a stretch but, in the Ultron arch, he wasn't a complete disaster. Outside of this book, his use of his new Avengers status to harass Hercules in Incredible Hu- Herc was interesting, though certainly didn't go far toward making him likable.

Sentry- Ah, speaking of complete disasters. This is the character that simply needs to go. Not just from the Avengers, but in general. First, they need to retcon the retcon and say that part of his undiscovered ability is thought projection which allows him to subconsiously make other people believe whatever he believes, therefore when he became convinced that everyone had known him for years, they did too, but it wasn't really true. Even the story with his wife's supposed death was stupid. So now he can bring people back from the dead? You'd think Bendis would catch on that no matter how many powers he throws on this guy, the one power he doesn't have is the power to be interesting.

Hank Pym- I'm glad to see Pym involved in the book if not as an actual member, however Bendis just can't write him well. It was nice to see that he was able to save the day and I could even understand his feelings of guilt over having created Ultron in the first place, but it's everyone acting like he's such a loser that quickly grates on me. Of course I am a fan of Dan Slott, generally, but over in the Initiative, he's portraying him as being as big a jerk as everyone in the Bendis books treats him as. I really want to see this guy get some respect.

Ultron- Female, male, it didn't really matter to me. The point is I thought this was not a very good Ultron story. He/she just seemed to be the catalyst for bringing the group together rather than a real threat. Of course, this is also partly due to the huge delays in publication. By the time each issue had come out, I actually needed the recap page to remind me what the villain was up to and by the time it ended, we already knew the team won without any permanent consequences.

Thought bubbles- Yes, I'm counting these as a character because they seemed to have a life of their own. I was never a fan of Quesada's rule against them because I think they can sometimes serve a useful purpose though he was right that, even in the olden days, they were often annoying. But they were never like this. Bendis used them to make each and every character just a little less likable. It's almost as though he and Quesada had teamed up and said "If people don't think thought bubbles are annoying, we'll show 'em."

[BigDuke]

I read this issue when it came out and was okay with it. But I went through and reread the whole arc. I had forgotten large plot points because it took so long to tell this story. I have to say that the retelling of some of the prior issue did not bother me as much as it seems to have some others. Maybe because it reminds me of some of the older Avengers stuff from the 80s I am reading now, where this was commonly done. I know we have the recap page now, but honestly, how many of us read this? Is there ever anything insightful there? Maybe I am dense and should pay more attention there.

The thing that really jumped out at me is how negative the thought balloons all were (except for a couple of Ares'). Why are these people even together? They seem to, by and large, hate half the team they are stuck with. It reminds me of Gone with the Wind. This is supposed to be this big great oscar winning aclaimed movie. So I sit down to watch it, and I was so sick of the characters that half way through I turned it off. None of the main characters were likeable. This arc of MA reminded me of that, not because they weren't heroic and didn't have cool powers, but because they were rotten about each other. I know that Hawkeye was a mouthy brat to Cap when he started, but he had the stones to say what he thought and live with the consequences. These Avengers "think" poorly of each other, but it doesn't come out in the open. It reminds me more of my office than an Avengers comic.

I very much enjoyed the depiction of Natasha, especially when she took charge on the helicarrier. It seems to me that she was depicted pretty well. I also enjoyed (as much as it pains me to admit this) Ares. If we put aside the many times he showed up as a villain, this is what a heroic version of Ares would be. Sure he's arrogant, but so was Herc. And he is a violent bad-a**. Simon also rang reasonably true for me, though he was a bit in the background. Sentry was, well, Sentry. And we didn't see much of Iron Man.

The big disappoinments for me were Ms Marvel and Wasp. When did Carol become such an insecure ditz? She had a couple great individual heroic moments, but as a leader she was portrayed like wet cardboard. That's not who I remember or expect. And Jan was okay (not great but okay) until that final scene with Hank. I may be a little out of date on their relationship, but she is telling herself in her head(thought balloons) not to say something, and then says something really awful. That just seemed so off. She was weak and snipey instead of the strong character I remember.

Ultron seemed off to me too. Like I have said, I am a little out of date and have some catching up to do on my reading, but I don't remember Ultron as cold, calculating, and emotionless. The Ultron I remember was homicidal, maniacal, and arrogant.

As for Hank, I didn't mind how he was depicted too much, but then I have never been a huge Pym guy. What bugs me is how he is smart but unsure in MA, but seems arrogant and angry in the Initiative. Either one is a Skrull, or the two writers need to talk more.

Overall this issue and arc were good enough. But it was like hearing your favorite tune being played live instead of your favorite recording. It was mostly like your favorite tune, and you enjoy it, but a couple of off notes keep you from loving it. That is how this story left me feeling, I like what I should have been doing handsprings over.