New Avengers: The Collective (4)

What, another New Avengers review?  I know, but I needed to get through it so that I could read the New Avengers: Civil War which I’ve been hanging onto for a while as I am thinking of collecting all the Civil War books even though I thought a few of them were horrible.  I’m also really trying to force myself to review each TPB I read right before I read another one because otherwise I’ll put off the reviewing and it’ll never get done (like my DC & Darkhorse reviews).  So yeah, another New Avengers review. 

Ok, now that all of that nonsense is out of the way, how about I talk about the book.  Honestly I was a bit disappointed, not just in this book but in how the entire New Avengers series went after Vol 1 (Breakout).  Secrets & Lies was much better than Sentry, but The Collective is nearly as frustrating as Sentry was.

The vague story, there’s some entity that comes from space and takes out a town in Alaska and Maria Hill, Director of Shield reluctantly asks for help from the Avengers.  Relations between the team and Shield are at an all time low which effects the entire story.

What I liked best about the story was the first chapter in which Luke Cage took the Avengers to the streets of Detroit to actually try and make a change that would effect the everyman.  It had nothing to do with the story really, but it wasn’t inane like the rest of the book.

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So what did we really learn in this book?  Not all that much, but Maria Hill kept mentioning the registration act in her effort to foreshadow the events to come.  In fact, even though it appeared like the emergence of this entity was important at the time, it really wasn’t.  I almost get the feeling that this book acted merely as a placeholder before the whole Civil War storyline began and they really didn’t want to rock the boat right before whole Marvel universe was changed forever.

Where would I rate it?  Above Sentry but below Secrets and Lies and again, I’m disappointed in the series as a whole because it had so much promise.

Moon Knight: The Bottom

Wow, this is an odd review huh?  So far it’s been almost all Avengers and wham, out of nowhere I choose to review one of Marvel’s least known characters.  So why Moon Knight?

When I was 15 I was reading comics at a friend’s house and he was reading a Moon Knight comic.  At that time, I had honestly never heard of him, so I asked my friend who Moon Knight was and his response was, “he’s a Jewish super-hero, he’s kinda lame”.  Well, I took it to heart that he was lame and never thought twice about him until, many many years later I’m playing Marvel Ultimate alliance and who appears in the line-up but Moon Knight.  I checked out his powers and he’s actually pretty fun to play so I played him a bit.

Not too long after I was buying a TPB online that I needed and I got the chance to add a copy of Moon Knight: The Bottom to my order without adding any shipping charge and it only cost $2.00!  Even if the trade paper back was read by bums with sticky fingers it’d still be worth it for $2.00, so I added it to my order.

When I received my order the Moon Knight book was in remarkable shape so I figured if they were adding it on for only $2.00 it’s really got to be a stinker so I decided to read it that day just to get through it.

What I found was a book with very good artwork, intense violence and an experience that I actually really enjoyed.  I can honestly say that aside from some discount Halloween decorations I got after the holiday, this is probably the best $2.00 I’ve ever spent.

Moon Knight: The Bottom is exactly the kind of story I relish.  A person who was once someone of import has completely been broken down until he is almost worthless.  Marc Spector, the former Moon Knight is alone, lonely, crippled, depressed, addicted, in pain and really at rock bottom.  Where can he go from here, only up right?  While figuratively that’s true, you can go up at a slant.  Not everyone is able to return from the bottom sane and heroic, sometimes the filth at the bottom sticks to you and that’s how it is with Marc Spector, but not just in this instance.  See Marc was a paid killer, a warrior and he’d hit bottom before, actually died there and was given the chance to serve an Egyptian god named Konshu in becoming vengeance incarnate.  This isn’t Captain America, not everything he does can be easily justified or perceived as the right thing to do.  Moon Knight was a troubled character before he hit The Bottom so again, where does he go from here?

Moon Knight isn’t going to be for everybody.  Like the Punisher, he’s a vigilante and his greatest power appears to by the ability to withstand a lot of damage which makes for very bloody confrontations.

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What I’ve listed in the spoiler is all the action, but what I haven’t put in are the emotional encounters, the dark soliloquies and conversations between Marc Spector and his god Konshu.

It’s a dark and violent story.  It’s also a good story, sometimes confusing and frantic, but that’s how Marc Spector himself is as he crawls back from The Bottom.  I would definitly recommend this title to anyone who likes their comics dark.  In fact, now I’m going to look for the rest of the Moon Knight TPBs that follow this one.

The Ultimates 2 – Grand Theft America (2.2)

Well, this book finishes up the story where Gods and Monsters left off and to be honest with you, I could use a bit of a break from The Ultimates so it will be a while before I check out The Ultimates 3.  So does this book do justice to the series?  In my humble opinion, no.  I’ve mentioned before that the normal pace for The Ultimates books tends to be a bit slow, but this book isn’t slow at all.  In fact it moves so fast at times it seems frantic, like we’ve missed a panel or two.

Basically the bottom falls out on The Ultimates in this book, which could have worked out very nicely, but I feel that Marvel took the wrong path on this one.  I see what they were doing, I get the fact that Marvel likes to tie issues in the real world into their stories:  Mutant/Super-hero registration, segregation, the Legacy virus… I get it.  I normally enjoy the way Marvel intertwines issues between the real world and the created one, but sometimes it gets in the way.  In fact, I think this could have been a much better book had they just removed the politics and just told the story.  It felt very contrived and rushed the way it is.

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There was some great action in this book, so if you pick it up just for that reason then you’ll probably enjoy the tale, but if you are looking for story that feels honest you may be left a bit disappointed like I was.

Civil War

The thing to ask yourself before going into Civil War is ‘do I like change?’.  I figure most readers of Trade Paper Backs do enjoy change.  They enjoy villains rising from the dead, characters changing powers and even super-heroes getting killed.  Not all the time mind you, but once in a while to shake things up.  Well that’s exactly what Civil War does to the entire Marvel universe, and things will never be quite the same.

This is important for you TPB readers and I can’t emphasize this more, if you want to understand what Marvel’s Civil War was all about, buy this TPB first! I have read many of the other Civil War TPBs and some of them are downright confusing and most add nothing substantial to the main plot.

Long story short and a minor spoiler– chances are anyone knowing even the slightest about Marvel’s Civil War probably knows all of this anyway — the New Warriors which include Speedball and Namorita are starring in a reality TV show about super-heroes and to boost their ratings they raid a hide out for super-villains.  Unfortunately they aren’t up for the challenge and things go wrong when the villain named Nitro uses his exploding power to kill everyone in a two block radius which just happens to include an elementary school.  There’s major repercussions from this tragedy as the American people demand accountability from their super-heroes and in this case, accountability means un-masking.

What really sets things off in this book is the horrible way the current Director of Shield Maria Hill handled the situation in her briefing with Captain America which forced him to take a stance.  In fact Cap took a stance to an extreme that he probably never would have  if cooler minds had prevailed.

So here’s the synopsis.  Half of the Marvel super-heroes led by Tony Stark agree to register with the government, get trained in how to use their powers responsibly and even draw a government paycheck.  The rest of the heroes following Captain America believe the registration act is a violation of their civil rights and refuse to arrest and imprison super-heroes who don’t feel that they need to register.  So of course, the two sides must clash.

Perhaps if the rebellious team led by Captain America had just buried themselves and hidden out things wouldn’t have turned violent, but these are still heroes, people who feel the need to be where the public needs them most, making them easy targets for Tony Stark’s team of heroes and the entire Shield force.

This is a great book as far as TPBs go because with minimal knowledge of the Marvel Universe you can easily understand what is going on yet fanboys will enjoy the more subtle references that aren’t integral to the storyline.  That’s the other great thing about this book as a read, it’s completely self-contained and meant to be just that.  There’s a beginning, we see how and why the conflict began, there’s a middle filled with conflict and loss and finally there is an ending that offers closure, not hinting at what’s going to happen in the next book.  This is obviously a result of Civil War covering a limited series and the end result is a very enjoyable experience.

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You’ll notice that this review has a ton of tags.  I actually limited the character tags to those characters that actually contributed significantly to the action or the storyline.  The number of tags would be double if I had merely included anyone who made an appearance in this book.  So yeah, just about everyone in the Marvel universe picked a side, fought for it and had their lives changed by all that happened.  So to me, this TPB is a must have for any Marvel fan, the companion books…not so much.

The Ultimates 2 – Gods and Monsters (2.1)

The Ultimates 2 starts off with a bang.  Captain America leaps out of a helicopter and kicks some terrorist ass to free some hostages.  But that really has nothing to do with what this book is about.  There are some smaller side story lines, like Hank Pym coming back with his Ant Man persona, the relationship between Cap and Janet gets more involved and Tony Stark falls for the Black Widow, but the core of the story revolves around two characters; one is a god and the other is a monster.

Just when Dr Banner seems to be getting the Hulk under control we finally the consequences from Ultimates 1 come to fruition as the Hulk is held responsible for killing over 800 people on his rampage through New York.  Was it really his fault?  Does that even matter?  There is always a need for a scapegoat and Banner, deservedly or not has become just that.  Now he must be tried before a jury of his peers.

On the other end of the spectrum, Thor is being more vocal in his discontent with the US Government stating his belief that they will eventually send the Ultimates to the Middle East despite the fact that it is prohibited by their charter or something.  He publicly removes himself from the team right before confidential documents about Bruce Banner being the Hulk get leaked to the media.  This brings him into conflict with the Ultimates and besides that Thor’s delusions of godhood appear to be getting worse, will they be forced to fight another teammate?

The book is written at the same pace as the other Ultimate books which may be a bit slow for casual readers but that’s because it’s not meant for casual readers.  This series wants us to take a look at these super heroes and discover just how human they are.  They have faults, desires and fears that impact their lives and the story.

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Again, it’s another good Ultimates read that I’d recommend and it leaves you with one Hell of a cliff-hanger that will have you itching to get the follow-up book Grand Theft America.

New Avengers: Secrets and Lies (3)

Will the 3rd New Avengers book restore the series to the top of the shelf or did Sentry begin a downward spiral that there’s just no getting out of?  Will this be the book where Daredevil finally joins the team?  Will Spider-Man make any more booty jokes?  Ok, so not so much the last one, but seriously this has to be the issue Daredevil jumps into a black costume and joins the New Avengers right?  They keep showing pictures of a black clad ninja-guy, who else could it be?  Well, the darkly clad stranger actually does get unmasked in this book, see the spoiler below.

The Avengers start out this book with a trip to Japan to fight some ninjas, not contrived at all.  So… of course we get a little New Avenger on ninja action, which is nice.  We also get to see our mysterious ninja like black clad figure doing a bit of ass-whooping alone.  Hydra was there and so was the guest star of the night was the Silver Samurai.  Turns out the Silver Samurai was apparently illegally imprisoned by Sheild at the Raft and he just happened to escape during Breakout.  That’s the reason why the Avengers are there, see how it all ties back together.

Ok, so now that their little Japanese adventure is over it’s time to get to the Secrets & Lies.  One of the New Avengers has got a dark secret they may cost them their membership on the team. Oh please don’t let it be Spider Woman.  I have an unhealthy attraction to her.  I mean I know she’s just a drawing but… like I said it’s unhealthy.  I think maybe they embedded her pheremones into a scratch and sniff on the pages.  Come on, you know what I mean, drawn to perfection with thick black hair, who wouldn’t be attracted to her.

Ok, it’s her.  I hate to spoil it here, but it’s kinda obvious when you look at the collected books that this TPB contains, which I love.  Others may feel differently, but I appreciate the fact that Marvel goes out of their way to recap a story through a collected comic I would have never bought but directly relates to the Avenger story contained within this book.

When that little bit of nastiest is completed, the New Avengers decide that they can’t keep the reformation of the Avengers from the public any longer and hold a press conference that has mixed results.  Throw in a cameo by Ms. Marvel and you’ve got the book in a nutshell.

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So, how did it compare to the other trade paperbacks in the series?  Somewhere in the middle actually; not as good as Breakout but not nearly as bad as Sentry.  It’s good enough to make me give the next book in the series a chance.  So it’s ordered and I’ll review it when it gets in.  Until then, I have a ton of other TPBs just waiting to get a write up.

The Ultimates – Homeland Security (1.2)

Homeland Security opens up just where Super Human ended and it also concludes this run of the series.  As I began reading the second book I was reminded of how this series are darker and covers more mature themes than a normal Avengers book would and in my opinion they aren’t really suitable for younger readers.

Ok, now that the disclaimer is out of the way, let’s get to the difference between books.  Even though this book concludes the story of the previous Ultimates book, there are significant differences.  For instance, the problems the Ultimates face in the first book are problems that they brought about themselves.  In Homeland Security, there are significant outside forces to deal with, forces of an extra-terrestrial nature.

Another significant difference is the cast.  The core five were established in the last book but that changes as Giant Man’s actions from the previous book significantly reduced his role in Homeland Security and added to the team are Black Widow, Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch — the last two are only bit players though.  In an homage to The Matrix Hawkeye and the Black Widow make their entrance in black trench coats carrying black duffel bags filled with weapons and deal some serious damage to some unsuspecting aliens.  Both Black Widow and Hawkeye play important roles in the final battle of the series.

The core team have had big changes as well.  Captain America gets a reminder of how out of touch he is with modern social norms, the Wasp has her own private struggles after having it out with her husband.  Tony Stark admits uncertainty in his self-imposed crusade and in a moment of weakness expresses self-doubt which is out of character for him.  Dr Banner is remourseful for his recent actions and scared about his future yet still has the ability to let his guard down and laugh when visited by Betty Ross. All these changes show one thing, our ‘Super Human’ team is all to human.

The biggest change between the two books is probably the amount of combat in Homeland Security.  You will not go more than four pages in between fights and some of them are just epic.  The main battle at the end of the book is chaotic and frantic just like a real battle would be.

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The main question I have to answer is, does the second book live up to the first Ultimates book?  The answer is yes.  The payoff of Homeland Security is worth the slower pace of the first book and it resolves almost all of the important storylines but still leaves us with a couple of more personal issues that leave us wanting more.  All in all I thoroughly enjoyed both Ultimates books and recommend them to anyone that likes a more realistic and slightly darker super-hero read.

The Ultimates – Super Human (1.1)

The Ultimates is part of Ultimate Marvel, a series designed to re-imagine the stories of some of Marvel’s classic characters with a modern twist.  Not only does this allow Marvel to remove some of the confusing and sometimes convoluted histories of these characters, update their origins within our current scientific paradigm but it also had the possibly unforeseen but beneficial side-effect of de-cluttering this new universe.  Sometimes the classic Marvel galaxy just feels too overrun with both villains and heroes.  Does the world really need to be saved from destruction everyday?  A reduced cast makes what you are reading somehow feel more important and more possible.

But that’s just my opinion on the whole Ultimate Universe of which the the Ultimates are just one part.  The Ultimates are this generations Avengers using pretty much the old cast.  The story begins with Captain America serving a much deserved beat down to some evil Nazis before an explosion sends him into the dark depths of the Arctic where he can cool off for 50 years or so.

Major Nick Fury, a black and more fierce version of than the one from the original universe — who even in the book compares himself to Samuel L. Jackson — is charged with putting together a government sponsored force capable of dealing with the world’s new super-threats.  This comes as a response to the Hulk ravaging a pier in Manhattan and coincidentally, the first member of the new team is a cured Dr. Banner with the hope that he can reverse engineer the super-soldier serum that made Captain America the man he was in WW2.

Dr Banner was eager to join the team and redeem himself but his colleagues Hank & Jan Pym who also agree to join the team as Giant Man and Wasp aren’t so eager to have Banner along for the ride; neither is Banner’s old girlfriend Betty Ross who was brought in as the Director of Communications for the new team.

Tony Stark volunteers his service so the only hold up on getting the team rolling is the new Super Soldiers Banner is going to create when his serum gets completed which is proving more difficult than previously believed.  As fate would have it though just when all looks bleak, a team of marine biologists discover a Captain America popsicle in the Arctic Ocean and somehow Major Fury’s team is able to revive him.  The Avengers have assembled.  Well, I left out Thor, and while he does help the team in a time of crisis he also refuses to work for ‘the man’.

Now that the team is together the problems begin.  Captain America is a man out of time, he struggles with understanding the world’s declined social standards and being 50 years younger than those he loves.  Next, the media starts questioning the governments choice to fund a team tasked at stopping super-powered crime when there’s been nothing worth fighting in months.

In moment of relaxation, Dr Banner overhears his colleagues joking about him and it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back.  He feels like an utter failure having not come up with the answer to the Super Soldier formula and he turns to the Hulk for an answer.  That’s the irony of the whole book, Banner Hulks out and it’s his own team that stops him.  If the team had never been put together, Banner wouldn’t have had a reason to bring out the Hulk.  A team with no one to fight manages to to create their own foe to give them a justifiable purpose, even if it’s only one team member who is to blame.

The book touches upon some dark aspects of humanity.  People break into Captain America’s new digs and destroy his personal belongings, Hank and Jan have a fight that goes way too far. It’s real, that’s what I’m trying to get across, some of the shine that normally goes hand in hand with superhero comics has been dulled, but that’s alright, it’s actually what I enjoyed about The Ultimates.

For instance, when Giant Man grows and when Wasp shrinks, their clothes don’t resize with them.  During a fight, Iron Man needs to take time out to recharge, Giant Man takes a hit and is out for the entire fight, Captain America gets beaten to a pulp.

The closer to reality action and the somewhat dark themes makes for a more mature book, and hey there’s a cameo by President Bush and you don’t wanna miss that.  It’s a great read but it does leave a lot of story left to be finished in the second Ultimates book which I’ll be reviewing soon.  That’s probably the only real knock I have against this book as a TPB, but that doesn’t really bother me honestly.

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If you are picking it up hoping for non-stop action, then you are bound to be disappointed, this is more of a character study of classic characters that deserve the attention.

New Avengers: Sentry (2)

The New Avengers – Sentry is the second title in the New Avengers collections and as the title suggests nearly the entire book is dedicated to the search for and comprehension of Sentry.  Who is he?  Why does nobody remember him?  They even ask, is he just a comic book character instead of an actual real life hero – a hyperrealistic question if ever there was one?

The story begins with a meeting of the Illuminati, and if you don’t know who they are I’m not going to spoil it here for you.  It’s actually not critical to the story but I figured it was worth a mention.  After that Wolverine, Spider-Man, Luke Cage and Spider-Woman have a heart to heart with Wrecker, one of the many super-villians that escaped from the Raft – a high security prison for super powered criminals (see Breakout).  Wrecker’s alone so all the power inside his magical crowbar is his own, which means he doesn’t have to share it with the rest of the Wrecking Crew and that makes him an extremely powerful foe as our heroes find out when he hands them a proper whooping.

Ok, it’s a decent fight, but one continuity problem: in one panel Wrecker slams his crowbar into Luke Cage who ends up flying back into the wing of of the quinjet the New Avengers had flown to Long Island on.  The impact does a significant amount of damage to the wing of the plane, more than it does to Luke Cage. Pages later when the fight is over, Iron Man calls the team and tells them to ‘assemble’, by which he means they need to get their butts on the quinjet and meet him in Connecticut.  In the next panel, the New Avengers are seen boarding the plane.  How do you fly a plane with a broken wing?  I can see how they missed it because they’re telling the story out of synch with time so the panels keep flipping between past events and the current which means the fight spans over several different scenes.  It’s not really a huge deal, but on a A-list type of book, it’s a flaw that probably shouldn’t have been overlooked.

That aside, as I alluded to earlier most of the book is trying to resolve a problem with Sentry, a super hero that no one can remember.  The solution involves bringing together the combined forces of the Inhumans, the New Avengers, the X-Men and the Fantastic Four.  That’s quite a collection heroes and it would be really cool to see them all battling it out with some fiend, but that’s not what happens.  Well, actually it happens, but it happens off the page.  We – the reader – miss out on all the action!  What we do get to witness are scenes of possible past story lines that may or may not have occurred, comic panels intentionally drawn like it’s still the Golden Age of comics, a lot of discussion about the problem at hand and a vague solution which resolves everything in a single panel.  Huh?

Yeah, that’s the problem, the whole book leaves you feeling like you missed out on what was supposed to be important.  We miss the grand battle, the resolution is just a bright white light and we end up with a super-hero that has the ‘power of a thousand suns’.  I feel fully cheated and what’s worse is that it all feels like a contrived way for me to be able to accept one of the most powerful characters Marvel has to offer being dumped into an existing world without him having to have a history.  Dumped is the right word, because honestly it’s like the Beyonder dropped a deuce and it turned into Sentry.  Seriously, you guys could have done better.

I was really disappointed with the follow-up to Breakout which by all accounts was a entertaining read.  Hopefully the guys pulled it back by book three or I might have to abondon the series in search for something better.

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It’s also worth mentioning that the TPB includes some bonus content at the end of the book.  They included a dossier of super-villians and a list of super-powered prisons they called the “New Avengers Most Wanted List”.  From what I can tell, all of the villians listed actually broke out of the Raft in Breakout.  It’s a kind of cool resource for getting caught up with your favorite villians in the Marvel Universe or even learning about someone new.  If my count is right it’s 51 pages long and it’s very text heavy. The dossier is a decent add-on and one of the saving graces of this TPB.