Civil War: Fantastic Four

As I really enjoyed the main Civil War TPB, I decided that it would be worth while to collect the whole crossover event, or at least as many as I could easily find fairly inexpensively.  So I grabbed a handful of them and got to reading, little did I know that some of them would suck and even lie in contradiction with the main TPB book they were meant to support, or was it the other way around.  Regardless, continuity in a crossover event is key and in this book at least, Marvel missed the boat.

As one might expect after having read the main book, this book starts in the hospital with the Fantastic Four looking over the concussed form of Johnny Storm after he was viciously attacked on the city streets after the Stamford incident. Almost immediately the conflict between Reed & Sue Richards starts.  Reed is one of the three people instrumental in the designs and plans not only for the enforcement of the Registration Act, but also for the Fifty States initiative and the prison called 42 located in the negative zone.  Susan on the other hand can’t imagine trying to capture and imprison heroes that have not only done a lot of good, but are also friends of theirs.  This rift comes to a head and Sue and Johnny actually leave Reed and the children to come to the aid of those following Captain America, the freedom fighters if you will.  Ben Grimm on the other hand makes his own decision and it’s a good one that I’m surprised more heroes didn’t think of or act on.

show spoiler

In the end, Sue and Reed reconcile but she says something to the effect that things can never be the same again.  I don’t imagine that’s a surprise to any Fantastic Four fan who would have known by now that the two aren’t divorced or separated.

I’m pretty disappointed in this book and I’m keeping my finger’s crossed that not all the Civil War books are not as bad as this one or two of the other’s I have read but haven’t reviewed yet.

Avengers Disassembled

Wow, that’s quite a cast I listed in the tags and I tried to just list those characters that made an impact on the story.  The full cast list would account for almost every Marvel Hero of consequence.  It seems only fitting though to have such a prestigious cast when you end an era.  Don’t get me wrong, I understand that the Avengers were rebuilt not real long after they broke apart, but things could never be the same.  In an attempt to modernize the book Marvel will inject popular characters from other series into the Avengers, they’ll add more of a real feel to the book and probably make it darker as well.  According to Marvel, it had to be done to keep the book alive so there’s no point in complaining about what has been lost.

I knew going into the book that Avengers Disassembled was going to be the breaking point of the team and I had heard mumbled rumors as to what happened in the book, but I wasn’t exactly clear how it would go down.  I was very worried that in order to get to where they wanted to go in the book that it would feel rushed and very contrived.  When I finished the book I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised at the story but still saddened by the loss of what had been, exactly how I think Marvel wanted to end the series.

show spoiler

I’m sure there are others that did not enjoy Avengers Disassembled as I have, it’s too controversial an event to make everyone happy.  It is a more important book than first blush indicates when multiple Avengers titles launched not too long after.  Any fan of the Avengers or just a fan of Marvel in general should pick up this book even if you became a fan after the original Avengers era had ended.

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.

show spoiler

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.

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.

show spoiler

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.

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.

show spoiler

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.

New Avengers: Breakout

Historically, I haven’t been huge on the Avengers.  I don’t exactly know why, when I started reading comics all of my friends were into the X-Men and so that’s what I began reading.  At that time, I also liked matching costumes which I know is lame but I was  bit anal back then.

Anyway, I actually got into the Avengers through the Ultimates, which was really the first true Avengers type book I had read.  After that I picked up the Essential Avengers and went from there.  So while I know the basics, I’m still a little foggy on their recent history right before Breakout which means, I read Breakout without without having read Avengers Disassembled.  Blasphemous, I know but that’s the way it is with TPB’s, sometimes you get what’s available.  So the question I had going into this book was, ‘how well is this book going to stand on its’ own?’  Turns out, pretty well.

I remember seeing a Joe Quesada interview about the New Avengers and I remember him seeming excited about a brand new start and mentioning how they could add popular characters like Wolverine into the mix.  Hearing his excitement made me want to pick up the title even more, but adding Wolverine to the mix, not so much – isn’t he stretched pretty thin as is?

Other than that I knew nothing about the title so I picked it up and jumped into it with both feet, reading and enjoying the book in a single sitting.  The first thing I noticed was that the coloring was amazing, just like it was in The Ultimates. See to me, coloring is really important because it can make good art look like crap if it’s done wrong.  The art, text and layout look excellent as well, as I would imagine it should in a top shelf title.

So the story opens up with Electro inciting a jailbreak at a maximum security prison for the super-powered.  I love this concept, even if it is a bit played out.  A bunch of bad guys with a lot of pent up rage make for an outstanding super hero beatdown, and that’s exactly what happens.  Some of the released criminals include Carnage, Purple Man and The Hydro-Man, you know the usual suspects. The heroes who just happen to be there or get there quick enough to make a difference include Captain America, Spider-Man, Spider Woman, Luke Cage, Daredevil, Iron Man and some guy called Sentry who only plays a small part in this book.

The battle that takes place is absolutely fantastic.  It’s mass chaos set at a frantic pace with bone-crushing results.  I would suggest this book to anybody just for the initial fight scene alone, it’s just that good.

After the fight, Captain America attempts to recruit the heroes that helped put some of the super-criminals back in their cells to be the New Avengers, because as he says, ‘it’s fate’ that they all gathered at the same spot in a moment of need.  Most agree and a new team is born.  Soon after the collective team discover clues about the breakout that lead these heroes to the Savage Land where they run into Wolverine.  Our heroes let him tag along because it never hurts to have a killing machine along with you for the ride when you’re in a jungle filled with dinosaurs and mutates.

Our heroes eventually discover the reason for the breakout and and get caught up in intrigue fueled by an unsuspected conspiracy that leaves the New Avengers unsure as to who their allies and enemies really are.

show spoiler

So with the amazing action in the jailbreak fight, the humorous interactions of Spider-Man with Luke Cage, the sexiness of Spider-Woman and the inclusion of some of the best heroes Marvel has to offer — Captain America, Wolverine, & Iron Man — you’ve got to pick up this book because it’s got something for everyone put together by some of the best writers and artists Marvel employs.