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Avengers Re-Read: The 2000s - Part 2 1/13/2015 7:13:44 AM
This Post orginally appeared on thunderalleybcp.com
The Avengers Re-Read continues its progress through the 2000s.
World Trust (Avengers vol. 3 #57-62)
Following Kurt Busiek’s iconic run was no easy task. Enter Geoff Johns, during his brief flirtation with Marvel before becoming embedded at DC. Several world capitals disappeared, including Washington, DC. The Avengers, still with a fairly expansive roster, set about trying to calm the international community and solve the disappearances. Falcon, Ant-Man, Sub-Mariner and Black Panther all returned and Ant-Man immediately fell into conflict with Jack of Hearts. A mysterious force assailed Scarlet Witch, then she and the Vision began to drift closer to one another again. In a panic, the U.N. turned control of the world over to the Avengers. The team addressed problems on several fronts, while Wasp and Yellowjacket, who were in DC when it vanished, ran afoul of Scorpio. Scorpio had engineered the incident using the Scorpio Key to separate the two halves of the cosmic In-Betweener (Chaos and Order) and spirit the cities to the Chaos dimension. Separated from his other half, Order was loose on Earth and refused to be rejoined to Chaos, giving the Avengers a hard time. Most of the team landed in the Chaos dimension, where the two halves of the In-Betweener were reunited and the cities restored to Earth. After the incident, the Avengers officially aligned with the U.N. to reflect their global status. A new core line-up stabilized around Captain America, Wasp, Iron Man, Yellowjacket, Warbird, She-Hulk, Black Panther, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Falcon and Jack of Hearts. Ant-Man initially declined a regular roster spot, but after losing custody of his daughter to his manipulative ex-wife, he joined full time. The tension between Ant-Man and Jack of Hearts increased, as the latter struggled with the long periods of daily isolation necessary to leech the deadly radiation his body produced.
Johns was a good fit for the book and assembled a diverse roster full of fan favorites and a couple of oddball choices. He handled the various personalities well and moving the Avengers into a more officially global role had a lot of potential. The “World Trust” arc was well done, but the attempt to once again reboot the criminal cartel Zodiac went nowhere.
Kieron Dwyer and Rick Remender did a nice job in their last few issues on the book. Then-developing star Gary Frank, a frequent close collaborator with Johns at DC, stepped in for a couple of low key issues that looked great. While this is a decent run of stories overall, it’s not the highest priority for fans. Those with a particular interest in Johns’s work, however, might want to see this relatively rare example of non-DC material.
Red Zone (Avengers vol. 3 #64-70)
Falcon took a brief spotlight as he looked into possible treachery by Henry Peter Gyrich, the team’s one time federal nemesis who’d become their liaison to the U.N. Next, a biological attack on Mount Rushmore with a swiftly mounting infection and death toll brought the team into action. The Avengers entered the infected area (the “Red Zone”) and found a hidden U.S. military lab beneath the mountain. Iron Man and Black Panther uneasily collaborated on a possible cure until Dell Rusk, the belligerent Secretary of Defense, had them arrested for treason. The Avengers discovered a team of A.I.M. agents trapped in the military lab and learned they were responsible for the release of the virus, which the military had engineered. Jack’s powers had a devastating effect on She-Hulk, first de-powering her, then turning her into a berserker. She-Hulk fled her teammates. Gyrich worked with Falcon to get proof that Rusk was corrupt, but Rusk shot them both before they could do anything with it, then revealed himself as the Red Skull in disguise. Iron Man and Black Panther escaped captivity, but ran afoul of the Skull, who added them to his group of hostages. Captain America arrived in DC and fell into the Skull’s trap trying to save his friends. The Panther and Falcon’s tag team effort brought down the Skull and secured the cure for the virus. At the end of the arc, Warbird left active duty to go work for the Department of Homeland Security.
Red Zone was the highlight of Geoff Johns’s tenure on Avengers. The mix of a deadly biological attack, political intrigue and a classic Marvel villain worked very well. Johns took some chances with the characters and created a sense of real stakes with the jeopardy the team faced. Future Johns collaborator Ivan Reis handled the Falcon spotlight, before new regular co-artist Olivier Coipel, in his Marvel debut, took over. Coipel’s work was stunning, highlighted by a strong design sense, interesting layouts and a facility for widescreen comic book action. It was an ideal team that produced what would turn out to be the last great story of this volume of Avengers. Highly recommended.
The Search for She-Hulk (Avengers vol. 3 #71-76)
Hank and Jan got a one-issue spotlight for their trip to Vegas. Hank proposed remarriage, but Jan gently helped him understand why they were better off not going that route, punctuated by a nasty fight with their old enemy Whirlwind. Elsewhere, the Avengers went looking for AWOL teammate She-Hulk. Back in her normal identity of Jennifer Walters, she’d fled to a small town in Idaho, hoping to find her cousin, who’d been spotted in the area. The situation escalated quickly and the “savage” She-Hulk re-emerged. Hawkeye returned to help reel She-Hulk in, just as her cousin arrived and transformed into the Hulk. Jack of Hearts stopped the rampaging cousins by absorbing their radiation, but left enough so that Jennifer could resume her “intelligent” She-Hulk persona. Given Jack’s negative effect on She-Hulk, the team determined one would have to leave. Given Jack’s limited availability due to his radiation treatments, things weren’t going his way. Jack followed Ant-Man when the latter learned a deadly pedophile had kidnapped his daughter. Jack stopped Ant-Man from killing the kidnapper, but then scooped him up and carried him into the atmosphere, where Jack’s built-up radiation detonated, killing them both.
Johns’s final arc was solid all around. He did some especially nuanced character work with the complicated Hank/Jan relationship (the last decent characterization that couple would enjoy for years). The She-Hulk arc was deftly handled and explored Jennifer and her cousin in some interesting ways, even as it produced some blazing action. Hawkeye’s return was welcome and the resolution of the Ant-Man/Jack of Hearts tension was unexpected and rather poignant. Steve Sadowksi handled the bookend Hank/Jan and Ant Man/Jack standalone issues quite nicely. Scott Kolins (who was alternating with Coipel) came aboard for the She-Hulk arc and turned in some nicely stylized, frenetic work that fit the story well. Johns may not have exited the book with a bang, but it was solid work that brought his relatively brief tenure to a decent conclusion. His fans especially might be interested in this collection.
Lion Heart of Avalon (Avengers vol. 3 #77-81)
Any writer following Kurt Busiek and Geoff Johns on a title would face a daunting task. Marvel’s puzzling choice of Chuck Austen, with whom the company was unaccountably infatuated at the time, nearly brought down the franchise. The result was one of the most painful runs in Avengers history (that would mercifully last only two arcs).
The Avengers traveled to London in pursuit of the Wrecking Crew, who had a mysterious new boss. Kelsey Leigh, a single mother who was re-emerging into the world after surviving a violent attack, found herself in the crossfire of the battle. When Captain America and Wasp were incapacitated and at the mercy of Thunderball, Kelsey took Cap’s shield and defended the heroes, apparently at the cost of her own life. The Avengers subdued the Crew and looked after Kelsey’s children. A hotheaded Hawkeye confronted the villains and sustained serious injuries. Kelsey’s soul wound up in some odd dimension where she met the spirits of the original Captain Britain and his wife, Meggan. Offered a choice, Kelsey wound up inadvertently becoming the new Captain Britain. She was warned that she couldn’t reveal her identity to her family or they’d die. She returned to Earth and, with the help of the Scarlet Witch, defeated the Crew’s boss, the sorceress Morgan LeFay. She rescued the original Captain Britain in the process, before agreeing to join the Avengers, who brought her “orphaned” children and mother to stay with them in New York.
Brace yourself, the number of things that went wrong in so relatively short an arc was astounding. First there was a conversation between Hawkeye and Captain America in which Hawkeye dove headlong into misogyny, insisting that Cap’s lack of love life was related to his refusal to hit female villains. Hawk and Cap then stripped off their clothes on a busy London sidewalk to change into their costumes. Wasp had gained the ability to grow to giant size, but apparently lost all her brain cells, causing massive property damage and leaving herself and Cap vulnerable to the villains. Cap, usually the smartest tactician alive, was utterly careless in battle, allowing a second stringer like Thunderball to get the drop on him. In another completely out-of-character move, he’d later blame Kelsey for getting herself killed protecting him and Wasp. Hawkeye also abandoned common sense by marching Kelsey’s children into the makeshift clinic despite knowing of her serious injuries. Hank Pym was suddenly an insensitive jerk who said that Kelsey’s kids would just “get over” her death. This was actually the start of a long stretch for Hank Pym that ignored the twenty years of character work that preceded this issue and presented him as a barely competent, violent, borderline psychotic asshole that everyone hated. We were also supposed to believe that Hank thought that their teammates were all ignorant of the infamous incident of domestic violence involving him and Wasp, years of story and both Hank and Jan talking about it openly and often to everyone notwithstanding. For some bizarre reason, disrespecting Hank was one of the few elements from this period that writer Brian Michael Bendis would keep going when he took over.
The creation of a new Captain Britain seemed unnecessary, since the original was active and a viable character. The “twist” of Kelsey being unable to reveal the truth to her family seemed gratuitous and an unearned attempt at creating “drama.” Kelsey was an interesting and actually likeable character, but her sudden evolution into herodom was clunky and unconvincing. And the deliberately obtuse “choice” presented to her was cruel and obscure for no good reason.
Action that lurched from one scene to another with little logical momentum. Horrific character work and the outright, almost gleeful, ignorance of established history. The character assassination of well-established heroes. Sickening misogyny and an approach to sexuality that treated intelligent adults like rabidly horny teenagers with no impulse control. The start to Austen’s tenure was an absolute horror show. The talented Olivier Coipel (with an assist from veteran Sean Chen) produced some positively beautiful artwork, but it was absolutely wasted on such a pointless, ugly story. A conspiracy-minded reader might wonder if Marvel deliberately had tanked the series to justify the Bendis re-launch a few months later. Whatever the reasons, this is nothing any Avengers fan need bother with.
Once An Invader (Avengers vol. 3 #82-84, Invaders vol. 2 #0, Avengers vol. 1 #71 and Invaders Annual #1)
After this short arc, an unsuccessful attempt to relaunch the dormant Invaders team, Chuck Austen’s reign of terror ended. The actual story is almost pointless. A murky series of machinations created a new Invaders team and led to an invasion of a Middle East country. The Avengers got involved to attempt to avert a crisis. It played poorly and had almost no impact on the team in the long term. And the attempted Invaders re-launch quickly fizzled.
Instead, viewers got treated to more terrible characterization. In spite of her “big secret,” Kelsey was so utterly transparent that even people who had never met her could have guessed who the new Captain Britain was. Her violent tantrum at her own memorial (while in costume) would have been tacky enough under normal circumstances, but given that her traumatized children, who believed she was dead, were present, it was utterly unforgiveable. Hank Pym was still an insensitive jerk who assumed Kelsey had deliberately ditched her kids, because she was tired of them. Then we had the rabbit hole of conflating the flirtatious banter in which Hawkeye and Wasp used to indulge in the ‘60s and ‘70s as a long-suppressed desire to bone each other senseless. That Hawkeye suddenly claimed to “never have forgiven” Hank for hitting Jan flew in direct opposition to the original arc (where Hawkeye was Hank’s biggest supporter and shamed his teammates for not doing more to help him) and years of stories in West Coast Avengers, where Hawkeye’s faith and support were instrumental in Hank’s redemption. But forget all that, because not only were Hawkeye and Wasp getting it on, they were brain dead enough to do so somewhere that Hank could walk in on. There was not a single redeeming grace to any of this writing. Once again, some great art (this time from Scott Kolins) went utterly to waste in service of a plot that had no reason to exist. The inclusion of a Silver Age cross-over featuring the Avengers and Invaders just showed how truly terrible this pointless arc was.
Avengers Disassembled (Avengers vol. 3 #500-503 and Avengers Finale)
After allowing Chuck Austen to defecate all over the series, Marvel had nothing to lose by bringing in Brian Michael Bendis and David Finch to burn it all down and start over. On a seemingly quiet morning, a series of attacks had the Avengers in jeopardy. The believed dead Jack of Hearts returned and detonated on the lawn, killing Ant-Man. Vision (M.I.A. since the Red Zone arc) returned with no explanation of where he’d been before he crashed into the mansion and unleashed a horde of Ultron robots. She-Hulk lost control, went savage and ripped Vision in half. Before long, Wasp and Captain Britain were critically injured. Meanwhile, Iron Man melted down in front of the U.N., threatening a delegate and appearing to be drunk. An S.O.S. brought most of the team’s former members out in force, just as an apparent Kree invasion took place that resulted in Hawkeye’s death. The arrival of Doctor Strange led to the revelation that the Scarlet Witch, driven over the edge by years of losses and traumas, had used her reality-altering powers to attack her friends. That assault was triggered by the recovered memory of her “erased” children. A final confrontation left the Witch catatonic and in the custody of Magneto. Several members of the team regrouped a couple months later at the wrecked mansion. Iron Man revealed he’d suffered severe financial losses and couldn’t afford to rebuild the mansion or fund the team anymore. After facing some memories (both good and painful), the team emerged to find a crowd of supporters there to cheer them on their way as they disbanded.
The controversial Bendis era began here. Your ability to enjoy the story will depend on your tolerance for his dialogue-heavy “talking head” style. Not that there wasn’t plenty of action, which gave Finch the room to craft some impressive visuals. Fans were aghast at the use of Scarlet Witch as the catalyst of the team’s downfall, but honestly, Bendis’s script made a fairly convincing argument that her massive breakdown was perfectly consistent with the years of sorrows the character had endured. Bendis unfortunately ran with the “ultra-jerk” characterization of Hank Pym, but other characters resembled their old selves again and the emotional drama between the heroes felt real and earned. A few details felt lacking (confirmation that the rest of the team was fully in on Captain Britain’s identity; the Vision’s whereabouts for the previous several months; the trajectory of the Hawkeye/Wasp affair), but for the most part, the story logic hung together. This radical deconstruction of the team may not have been what long-time fans wanted or expected, but Bendis’s willingness to take some real chances with the characters and franchise was brave and effectively paved the way for the new era. And even though parts of it are difficult for fans to take, it’s a strong arc that’s developed into a modern classic for good reason.
