Godawful, but I do enjoy Ares.
"This is madness"
I expected "This Is MARRVELLLLL!!!"
You are so correct. So, so correct. :rockon:
Hmmm....
At least the first issue of UIM was decent. It was a slow and steady decent to suckiness. This started sucking on the front cover.
The problem I have... I have two MAIN problems. I'm not going to get into the nitty gritty, there's no need, but here's my two MAIN problems:
First of all, Bendis is trying to go for a more retro, silver age feel. I get why. This is "The
Mighty Avengers". He wants it to be bombastic, a huge fight comic, unrelenting blockbuster type of deal. But he also wants to be more about characters. These are pretty much at odds. Complex characters aren't what bombastic action stories want. Complex characters take too much time away from the derring-do. Not only that, but the retro feel and poor use of the thought bubbles don't work to enhance character. It's a good idea - use thought bubbles to define characters as they're going to be hip deep in battles for issues on end. The problem is, thought bubbles detract from the characters by removing sub-text and contradictions. They become flatter because we know so much about them, we feel as though we know all there is to know about them, and they are what they appear to be. They become one-dimensional. Plus, the 'retro' feel of thought bubbles and roll calls, instead of creating fresh excitement (something Cho is doing incredibly well), the series appears stale and cutesy, a kind of conventional, "been there before" atmo which is against the impetus of the book.
Secondly, there's nothing in the comic. Understand, at the end of #1 we know Ultron has taken over Stark. At the end of #2, the Avengers know. While this difference could be incredible, it is in fact, two halves of the same scene. Bendis has turned a single scene into two issues. This can be brilliant if done appropriately, but here it's inappropriate. First of all, a bombastic fight comic has to have a fast pace. Decompressing the inciting incident of the story over two issues is antithetical to that. Especially when you consider the scenes not involved in the fight a character-generating scenes which are again, overdone to the point of become antithetical to the thrust of the series. The other flaw with the flashbacks is they're unneccessary from a story point of view. The purpose is to show how the Avengers came togehter and why. First of all, they all seem to have the same reason - being an Avenger is important. Thus, each additional one seems to be redundant. Secondly, there's no need for a special "Mighty Avengers" team. In this story, Iron Man and Ms Marvel go from having no team to a full team roster within 4 hours and are able to deploy said team to a fight. They don't need a team. They have dozens of teams. They can handpick which characters from which teams they need at the drop of a hat. Understand, if they can recruit Ares, who is living a mortal life somewhere incognito, and deploy him in the field in under 4 hours, it takes them no time to deploy an already registered superhero who's part of the initiative. All this coagulates into the mess we have - which is a plodding, character-driven series in which extremely little happens with no explanation or set up, spending more time on irrelevant scenes that repeat one another in no progressive fashion, using tools that give it a stale feel, whilst pretending to be a bombastic, adventurous comic of superheroes saving the world. Compare this to All-Star Superman or Nextwave and you realise this comic, save for Cho's beautiful art, has been done before, and better, many a time.
Shame really.
I really liked it and I feel ashamed.
