New Avengers #59
This review written by James Hunt on Nov.27, 2009.
Secret Invasion managed to noticeably dull my enthusiasm for New Avengers, and while it wasn’t terrible, the “Sorcerer Supreme” arc that followed didn’t do a whole lot to put the shine back on things. However, the arrival of Stuart Immonen on art, combined with Bendis re-focusing some of the action back on Luke Cage, has re-energised the title to this extent. Indeed, New Avengers #59 is the best issue for quite some time.
Part of that is because the Hood has finally been pushed to the background a little, and once again it’s the Avengers that take the spotlight. For most of this year, New Avengers has been a little too heavy on The Hood, so seeing the heroes actually starring in their own book is probably far more refreshing than it should be.
It’s not just that, though – the events of the issue move at a surprisingly rapid pace, and as a slightly grumpy comics fan who remembers when you got a whole story every issue, I’m to see someone using the 22-page format as a well-defined, stand-alone chapter, rather than an arbitrarily-enforced serialisation constraint. This issue is firmly about the rescue of Luke Cage, and takes that idea from conception to execution in one 22-page story. If this is the way Bendis is going to take his writing in the future, then the days of decompression are quite definitively on their way out.
But enough about the format – it’s the events of the issue that truly make it feel like an inventive read, as the Avengers take a leaf out of the villains’ book and deploy their own tactics against them. Now that the tide of authority has turned, it’s nice to see this kind of idea being explored, and for a change it gives almost all of the cast members a distinct opportunity to get involved. The large number of guest stars doesn’t even detract from that, and indeed, if anything it brings back the feeling that New Avengers used to have of being on the leading edge of the Marvel Universe.
Although decompression is off the table, Bendis’ usual stylistic tics don’t go entirely un-noticed – for some reason, he’s recently decided that Bucky-Cap should use slightly out-of-date vocabulary, which doesn’t make much sense given that the character has been continuously alive for decades, and at the same time puts him at odds with his depiction elsewhere. Still, in fairness, it just about works if you take this series in isolation, and at least it prevents him from sounding like every other character in the book.
After all that, the biggest complaint I have about the issue is actually the cover. Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s great – possibly my favourite Marvel cover of the year – but it suggests a story far more interesting than the one we actually got. It’s strange to come away from an issue this good feeling a little let down, but when you make a cover that striking and memorable, it’d be nice if the issue’s contents could remotely reflect it!
November 28th, 2009 on 8:56 am
There were multiple problems with the issue, perhaps the worst one being that the plot was generic crime fiction — so generic that it would be better suited for a writing workshop than commercial fiction. Plugging various superheroes into the slots otherwise taken by crooks or hostage rescuers didn’t make the story superhero fiction.
The Doctors Strange and Voodoo could have teleported Cage, with his bed, out of the helicarrier as soon as they found him.
The backwards reasoning Bendis used to justify Osborn having ghost-detecting technology was painful to read, and only emphasized how flimsy the entire “Dark Reign” event is. There’s Osborn representing the federal government, and his thugs versus the Avengers — and the rest of the country (world?) is irrelevant. For decades, Marvel comics were scorned because practically all of the heroes lived in and fought in Manhattan; now, Bendis does events that are even more limited in scope, and people think they’re wonderful. The same things have happened in his other story lines (SECRET INVASION, the “Collective” arc); when he tries to write material that’s not derived from crime fiction, he resorts to plot devices that are worse, more immature, than anything past AVENGERS writers would have considered using.
FWIW, it’s impossible to rationalize “tech” that would detect ectoplasmic forms on the astral plane. That’s a separate dimension.
Bendis’s insistence on claiming that Cage’s skin as absolutely unbreakable doesn’t begin to make sense if one considers details at all. If his skin didn’t function as skin, Cage’s internal organs would be cooked by his own body heat. How are the surgical wounds supposed to be healing if his skin is back to being unbreakable? How is the device on his heart supposed to send or receive signals (or have a range of more than a few feet?)?
Re “stylistic tics”: One major reason for Bendis-speak is probably that he lacks the vocabulary that a professional writer generally has. When he tries to write someone being officious or intellectual, he can’t have them use big words he doesn’t know, so he alters their speech patterns. The result is a stilted, “formal” way of talking that nobody uses.
SRS
November 28th, 2009 on 4:01 pm
I disagree with your assessment of the plot – it quite openly inverts superhero tropes, as I mentioned in the review. If you believe it to be generic crime fiction, fair enough, but going on to suggest that generic crime fiction then isn’t suitable for professional sale is a very strange leap of logic.
Furthermore, I think calling magic-detecting tech “impossible to rationalise” is a bit of a stretch. Magic is already an irrational concept, and it’s not the first time the line between magic and science has been blurred in the Marvel Universe. Iron Man, in particular, has dealt with those ideas at length in the past.
And, in fairness, Bendis wasn’t the one who came up with “unbreakable skin” as Cage’s power. Debating the exact mechanics of what was designed as, let’s face it, a throwaway concept in the 70s is overly pedantic. You could equally say that Kitty Pryde should suffocate if she’s phased for too long, or that the recoil should blow Cyclops’ head off whenever he fires his eyebeams. Suspension of disbelief is essential in superhero stories. Admittedly, when one of the story’s dilemmas revolves around the idea that his skin can’t be broken it does push the mechanics of his powers into prominence, but only so far – this is an action comic, not an episode of House.
And regarding the stylistic tics, I don’t think they emerge because Bendis lacks vocabulary, but rather because he tries to have his characters speak naturalistically. Whether he achieves that effect or not is debatable, but his characters do speak in a way that resembles reality far more than fiction – which is to say, they repeat themselves, interject clauses and muddle over their words. It’s clearly a choice – if it wasn’t, his editors would pull him up on it – so rather than making judgements about his intellectual capacity, you should question whether it’s the right choice. Anything else is unfair to him and disrespectful to his craft.
November 28th, 2009 on 7:13 pm
Responses:
Re vocabulary: You’re apparently unaware that Bendis has used the words “genealogy”(NA #40) and “recon” i(NA #28) incorrectly, used the nonsensical term “biological reverse engineering” in MIGHTY AVENGERS #6 and has used other terms incorrectly as well.
The reason conversational speech isn’t used in fiction is that all the characters talk alike — a mortal sin for a writer. He’s being badly edited.
Other writers had Cage relatively invulnerable. Bendis is the one who’s made the “unbreakable skin” a major plot point in the series — and it will be a major plot point again when Cage learns about the implanted device. Even so, there’s a workaround: a surgical laser.
Sorry, magic isn’t an irrational concept, as its use in literally thousands of fantasy novels indicates. At worst, it’s a fictional concept. Iron Man is notable for complaining about magic, not for dealing with it. And the teleportation plot hole still destroys the plot.
Inverting a trope doesn’t make a generic plot original or entertaining. You seem to be assuming comics readers don’t read prose fiction.
Thanks for the response.
SRS
November 29th, 2009 on 12:42 am
You’re apparently unaware of Bendis’ indie work, where he specifically describes making comics out of monologues – partly so that he could teach himself to write dialogue to way people speak it. It’s entirely an artistic choice, rather than a technical limitation (and I think two examples of poor wording from 59 issues’ worth of dialogue hardly amounts to a well-defined pattern of lexical abuse.)
As for describing the results as a “mortal sin” – according to whom is this the case? Is that purely your critical assessment or is there a governing body who issues these edicts? Would you cast aside a book like Ulysses because Joyce doesn’t use speech marks? Or do you agree that the craft of writing can be bent to accommodate the author’s will?
Whether or not Bendis was the first to treat Cage’s skin as truly unbreakable, I still think it’s a bit strange to complain about the potential medical implications. Plenty of super-powers openly defy the laws of physics. Why are you so concerned about it this time?
Similarly, regardless of how it is used in other genres of fiction, magic, in the Marvel Universe, is irrational. One of the major problems in Marvel’s canon is that there are virtually no rules governing the use of magic. Indeed, there’s no evidence that this technology was not enchanted itself. We are shown, within the story, that the devices can detect magic – and so it is possible, and since it defies no laws established within the Marvel Universe I don’t see why anyone would have a problem with that.
Finally, while I did enjoy the plot, the entertainment value in inverting standard tropes was not what I was addressing. My point was that contrary to what you stated, the plot is superhero fiction, because it is inverting superhero tropes.
I’m not blind to Bendis’ faults – I think he places more emphasis on dialogue and plot than story and theme, for example – and I do agree that the matter of teleportation was a fairly large plot hole that could easily have been plugged, but I can’t help the feeling that even if it had been, you’d be questioning the logic of that too.
Let me ask you a question: have you ever enjoyed a comic written by Bendis? And if not, why did you read this one?
December 2nd, 2009 on 2:05 pm
I used to read practically everything Bendis put out (at least the first issue or so) and loved the early years of NA, his DD run and Alias, but I actively avoid him nowadays. I look forward to marvel giving the running of their universe over to someone else. Bendis has had his time and said all he has to say. Hopefully we’ll get something different after seige.
December 3rd, 2009 on 12:54 am
Although I generally like his work, it does worry me a little that he’s basically controlling both of “Marvel Universe” flagship titles, in New Avengers and Dark Avengers – especially when he’s lost a lot of steam on the former.
Part of the problem is that New Avengers has basically been in permanent event-mode for almost 2 years now. Even in the brief gap between Civil War and the lead-in to Secret Invasion, it did that crossover with Mighty Avengers. At this point, I’d really like to see a return to the more stand-alone arcs of the book’s first couple of years, which were as good, for me, as Bendis has ever been outside of Alias.