New Avengers is a comic book. This is a review of it. You are to read the review and leave a comment.THE NEW AVENGERS #54
WRITER: Brian Michael Bendis
PENCILS: Billy Tan
INKS: Batt and Billy Tan
COLORS: Justin Ponsor
LETTERING: Albert Deschesne
PLOT:
Brother Voodoo accepts the mantle of Sorcerer Supreme and joins the fight against the demoned-out Hood. Strange weakens the Hood, Hellstorm contains him, and the newly-christened “Doctor Voodoo” finishes him off with an exorcism. Ronin makes a bystander promise to promulgate footage of the battle before Norman Osborn can smear the facts.
Loki, seeking a pawn for the time of Osborn’s fall, offers the hospitalized and depowered Hood a second chance.
Ronin and Mockingbird watch Osborn’s televised interview from Dark Avengers #5. Disheartened by the media’s lack of backbone, Ronin declares that they have to kill Mr. Cornrows.
THOUGHTS:
The Avengers linger on the sidelines of their own book, making it seem like Brian Bendis wants to shape the whole Marvel Universe through this series more than tell stories in which his roster has a stake. Sure, our heroes each score a token blow on the amped-up Hood, who all but stands still and eats it, but the magical guest stars ultimately do the heavy lifting. Had the Avengers simply dropped Strange off in New Orleans and flown back home, the outcome would have been identical.
Forget whose title this is suppose to be, and the issue entertains fairly well. Bendis did good to pluck Voodoo from obscurity. He has personality and an interesting gimmick with his brother’s ghost trapped in his head. I would have liked to have seen what unique mojo a Sorcerer Supreme steeped in voodoo rather than faux far-Eastern mysticism would unleash, but he merely whips out the same old glowing Eye of Agamotto trick. This strikes me as a missed opportunity to sell Doctor Voodoo’s upcoming solo book to skeptical readers.
We get a few good Dark Reign developments. Loki has the Hood in his/her pocket, adding to the web of alliances and secret betrayals within the Cabal. Ronin’s announcement would have had more dramatic clout five years ago when a final splash page of a hero claiming he intends to kill a villain I know won’t actually die was still shocking, but nevertheless I see potential should the team follow through with an attempt.
I expect at least one full issue of the Avengers sitting at a table and debating every angle of this decision over a pizza, with several panels of characters repeating each other’s one-word phrases.
“Should we, like … kill Norman?”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.”
FAVORITE (REAL) QUOTE:
“Suck it, chimp!”
RATING:
3 out of 5 whatevers. People in tights beat up a scary demon, which is more excitement than New Avengers usually has.
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Great job again Chris. I am always pleased when I read an Avengers comic that doesn’t have the same panel reused a few times over, I don’t recall any this time around. Marvel must have got my letter. 🙂
Great review, as always Chris.
Wait, I just checked my facts and seen that Strange has in fact had 2 volumes of an ongoing in the past, but that hasn’t happened in 13 years.
Still, it’s instilling a lot of faith in the character of brother voodoo to give him his own ongoing given he’s never even got a title role in the past, be it one-shot mini-series or ongoing and I haven’t read anything by Remender so I don’t know if it’ll be any good or not.
And I’m expecting great things from Waids Strange series, great great things.
Doctor Strange is getting a Mark Waid mini-series soon. So it’s sort of fair 🙂
Na, Doc for some strange reason marvel are giving Doctor Voodoo his own ongoing written by Rick Remender, a privilege even Doctor Strange never received. I expect it to crash and burn horribly given the last mainly magic series marvel put out was captain britain and mi13.
As for this issue, I was bored and bryne-stole it the other day and found it extremely by the numbers and found it to be much inferior to mighty and dark this month. I agree with you though Chris that this book is essentially ground zero of the MU where most things happen (and if this book was 2.99 I’d probably still follow it for that reason but 3.99 to follow a book I’m not enjoying just for its reprecussions for the whole mu is madness) i and the book as a whole suffers for it, the only characters of the team with any personality shining through currently are Ronin and Cage, everyone else just being there to boost sales.
I’ll probably continue to byrne-steal this saying the DA are going to be involved here now, and I currently care a hell of a lot more about GG then PP right now.
Whats funny is that even though we didn’t get a NA ’round the table discussion’ in this ish…you can still get your fix of that if you read last week’s Utopia…the NA had a cameo where they were sitting around the table talking…its scary when the NA have more in common with the cast of The View than they do any prior avengers team…also, does anyone know if Brother Voodoo is goin to have a roster spot now on the NA?