front page  ·  comicbook reviews  ·  interviews  ·  comics  ·  merchandise  ·  contact us  ·  newsfeed: rss xml

New Avengers Annual #1 Book Released: 26 April 2006 Review posted: 01 May 2006 Writer: Brian Michael Bendis Artist: Olivier Coipel Ink: Geraci, Hennesy, Livesay, Magyar, Miki, Editor: Tom Breevort Publisher: Marvel Comics  2.00 out of 5 Stars Reviewed by Adam White

Much like a hungry rat at an electrified feeder bar, I cracked open New Avengers Annual #1 hoping for the best; however, what I got was something shocking and disappointing that left a bad taste in my mouth. Yes, I have tried New Avengers on two other occasions, both with brilliantly awful results, but this issue featured the wedding of two of my favorite characters, Jessica Jones and Luke Cage. Since these characters currently have no other title in which to appear, I was stuck getting this issue to see the culmination of the storyline I have followed for years now. Yet for whatever reason, these characters Brian Bendis handles so well elsewhere join the incongruous mess that is New Avengers, a book that is quickly becoming the bane of my existence.

Bendis presents a story here as haphazard as all the other issues of this series, spending twenty-two pages throwing rocks at perfectly good characters. The series feels crowded, with too many characters vying for panel space at the expense of their dignity, and yet Bendis does not one of them any justice. Jessica Jones has a few good moments, but juxtaposed against the foolishness of the book makes her seem foolish as well (which she most definitely is not). Jones and Cage do get married, but that really isn’t the focus of the issue. Which leads to the bigger problem at hand...

Bendis has turned New Avengers into a personal sandbox in which to bury characters like unwanted dog feces.

Bendis must have gotten a hold of a list of mid-tier characters that I like, only to eliminate them one by one. I have no legitimate problem killing characters if one has a good reason and does it with some amount of dignity in an appropriate story, but Bendis has turned his Avengers books into a personal sandbox in which to bury characters like unwanted dog feces. In this annual his victim is Yelena Belova (the second Black Widow), an intriguing character well-suited to espionage and adventure stories that had barely scratched the surface of her potential (not to mention the interesting dynamic she had with Natasha Romanov). Bendis apparently used Belova as a throwaway character in an issue of NA that I thankfully missed, but that made her appearance and handling here all the more appalling. For some reason, Bendis found it amusing to horribly scar Belova and then have Hydra (to who she really had no connection whatsoever) turn her into the new Super Adaptoid. Yes, you read that correctly: Bendis turned her into the Super Adaptoid. I could have laughed if I hadn’t wanted to throw up.

I can only imagine that Bendis’s conversation with Quesada about his plans for the character went something like this:

Joe: So Brian, I was thinking.

Brian: Yeah?

Joe: The annual. It has a wedding, it needs a death. Something big.

Brian: You want I should get out that ComicCritique jackwad’s list of favorites, just to show him?

Joe: Exactly.

Brian: Well, what about — no, I like that character too. Oh! Hey! How about that blonde Black Widow chick?

Joe: Sure. She’s not in Civil War. But you ought to make her death kind of dumb, in some really out-there way.

Brian: I’ll do ya one better — I’ll “Hawkeye” her a$$.

Quesada gives the thumbs-up.

Joe: Bonus!

House of M alum Olivier Coipel puts in a better showing than he did in that horrendous affair, but still nothing to write home about. I used to like his art quite a bit (Legion for DC), but the poor quality of the stories he has drawn recently must have either rubbed off on or depressed the guy in some way, because his work of late just hasn’t done anything for me. Then again, I saw almost the entire issue through an anger-induced haze of red, so I may not be the most objective judge of his work at the moment.

If you’re going to kill off someone, at least do it in a way that bears some relevance and relation to the character.

New Avengers Annual #1 cemented my hate of the series, and really just hacked me off to no end. If Bendis had written a spy thriller that had a fitting end for Belova, then I couldn’t have legitimately complained; but Bendis genuinely wasted her for nothing more than another pointless bashing and hitting session that any generic supervillain could have brought upon the team. Belova ended as a generic supervillain-of-the-week, a death not even Speedball deserves. If you’re going to kill off someone, at least do it in a way that bears some relevance and relation to the character and not like some Hater that got the keys to the Marvel offices.

I hated New Avengers Annual #1, and only begrudgingly gave it two stars because it featured the marriage of two great characters and served as an unintentional springboard for rich, future stories for them elsewhere. But I will forever be left with an image ingrained in my mind of Yelena Belova breaking the fourth wall and reaching for me, screaming “Not this way! Not this way...”