Avengers Assemble #2:
Summary: I'm going to skip over the first few pages because I couldn't make sense of them. Basically, some super-powerful being gave the Zodiac powers to collect items of power from the Earth... Or something. From there, Hulk arrives at Avengers Mansion and wants to talk to Captain America. Meanwhile, Taurus beats up the Avengers, but Hawkeye, Black Widow and Thor manage to get away from the battle with the box Taurus was carrying. Later on, the Avengers(now with Hulk) discover that the box contained the Ultimate Nullifier(?!!!). Cap tells Widow to hide the Nullifier in a safe place, and this issue ends with six members of the Zodiac slamming into the Avengers ship.
Thoughts: Now this was much better. The story was easy to follow, there wasn't PAGES full of endless, unnecessary dialogue, and the cliffhanger was strong. Add Mark Bagley's art, and this issue put New Avengers #24 to shame. Yeah, I don't get how/why the Zodiac would have the Ultimate Nullifier(shouldn't that thing be locked away at the Baxter Building?), nor who powered the Zodiac(the Supreme Intelligence? Korvac? Immortus?), but if the story stays as solid as it was this issue, I'll happily stick around to discover all of the answers to those questions.
Score: 7 out of 10.
See, Bendis needs to do more dialogue like this!
Please Bendis couldn't withhold dialogue if his life depended on it. Seriously I could imagine him forgetting to put some dialogue in one panel and then noticing that he had forgot to put the dialogue in, he would totally make marvel do a mass recall just so he could rewrite the comic to have more dialogue.
ReplyDeleteHA!! That's why THIS page was such a treat! It's not often Bendis actually lets the artist tell the story, without Bendis feeling the need to beat the reader over the head with inane conversations... I'm half surprised Hulk wasn't standing in the background of this scene being asked about his purple pants by Black Widow!
ReplyDeletehey just thought id mention it, the coming arc of thor dosent look to be very interesting, but the one fallowing it titled "Everything Burns" will cross over substantily with Journey into mystery, will have the return of surtur, Loki likley going bad again (so many mixed feelings on that) AND ALAN DAVIS WILL BE DRAWING IT.
ReplyDeleteIn other news the gambit series will be written by James Asmus and drawn by clay mann
That's right, the Surtur thing... THAT'S probably going to be the thing that completely turns Asgard(ia) against Loki. The fact that he made that deal with Surtur(even though he did it for a good reason). I'd bet that if Loki doesn't turn in this storyline, he def will the next one.
ReplyDeleteI am enjoying this series a lot more than I thought I was, lol. Especially since I'm so clueless to the Marvel side of the comic universe. I'm loving this story line with the Zodiac.
ReplyDeleteAnd before I go, I understand your dislike of Bendis' ongoing words on pages that seem to never end. Lol. I made the mistake of reading this and Ultimate Spider Man. My eyes were drying out from reading all the dialogue lol.
Cool. So far this has been a good, solid series, especially for people who are relatively new to the Avengers. See that, I can compliment Bendis when he deserves it! And this far he's deserved it here.
ReplyDeleteUgh, if you ever need a real example of my problems with Bendis, just check out the scan I posted in the review of New Avengers #24... That page is the perfect example of EVERYTHING I hate about Bendis! I mean I like reading dialogue if it's good(I'm always reading back issues from the 1970's-1990's, and there's way more dialogue there than in comics nowadays), but there are so many times when Bendis will just have characters saying nothing to each other, for PAGES, with it all leading to nothing! It's maddening!!!