Posted in: Comics, Recent Updates | Tagged: avengers, brian bendis, Comics, new

So They All Just Sat Around And Talked For An Issue. And I Loved It.

Published Sun, 12 Dec 2010 14:17:28 -0600

It's one of the criticisms most levelled at Brian Michael Bendis' work. Superheroes just sitting around and talking to each other over a kitchen table for an issue.

I mean it's not true. Sure there are extensive dialogue scenes, but then Galactus lands in the middle of the kitchen table and everyone has to hit him. Or some such.

But this week's issue of New Avengers was pretty much exactly this stereotype.

The cast of New Avengers sitting around a table talking. And then two of them interviewing for a nanny to look after their child. No one hit anything. No one stood up and carried the troops to action. No one even opened a wormhole for some dark interdimensional force to burst out. Instead they discussed the independence of the team, loyalty to their friends, salaries, whether member could be trusted, and the responsibility of a parent to put pragmatism over idealism. Oh and we discovered that Wolverine and Squirrel Girl used to have a thing.

And I loved it.

One senior industry figure emailed me this week to, basically, mock the issue in question. I hadn't read it at the time, but his description, even one of disdain, made me want to read it more.

Because just the description reminded me totally of the Peter David/Joe Quesada issue of X-Factor. Issue 87, I remember that too – where Samson psychoanalysed the team. Again, no big bad – just themselves. It was one of my favourites. Still is. And this is kind of up there.

The other question is, whether I should like this kind of superhero comic. Wouldn't children be bored of it, was I, a thirty-eight year old, really the ideal target market for this kind of thing. Well, first, this kind of thing was always my favourite bit of Chris Claremont's X-Men, even when I was twelve. But secondly, I don't care. As a reader, I am selfish. I'm not concerned with the future of the medium as I read panel to panel, I'm just looking for my own enjoyment buttons to be pressed. And this was witty, engaging, full of character and development and looked very Stuart Immonen-pretty indeed.

There's the argument that this kind of story has its place, maybe, but only as part of a richer tableaux, not the whole thing in and of itself. Well, yes, maybe, Brian Bendis may have shifted the balance a bit but his storytelling is still full of massive action scenes. big bold brash monsters and dangers and spaceships and time travel and all that. And those are the bits I'm usually bored by. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy the characters and clearly have some kind of unhealthy addiction to them, I just get restless when they do superheroey stuff. And want the bickering over breakfast back.

It's not like it's the only superhero book I read this week. I enjoyed Amazing Spider-Man and Knight And Squire too. I just enjoyed this more.

Am I evil? Am I, and others like me responsible for the falling (paying) readers of monthly superhero comic books right now by sustaining and pupularising this kind of title?

Basically, should I be taken out and shot for the good of the industry? For reading New Avengers, I mean, not for anything else…

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