The New Avengers #6 Review - Who are The New Avengers? No, really.
TITLE: The New Avengers #6
AUTHORS: Brian Michael Bendis
PENCILER: Stuart Immonen
PUBLISHER: Marvel Comics
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASED: November 10
By Luke Baker
Secret Agent Man
When The New Avengers series relaunched I was pretty pumped. Being a fan of it prior to this launch, I quickly jumped to subscribe. Six issues in, I am starting to question whether that was a good idea or not.
Don’t get me wrong — the first four issues I thought were absolutely fantastic. The artwork was dead on, and Brian Michael Bendis was pumping out a pretty engaging storyline one after another. The problem is that by New Avengers #5 and #6 it seemed almost as if Bendis was starting to run out of his batch of Wheaties. The story was becoming as dry as a school-nun.
New Avengers #6 is over fairly quickly due to lots of dual paged explosions and scenes with less frequent dialogue and more of a heavy emphasis on fighting. You would almost think that it was a comic by Michael Bay rather than Brian Michael Bendis. (EXPLOSIONS! EXPLOSIONS! EXPLOSIONS!) The artwork is good but in the end it comes across as a cheap attempt to tie up a story-arc that should have ended two issues early.
To add to the overall cheap vibe that I am getting from this months effort, it really feels that as if the last two issues were trying to reel you in with big characters like Wolverine and Spider-man. For the record, I have no complaints about Spider-man. I have a soft spot for him.
Anyways, by the end of New Avengers #5 Dr. Strange and his companion Dr. Voodoo along with all the New Avengers powers combined, they call on certain mystical powers to summon the mighty strength of Captain PLANE* … or, um, I mean a magically super charged Wolverine in attempt to save the world. What the freaking shit is going on here?
The teaser on the front cover of New Avengers #6 even boldly states, “ONE OF THESE AVENGERS WILL DIE!” A translation of that I would modestly put as, “PLEASE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, BUY THIS FUCKING BOOK!” It’s sheer desperation. It’s quite apparent after you’re done yawning from this $3.99 piece of beautifully drawn ass paper. Let me add that I was not at all surprised with Marvel’s choice in whom they decided to kill off.
To be totally fair, though, I did enjoy a good majority of the story arc. Four good issues out of six aren’t all that bad, however, that does tell us something. Occasionally, Brian Michael Bendis will come out with a fantastic plot that eventually gets dragged out a wee bit too far. That is exactly what happened here. When it was all over and done with, I really just did not care anymore. I basically just couldn’t wait until the story was finished. Somehow, I get the feeling Bendis couldn’t wait for it to be either.
The past six issues of The New Avengers started out to be a rollercoaster of action with Dr. Strange and the gang. Though, ultimately in the end it was more of a boring lollercoaster that was, quite frankly, just plain strange.
The teaser for next issue says: “Who are the Avengers?” Someone, please tell me because after this issue it is very unclear what this book is trying to be and seems to be in the midst of an identity crisis.
Rating: 5.5/10
