Brett White
Mar 30, 2008, 05:17 pm
<a href="http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/nav039full.jpg"><img src=" http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/covers/marvel/nav039thumb.jpg" alt="New Avengers #39" hspace=10 align=left></a> Reviewer: Brett White, brett.stephen.white@gmail.com
Story Title: Echo
And who are you really?
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: David Mack
Color Art: Jose Villarrubia
Letterer: RS & Comicraft’s Albert Deschesne
Cover Artist: David Mack
Associate Editor: Molly Lazer
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Published by: Marvel Comics (www.marvel.com)
SPOILERS
Love or hate Brian Bendis’ take on The Avengers brand, he has taken the book from being irrelevant to Marvel’s flagship. The saga of the Marvel Universe can’t be told without an issue of New Avengers leading the way. As good as this has been for many forgotten Marvel heroes from the 1970s, it’s not been so good for the title. New Avengers teeters back and forth from complex crossovers to issues that read more like a solo series than a team book. Bendis hasn’t found a balance.
With Secret Invasion breathing down our necks, Bendis serves up a relatively quiet story starring Echo. It advertises the upcoming mega-event well, but Echo lacks any discernable personality. She’s still a deaf version of Elektra, the deaf part being something that Bendis has strained the credibility of. Thankfully there are no scenes of her being able to read the lips of half a dozen characters all talking over each other in this issue. The only bit of characterization we get for Echo is that she has a mysterious connection to Wolverine. For the love of Jarvis, why does she need a mysterious connection to Wolverine? Variant covers, yearly crossovers, thirty titles featuring Wolverine a month, is it really 1993? Have the Skrulls invaded Marvel?
I have serious complaints about Wolverine. I know trying to rationalize Wolverine’s appearances has been pointless for the last fifteen years, but it seems to be reaching a new level of ridiculousness. I can rationalize Wolverine jumping from battle to battle with multiple teams, but I find him actually living in Avengers Apartment and drinking milk in the middle of the night hard to believe. I wish Bendis would acknowledge that Wolverine isn’t just his character. A simple “glad to have a place to live after the school was closed” would be nice. I’ve already discussed how redundant it is for Wolverine to have a mysterious connection with everyone in the Marvel Universe. I assume his healing factor heals his memory as well because I would assume that all the faces would blend together after his fiftieth Hand skirmish in Madripoor.
My real pet peeve with Wolverine is how clumsy he is. It seems like in every issue he is getting shot, stabbed, decapitated, flayed, burned, or chopped up just because the writers know he has a healing factor. This doesn’t make him seem cool, it makes him seem incompetent. A dope with a healing factor is a fine angle for a character, but this isn’t Wolverine. He’s a samurai, a brawler, and a former secret agent. He’s the best there is at what he does, he just apparently doesn’t care if he has to re-grow his skin after every mission. If you compare Wolverine to the other Avengers, he’s easily the worst fighter. How many times have you seen Clint Barton get burned alive? How many times have you seen Iron Fist get shot in the head? Wolverine is shown getting torn apart in all fight scenes in this title. An average Skrull that Echo had on the ropes fries Wolverine with an optic blast.
This issue does have me excited for Secret Invasion even if the Skrull was about as smart as Full House’s Kimmy Gibbler. Echo doesn’t even intentionally trip the Skrull up with trick questioning, the Skrull just plain goofs. For all of the extensive research it’s done on a character that is easy to replace due to having “the least history,” the Skrull seemed to forget one of the only big parts of Echo’s history. The following battle was well paced and I’m interested to know where the Skrulls got the source material for duplicating Cyclops, Nightcrawler and possibly Firestar’s powers.
The end of the issue isn’t surprising since the two characters have formed a genuine connection. This was hinted at in a previous issue, so I’ve seen it coming for a while. However, the shift of focus from Wolverine to Clint at the tail end of the issue was forced. I love that Clint is educating Echo on being an Avenger and I hope that this is part of a larger arc of Echo finally feeling right alongside the icons of the Marvel Universe. I just think the end of the issue would have been even more compelling if it had been Clint instead of Wolverine throughout the issue. This would have taken the clichéd connection and healing factor abuse out of the issue and made it a lot better for it.
The art is suitable and dynamic, although I miss Leinil Yu.. Just like Gaydos working on last month’s Alias issue, David Mack does this month’s Echo issue. It’s a nice balance between the almost impenetrable nature of his painted work and run-of-the-mill pencils. The page layouts are off kilter which really saves his style from being like anyone else’s.
Even though this issue is a driven by a single character who isn’t really given much character, it’s an enjoyable read with pleasant art and succeeds at building tension for Secret Invasion. In an ideal world, Marvel would let the crossovers rest so this book could really live up to its potential.
OVERALL:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avnone.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avnone.jpg
Buy New Avengers online now from X-WORLD and save! (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=1546&cat=NEW+AVENGERS+)
Story Title: Echo
And who are you really?
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: David Mack
Color Art: Jose Villarrubia
Letterer: RS & Comicraft’s Albert Deschesne
Cover Artist: David Mack
Associate Editor: Molly Lazer
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Editor In Chief: Joe Quesada
Publisher: Dan Buckley
Published by: Marvel Comics (www.marvel.com)
SPOILERS
Love or hate Brian Bendis’ take on The Avengers brand, he has taken the book from being irrelevant to Marvel’s flagship. The saga of the Marvel Universe can’t be told without an issue of New Avengers leading the way. As good as this has been for many forgotten Marvel heroes from the 1970s, it’s not been so good for the title. New Avengers teeters back and forth from complex crossovers to issues that read more like a solo series than a team book. Bendis hasn’t found a balance.
With Secret Invasion breathing down our necks, Bendis serves up a relatively quiet story starring Echo. It advertises the upcoming mega-event well, but Echo lacks any discernable personality. She’s still a deaf version of Elektra, the deaf part being something that Bendis has strained the credibility of. Thankfully there are no scenes of her being able to read the lips of half a dozen characters all talking over each other in this issue. The only bit of characterization we get for Echo is that she has a mysterious connection to Wolverine. For the love of Jarvis, why does she need a mysterious connection to Wolverine? Variant covers, yearly crossovers, thirty titles featuring Wolverine a month, is it really 1993? Have the Skrulls invaded Marvel?
I have serious complaints about Wolverine. I know trying to rationalize Wolverine’s appearances has been pointless for the last fifteen years, but it seems to be reaching a new level of ridiculousness. I can rationalize Wolverine jumping from battle to battle with multiple teams, but I find him actually living in Avengers Apartment and drinking milk in the middle of the night hard to believe. I wish Bendis would acknowledge that Wolverine isn’t just his character. A simple “glad to have a place to live after the school was closed” would be nice. I’ve already discussed how redundant it is for Wolverine to have a mysterious connection with everyone in the Marvel Universe. I assume his healing factor heals his memory as well because I would assume that all the faces would blend together after his fiftieth Hand skirmish in Madripoor.
My real pet peeve with Wolverine is how clumsy he is. It seems like in every issue he is getting shot, stabbed, decapitated, flayed, burned, or chopped up just because the writers know he has a healing factor. This doesn’t make him seem cool, it makes him seem incompetent. A dope with a healing factor is a fine angle for a character, but this isn’t Wolverine. He’s a samurai, a brawler, and a former secret agent. He’s the best there is at what he does, he just apparently doesn’t care if he has to re-grow his skin after every mission. If you compare Wolverine to the other Avengers, he’s easily the worst fighter. How many times have you seen Clint Barton get burned alive? How many times have you seen Iron Fist get shot in the head? Wolverine is shown getting torn apart in all fight scenes in this title. An average Skrull that Echo had on the ropes fries Wolverine with an optic blast.
This issue does have me excited for Secret Invasion even if the Skrull was about as smart as Full House’s Kimmy Gibbler. Echo doesn’t even intentionally trip the Skrull up with trick questioning, the Skrull just plain goofs. For all of the extensive research it’s done on a character that is easy to replace due to having “the least history,” the Skrull seemed to forget one of the only big parts of Echo’s history. The following battle was well paced and I’m interested to know where the Skrulls got the source material for duplicating Cyclops, Nightcrawler and possibly Firestar’s powers.
The end of the issue isn’t surprising since the two characters have formed a genuine connection. This was hinted at in a previous issue, so I’ve seen it coming for a while. However, the shift of focus from Wolverine to Clint at the tail end of the issue was forced. I love that Clint is educating Echo on being an Avenger and I hope that this is part of a larger arc of Echo finally feeling right alongside the icons of the Marvel Universe. I just think the end of the issue would have been even more compelling if it had been Clint instead of Wolverine throughout the issue. This would have taken the clichéd connection and healing factor abuse out of the issue and made it a lot better for it.
The art is suitable and dynamic, although I miss Leinil Yu.. Just like Gaydos working on last month’s Alias issue, David Mack does this month’s Echo issue. It’s a nice balance between the almost impenetrable nature of his painted work and run-of-the-mill pencils. The page layouts are off kilter which really saves his style from being like anyone else’s.
Even though this issue is a driven by a single character who isn’t really given much character, it’s an enjoyable read with pleasant art and succeeds at building tension for Secret Invasion. In an ideal world, Marvel would let the crossovers rest so this book could really live up to its potential.
OVERALL:
http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avfull.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avnone.jpg http://www.comixfan.com/xfan/images/reviews/avnone.jpg
Buy New Avengers online now from X-WORLD and save! (http://x-worldcomics.com/yourvirtualstore/shopdisplayproducts.asp?id=1546&cat=NEW+AVENGERS+)