AVENGERS: DISASSEMBLED is an Important Story that Changes Everything. The best way to tell is by paying a visit to Marvel’s handy “Who gets it next?” org chart. It’s hard to tell which entry is my favorite, but “Stumped: lost an arm” and “Half the man he used to be: ripped in twain” rank highly.
Like Mark Hale, I’m a big old Avengers fanboy. I developed an unhealthy fixation on the Scarlet Witch. I cried bitter tears when they ditched everyone cool to bring in Tigra. I thought “Heroes Reborn” should have been followed up with a war crimes trial at the Hague. It’s where John Byrne officially became dead to me. I sat in the lonely corner reserved for the handful of people who thought Monica Rambeau was an insufferable goody-goody and sucked up too much story.
Ahhh, memories.
So it’s kind of odd that my reaction to AVENGERS 500 is pretty much… no reaction at all. I mean, sure, I think there are too many splash pages and the explosions sail past camp and some of the dialogue could cause seizures. But as far as what actually happens in the story? Meh. Couple of characters die, lots of stuff blows up, worst day ever, blah blah blah.
It’s like the nostalgia centers of my brain have atrophied, or at least the parts that govern sentimentality. Honestly, Marvel and DC have told so many Important Stories that Change Everything that aren’t and don’t that it’s hard to get worked up over the latest entry into the genre. And absent nostalgia and sentimentality, there really isn’t any suspense in the story for me.
To quote Grant Morrison, who’s speaking on an entirely different subject (found via Fanboy Rampage):
“The current vogue in superhero comics, post-‘Hush’ is for the ‘definitive’ take, which tends to manifest itself as creators playing it safe by cherry-picking and re-packaging all the best and most popular elements of an already successful feature. It’s a commercial strip-mining kind of approach to a given property that seems to make a lot of sense until you realize it can really only work once before you find yourself in the awful position of having to make up stuff again.”
Which is basically what Bendis and company are doing here. (I’m not at all certain that isn’t basically what Morrison himself did with NEW X-MEN, but that’s a different discussion entirely. And, besides, he’s right.) And what Marvel tried to do with “The Crossing” and “Heroes Reborn” and the Walt Simonson run.
Honestly, no matter how drastically Bendis changes things in the title (and it was past due for a new coat of paint, I readily admit), Marvel will, at some point, change them back. The new status quo will become as stale as the old one, and Marvel will want a quick boost, so there’ll be another Important Story that Changes Everything Back.
And that’s fine; it’s even kind of smart for a company to show that kind of flexibility, to recognize market forces and a changing audience.
It’s just not very suspenseful, no matter what Vision pukes up.