Hickman's "Avengers"

[Fives]

It's not Ikaris, it's a character called Manifold. From Hickman's formspring account:http://www.formspring.me/JonathanHickman

JonathanHickman -
The second is Sunspot, the first is Manifold.

On his twitter account he also said that the roster starts at 18, and grows with 8 more members that are being kept secret until later.

 

[runawayboulder]

I read through a lot of those and I'm not too thrilled with the vibe I'm getting from some of his responses.

Wolverine is there because he's popular.....

Not bringing back the Wasp.....

Not using the Vision.......(although he may be acting coy on that one)

And he has no interest in writing Bucky, in a book that is gonna feature almost 20 Avengers making it basically an Avengers All-Star book. I have a bad feeling that a lot of writers at Marvel don't care for that character. That guy is f***ed when Bru leaves.

I'm still gonna give this a shot but Hickman has bored me in the past with some of his stories. Just like the Heroic Age relaunch, I'm gonna get all the new Avenger titles and just drop them as I go if I don't like them.

 

[Webhead2006]

Well good he confirmed who the lineup is. And can't wait to see who the 8 more our. And so far for the 18 for this book who is the whole lineup?

 

[TheCorpulent1]

I'm interested to see where he goes. Hickman's one of the writers doing a lot of pretty original, unpredictable stuff in superhero comics these days, so I'm usually willing to at least give him the benefit of the doubt at the beginning of his runs. Some go into wonky directions I don't like, others go into wonky directions I do like, but the journey to those wonky directions is worth reading for myself. So I'll give this smorgasbord of Avengers book a try.

 

[THANOSRULES]

Im sick of new characters....I'd rather Hickman use one of his Secret Charactersor an Academy/Initiative char.

 

[TheCorpulent1]

There are still a few characters yet to be revealed, so maybe we'll see that. I'm kind of thinking the Academy may stay open despite its eponymous series' end, though. Either that, or they'll fold the remaining Academy students into the Jean Grey School and just have that be the one-stop superhuman school. Either of those would be cool to me.

 

[Webhead2006]

Ya the xschools/avengers training places probably still be around/mentioned. If. Books end. And we still have young heroes trained.

 

[THANOSRULES]

We have a load of unused characters that were solid stemming from the now old Initiative. I liked them.

 

[Fives]

I posted this in the Marvel Now thread, but thought I'd also post it here to since it's the art for the book this thread is about. Newsarama has Jerome Opena's Avengers first look:http://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album_view.php?gid=4497

 

[THANOSRULES]

who is that baddie?

 

[runawayboulder]

Beautiful artwork there.

 

[Webhead2006]

Very good art there. Can't wait to see it in color.

 

[BigSams50]

Wow. That art is amazing. This is becoming the title i am most excited about with the Marvel NOW launch

 

[KangConquers]

I read through a lot of those and I'm not too thrilled with the vibe I'm getting from some of his responses.

Wolverine is there because he's popular.....

Not bringing back the Wasp.....

Not using the Vision.......(although he may be acting coy on that one)

And he has no interest in writing Bucky, in a book that is gonna feature almost 20 Avengers making it basically an Avengers All-Star book. I have a bad feeling that a lot of writers at Marvel don't care for that character. That guy is f***ed when Bru leaves.

I'm still gonna give this a shot but Hickman has bored me in the past with some of his stories. Just like the Heroic Age relaunch, I'm gonna get all the new Avenger titles and just drop them as I go if I don't like them.

We really only had ten spots. The Six Avengers movie characters were inevitable, as were Wolverine and Spider-Man. I just wish they'd put those extra spots to better use.

 

[Webhead2006]

Well the teams will probably be rotating folks in an out as most of the avengers books are due to have big memberships.

 

[KangConquers]

Well the teams will probably be rotating folks in an out as most of the avengers books are due to have big memberships.

I'd kind of like to see a "Best of" both the classic team and the modern Bendis era team. While I'm particularly fond of the classic line-up, I'd have a hard time arguing that Two-Gun Kid, Stingray, Deathcry, and D-Man were better Avengers than Spider-Man, Luke Cage, Spider-Woman and Iron Fist.

 

[THANOSRULES]

But you can develop those kind of characters (IE B list char) within the book...Spidey you have to keep mainly status quo.

If you want to hone in on what defined many writers tenure..its how they handled characters who didnt have ongoings (at least major ones).

(See Hawkeye, Scarlett Witch/Quicksilver, Luke Cage, Vision, Wonder man, Beast)

..and many of these guys started off as little known,out of favor,misfit or new heros within the pages of avengers.

 

[KangConquers]

But you can develop those kind of characters (IE B list char) within the book...Spidey you have to keep mainly status quo.

If you want to hone in on what defined many writers tenure..its how they handled characters who didnt have ongoings (at least major ones).

(See Hawkeye, Scarlett Witch/Quicksilver, Luke Cage, Vision, Wonder man, Beast)

..and many of these guys started off as little known,out of favor,misfit or new heros within the pages of avengers.

That's true. As much as I hate Bendis's writing, the philosophy behind his series was very strong; take the biggest characters the company has, and combine them with down and out characters. He made legitimate names out of Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, Sentry, Ares, The Hood, Doctor Voodoo, and several other characters that were wallowing in obscurity.


The characters that bother me the most are ones with previous team affiliations. Spider-Man is fine in my eyes; I always saw him becoming an Avenger as a sign of maturity and growing importance within the superhero community. Other characters (Doctor Strange, Wolverine, Storm) are too closely tied to other teams for me to ever consider them serious additions.

 

[runawayboulder]

He made legitimate names out of Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, Sentry, Ares, The Hood, Doctor Voodoo, and several other characters that were wallowing in obscurity.

Not for nothing, out of those people, who are still around? Luke is on Thunderbolts, most fans despise Spider-Woman, Sentry is dead, Areas...dead, The Hood is MIA, Voodoo is dead.

 

[hippie_hunter]

That's true. As much as I hate Bendis's writing, the philosophy behind his series was very strong; take the biggest characters the company has, and combine them with down and out characters. He made legitimate names out of Luke Cage, Spider-Woman, Sentry, Ares, The Hood, Doctor Voodoo, and several other characters that were wallowing in obscurity.

The only character he made legitimate was Luke Cage and maybe the Hood. Most people still don't care for Spider-Woman and disregard her as a mere pet character of Bendis, not even Bendis could save her from low sales in her solo ongoing which lasted only 7 issues. He killed Dr. Voodoo (who was never really accepted as Sorcerer Supreme and his book was cancelled within 5 issues) and Ares (and I would say that Oeming and Pak made the character far more legitimate than Bendis who treated him as nothing but a blood thirsty savage). He turned the Sentry into a goddamn joke who was literally hated by almost everyone in the end (and he was killed too).

 

[KangConquers]

The only character he made legitimate was Luke Cage and maybe the Hood. Most people still don't care for Spider-Woman and disregard her as a mere pet character of Bendis, not even Bendis could save her from low sales in her solo ongoing which lasted only 7 issues. He killed Dr. Voodoo (who was never really accepted as Sorcerer Supreme and his book was cancelled within 5 issues) and Ares (and I would say that Oeming and Pak made the character far more legitimate than Bendis who treated him as nothing but a blood thirsty savage). He turned the Sentry into a goddamn joke who was literally hated by almost everyone in the end (and he was killed too).

That all goes back to his writing sucking, which I laid out in my opening statement.

 

[runawayboulder]

He did elevate Norman Osborn to a major player in the Marvel U but Ellis deserves some of that credit too for laying some of the groundwork.

 

[THANOSRULES]

The only character he made legitimate was Luke Cage and maybe the Hood. Most people still don't care for Spider-Woman and disregard her as a mere pet character of Bendis, not even Bendis could save her from low sales in her solo ongoing which lasted only 7 issues. He killed Dr. Voodoo (who was never really accepted as Sorcerer Supreme and his book was cancelled within 5 issues) and Ares (and I would say that Oeming and Pak made the character far more legitimate than Bendis who treated him as nothing but a blood thirsty savage). He turned the Sentry into a goddamn joke who was literally hated by almost everyone in the end (and he was killed too).

..but the strategy was sound for Bendis..the execution just fell short because , in the end, he overwhelmed us with something that lacked definitive cohesion and never seemed like well written arcs.

..and the Luke Cage "success" was really more connected to alias. If anything he made Luke work becuase he really likes that character and spent time and effort on him. (this goes for jessica jones as well) This was Bendis' "vision and scarlett witch", and if any credit is due, it's here.

..Not really true with a lot of the others. Bendis didnt give us much on any of them and he really could have. In fact he flat out botched most of them.The exception here is Sentry..who Bendis seemed more keen on developing a villian nature in and in the end at least tried to do something..although it never seemed like he had a clear plan.

The fact that he took characters like Protector, Echo, and made them hallow and uninteresting when he had carte blanche to make these characters interesting..really indicts Bendis run on the book. He also made a lot of established great characters like simon williams, carol danvers, wanda maximoff, etc.. hollow and uninteresting and compounded this by writing them completely out of character.

Hood is a good character..but the arcs he was in just did not work. He never seemed like he had any real plan to where he was going aside from constantly sticking him in some disjointed central villain role.

As for "dr stange" as an avenger...I'm a fan. Bendis actually wrote him decent,and Defenders have been so unsuccessful and erratic I'm fine with seeing him as an Avenger. The Mystic arcs (in avengers) with Bendis just fell short...they usually fizzled with some typical Bendis patented Dues Ex Machina.


..at any rate on some level i respect Bendis for some of the stuff he tried to do..I mean not all of these B listers work out. Busiek had several misses like triathlon and silverclaw, Stern had Dr. druid (who they really tired hard on), Etc..


edit" as for your last thoughts on Ares and Sentry..completely agree. In fact u can throw in Morrison for Protector there as well, as I really enjoyed that Marvel Boy mini he wrote several years ago introducing the character. Really Bendis only ever "nailed" Luke Cage, Jones, and Spidey..clearly characters he knew. He never really developed much new with us..and that is pretty bad seeing as it was such a LONG run.

 

[hippie_hunter]

But again, he failed to make them legitimate. No one takes Spider-Woman, the Sentry, and others seriously at all.

 

[KangConquers]

..but the strategy was sound for Bendis..the execution just fell short because , in the end, he overwhelmed us with something that lacked definitive cohesion and never seemed like well written arcs.

..and the Luke Cage "success" was really more connected to alias. If anything he made Luke work becuase he really likes that character and spent time and effort on him. (this goes for jessica jones as well) This was Bendis' "vision and scarlett witch", and if any credit is due, it's here.

..Not really true with a lot of the others. Bendis didnt give us much on any of them and he really could have. In fact he flat out botched most of them.The exception here is Sentry..who Bendis seemed more keen on developing a villian nature in and in the end at least tried to do something..although it never seemed like he had a clear plan.

The fact that he took characters like Protector, Echo, and made them hallow and uninteresting when he had carte blanche to make these characters interesting..really indicts Bendis run on the book. He also made a lot of established great characters like simon williams, carol danvers, wanda maximoff, etc.. hollow and uninteresting and compounded this by writing them completely out of character.

Hood is a good character..but the arcs he was in just did not work. He never seemed like he had any real plan to where he was going aside from constantly sticking him in some disjointed central villain role.

As for "dr stange" as an avenger...I'm a fan. Bendis actually wrote him decent,and Defenders have been so unsuccessful and erratic I'm fine with seeing him as an Avenger. The Mystic arcs (in avengers) with Bendis just fell short...they usually fizzled with some typical Bendis patented Dues Ex Machina.


..at any rate on some level i respect Bendis for some of the stuff he tried to do..I mean not all of these B listers work out. Busiek had several misses like triathlon and silverclaw, Stern had Dr. druid (who they really tired hard on), Etc..


edit" as for your last thoughts on Ares and Sentry..completely agree. In fact u can throw in Morrison for Protector there as well, as I really enjoyed that Marvel Boy mini he wrote several years ago introducing the character. Really Bendis only ever "nailed" Luke Cage, Jones, and Spidey..clearly characters he knew. He never really developed much new with us..and that is pretty bad seeing as it was such a LONG run.

All great points, but I bolded one point that I want to discuss. If you look through Avengers history, every writer had a pet character that was rammed down our throats, to the delight of nobody.

- Stan Lee had the Swordsman, who he pushed really hard as a major adversary to the Kooky Quartet era Avengers.
- Roy Thomas didn't have any true failures, though I think he expected Arkon to be a major villain.
- Steve Englehart had Mantis, who he had beat up Thor with Kung Fu and pressure points...I love Mantis due to GotG and later appearances, but as of the Avengers run, she was highly unlikeable.
- We all love Roger Stern, but Doctor Druid was definitely a big "WTF?" in his run.
- Kurt Busiek had the fairly awkward sub-plot of the Triune of Understanding and Triathlon, that delighted absolutely no one, and gobbled up panel space in what was otherwise a masterful run.

As for poorly writing characters. I saw the preview for the next issue of Avengers Assemble and wept. Thanos is such a typical mustachio twirling villain in AA, and the Elders of the Universe are portrayed as a bunch of dopes (and he has Thanos address the Stranger and the In-Betweener as elders of the universe, which they are not.)