Agents of Atlas: Dark Reign, Jeff Parker

"The heroes of the 1950s are back with big plans for the 21st Century! When Federal enforcers under the hand of Norman Osborn burst into an armory under control of the Atlas Foundation, Jimmy Woo's Agents go head-to-head with the new powers that be. How it all goes down will make the playing field of the modern Marvel Universe more volatile than ever! This edition comes packed with extras, including a 1950s flashback to the Agents of Atlas' first savage encounter with the man now known as Wolverine! Plus, the Avengers must enlist the help of the Agents to help take down Kang the Conqueror! And discover the key role the Agents of Atlas played in Marvel's blockbuster event of 2009 in Secret Invasion: Who Do You Trust?!

Collects Agents of Atlas #1-5, Wolverine: Agent of Atlas, Giant-Size Marvel Adventures Avengers, and material from Secret Invasion: Who Do You Trust? and Dark Reign: New Nation."



Agents of Atlas is another of those books like The Defenders or Heroes for Hire that appears on the periphery of the Marvel Universe every now and again, and contains some great little all-ages stories without ever getting a long running ongoing book. This collects the Dark Reign tie in issues, which is a great fit for what is essentially the heroic Thunderbolts - a team of heroes pretending to be villains so as to create a peaceful world using the resources of a criminal empire.

Like Thunderbolts it allows for the lesser known heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe to get a look in; these books feature Temugin (son of The Mandarin) and everyone's second favourite bear themed character, Grizzly. It also showcases some more prominent characters from the Avengers era, including Bendis' New Avengers, The Sentry and Norman Osborne, and Wolverine. It's a broad cross section of popular and unknown characters that makes the book a joy to read. As someone who loves the one-page cameo and the intricacies of continuity an appearance from Man Mountain that ends with him being eaten by a dragon is a thing of joy.

There's a real light hearted ness to the book. One of the things that it succeeds in so well is telling a range of different stories. The Agents of Atlas as a whole are a collection of broad archetypes; a Spaceman, a Spy, a Gorilla, a Siren, a Robot and an Atlantean in a series of crime super heroics that owe as much to James Bond and Jackie Chan as to anything else. It means that as well as the exploits of the agents in the Dark Reign era you can have missions set in 1958 (yellow peril and red scare spy-jinks) absurd Kung-Fu battles or sic-fi invasions of revolutionary Cuba. Absurd, but wonderful.

It channels the same structured chaos of NEXTWAVE, and whilst it never reaches the heights of that comic, a book that is the single defining extrapolation of all comics ever, it does a good job of bringing in the wider reaches of a super heroic world.

Basically, it's crime and spy stories featuring a super hero team up in which a talking gorilla fires machine guns whilst a robot shoots a death ray from its head. If that doesn't sound like the kind of book you want to read then, Brother, you've got no business reading comics.

Also Read:

Warren Ellis; NEXTWAVE: Agents of H.A.T.E

Jeff Parker, Thunderbolts

Brian Michael Bendis, New Avengers

Matt Fraction and David Aja, Immortal Iron Fist

Siege: New Avengers, Brian Michael Bendis

"Steve Rogers makes his triumphant return to the Avengers, but is he too late? When the gods fall, what chance does a Super Soldier stand? Also, the ladies of the Avengers ban together to save the team. Plus, Ronin breaks into Avengers Tower to assassinate Osborn! This volume also includes the NEW AVENGERS conclusion by superstar Bryan Hitch."











The polar opposite of Heroes for Hire in so many ways, New Avengers is how to turn less well known characters into prime-time A-listers. From the very start of Brian Michael Bendis' run the Avengers franchise moved away from the big hitters (no Thor and Hulk for any of the run, Iron Man forming the Mighty Avengers and Captain America dying after Civil War) in favour of a mix of mass-media popular characters (Wolverine! Spider-Man!) and fan favourites (Jewell! Hawkeye! Luke Cage!). It gave the smaller characters a chance to shine, and built an Avengers team around the idea that alongside punching out a skeleton Nazi, genocide Robots or warring Alien races you can also stop drugs dealers and prison riots.

It's incredibly successful, especially for a book that mostly involved the street level heroes of the Marvel Universe sitting around and talking, or running away from fights with low grade villains (as great as Luke Cage vs Purple Man always is). The entirety of the run counts amongst my favourite series of all time. I've spoken in the past (on 'The Cape and The Cowl' over at http://www.impossiblepodcasts.com/) about how the Luke Cage centric issue from Civil War run is probably my favourite moment in comics.

I really love this series, you guys.

But unfortunately, this is the point where Bendis is starting to tread water.

To give you some context, in the last book Luke Cage was captured by the Hood's gang (after the authorities, led by Norman Osborne helped depower the New Avengers). He was rescued by his friends and teammates audaciously rushing into the heart of the Dark Avengers complex to save him.

This book starts with Hawkeye being captured by Norman Osborne, only to be rescued by the team straight away. It's less audacious, a lot easier and make a mockery of the urgency of the previous rescue mission. Then the Hood's gang are powered up, and go hunting for the heroes.

Just looking at those two books, both feature the New Avengers fighting the same enemies, in the same basic scenarios (way out of their power league) and in both cases having to rescue a captured team mate, again from the same enemy,

It's the same plot. By this point we've had a good 12 issues of the Hood and Osborne plotting how to take down the New Avengers, and with the relaunch imminent it feels like the series was padded out with a few Siege tie ins until they could start afresh.

As ever the best parts are the bits where the team simply hangs out. Spider-Man and Spider-Woman bounce off one another well, whilst the reaction to the return of Steve Rogers is pretty heartwarming. Best part though? Well, that's probably Hawkeye launching a one man assault on the Dark Avengers, in New Avengers: The List, a one shot put out just before Siege and included here for comepletionists sake.

Which really tells you all you need to know about where this book has got to.

Also Try:
Brian Michael Bendis, Civil War: New Avengers
Brian Michael Benids, Avengers Disassembled
Brian Michael Bendis, All New X-Men
Brian Michael Bendis, Ultimate Spider-Man