"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
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