New Avengers #33 – Review

By: Brian Michael Bendis (story), Michael Avon Oeming (art), Rain Beredo (colors), and Joe Caramagna (letters)

The Story: Daniel Drumm continues to wreak havoc as Dr. Strange looks increasingly murderous to SHIELD.

The Review:  Without a doubt, the star of this issue is the artwork.  Of course, I’m also left thinking how bloody WEIRD this arc is going to look when it’s collected, as we’ve gone from artists as wildly different from each other as Michael Gaydos to Carlos Pacheco to, now, Michael Avon Oeming.  And apparently next issue, we’re going to Mike Deodato, because why not?

New Avengers #5 – Review

by Brian Michael Bendis (writer), Stuart Immonen (pencils), Wade von Grawbadger (inks), Laura Martin (colors), and Chris Eliopoulos (letters)

The Story: The Avengers learn who is behind the mystic attacks and devise a plan to challenge him/it.

What’s Good: By this point, it should go without saying that I’m loving this as a Marvel mystic storyline.  It makes New Avengers feel distinct, it helps bring in some real power players from an arena that is largely ignored.

Focusing on the mystic corner of the Marvel Universe has also brought the best out of Stuart Immonen and Laura Martin, who are able to make the kind of bright, vibrant, Saturday-morning artwork on steroids that they clearly excel at.  New Avengers, even moreso now with all the mystic lights, spells, and blasts, is just downright fun to look at.

This issue’s plot had enough twists and turns to keep me interested.  There’s a constant sense of things getting increasingly large, both the story and the villain.  Things keep getting exponentially bigger and by the end of this issue, from a mystic perspective, the conflict is positively massive in scale despite its really only involving one team of Avengers.  Certainly, putting an identity on the bad guy (and it’s a huge one) helps a great deal with this.  Not only is the revelation both interesting and surprising in its gravity, but it also helps to make the story feel more important, something that has been lacking lately what with all the faceless, formless goons the Avengers have been fighting lately.