Barbelith Underground > Comic Books > New / Mighty Avengers

I was wondering if Mighty Avengers really annoyed me as much as I've been saying it does, so tonight I reread the first six issues. And yeah, kind of. That first storyline's really good in a widescreen Avengers way, even though it's basically one long fight sequence with recruitment flashbacks. Well-handled, though. Then I noticed that Bendis and Cho share a credit as storytellers, and perhaps that's because Cho contributes a great deal to the clarity and lucidity of the action sequences. They work - you know, most of the time, who's hitting who and where the other guys are and what beat's coming next - because they're well laid out and well thought out. The double-pagers usually have a framing sequence attached and the rhythms are right, if that doesn't sound stupid.

The story's not so good, though. I can miss plot points when I read serially, but there's no explanation of where Ultron comes from, no explanation of how the Moleman's kingdom gets wrecked on the way, no explanation of why a robot that usually likes to manufacture its own bodies in a very particular style instead takes over someone else's and decides to be a nude lady. Even in the Silver Age there'd be a panel or two of exposition. This is distraction writing: forget that! There's a big explosion over here! I suspect that the dinosaurs and the hot nude robot were included for Cho, who likes to draw both. It might be easier to overlook if the very next storyline didn't continue to pull threats out of its arse at a dizzying rate.

There is still good character work. Ms Marvel doubted the worth of arresting Cage and the rest of the fugitive Avengers from the start, making it credible that she lets them go all those times and setting her up to make some big decisions in Secret Invasion I'm guessing. Ares comes through. The Hank Pym and Tigra sequence is painful, though perhaps it's meant to be. The Sentry... is there a point to the Sentry? Does he have any value, from the standpoint of the characters or from a reader's perspective? Is bringing down a helicarrier now the single most predictable thing any writer can do?

In whatever the latest solicitations were, Bendis is writing six comics a month. Probably that's too many, because it seems to me that unless there's an artist willing to do a lot of heavy lifting this title staggers and falls.