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Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers – Prime (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Darren

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

Avengers Prime feels more like an epilogue than a new chapter. It’s a very clear attempt by writer Brian Michael Bendis to draw a line under the past five years of Marvel continuity, the direction of the Avengers franchise from Avengers: Disassembled through to Siege. It’s an attempt to sum up everything that had happened thematically, and to all his characters to move forward, hopefully stronger for the experience – a genuine attempt at character development inside the relatively static genre of superhero comics. While it feels, at times, a little bit too simplistic, it does feel like Bendis is tying up all his loose ends and ready to push forward on to new ground.

From the wreckage...

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New The Dark Knight Rises Trailer

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Darren

You don’t owe these people any more. You’ve given them everything.

Not everything. Not yet.

-Selina and Bruce

The new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises has been released and it looks suitably epic. Hm. Looks like it really might be about “the idea of Batman” in a very Grant Morrison-esque sort of way. “I’m adaptable,” Selina boasts, but she could be speaking of Batman himself, who is capable of being anything pop culture wants him to be. I suspect Nolan will be hitting the idea of Batman as a mythic symbol quite hard, and I honestly think that’s the best way to cap off a trilogy that’s been about the notion of a “modern” Batman. In particular, it seems that it might be exploring the notion of Batman as an inspirational figure being more important than the man in the mask. I think my excitement just went off the scale.

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Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, Volume 2 (Review)

Posted on April 30, 2012 by Darren

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

Written by Joe Casey, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, both volumes of it, can’t help but feel like an attempt to appease nostalgic fans, with a conscious throwback to simpler and more idealistic times, published while Mark Millar was deconstructing The Ultimates and Brian Michael Bendis was putting together the New Avengers. Both of those books represented something bold and new for a franchise that had been at the heart (but rarely the fore) of the Marvel Universe for decades, and both of which were undoubtedly controversial to older fans, offering a strange new direction for the series and its characters. Essentially an “untold” history of the team, drawing from classic published stories, Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes feels like a bone given to those fans uncomfortable at the very notion of change.

Looking for the blessing of the Trinity...

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Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers – Siege (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Darren

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

Read our review of The Avengers here.

Please, father… Let these heroes rise. Both Asgardian and mortal. Together. Empowered. Let them fight. Let them save us.

– Loki, Siege #4

And so, here we are. The culmination of more than five years of plotting in the Marvel Universe. Brian Michael Bendis has directed the Avengers franchise from Avengers Disassembled to Siege, crafting a post-modern exploration of what it is to be a superhero in a politically complex and morally ambiguous world. In doing so, for better or worse, Bendis has redefined the Avengers, with New Avengers just as “new” as the title promises. It’s somewhat fitting, then, that after years of introspection and exploration about when and how the characters in the Marvel Universe might be considered heroes, that it ends with an almost proto-typical superhero knock-down smash-up brawl fest.

Capping it all off...

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Mondo’s Alternate Avengers Posters

Posted on April 26, 2012 by Darren

The wonderful folks at Mondo have produced a series of character posters for The Avengers. I’m a big fan of graphic design, and I love the stylised approach that they’ve taken to these characters. There’s apparently only a tiny number of them going on sale some time soon (with Hawkeye and Black Widow already sold out), so it might be worth keeping an eye out for the others on sale. They really are quite awesome.

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Kurt Busiek’s Avengers – Avengers Assemble! Vol. 4 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 25, 2012 by Darren

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

Read our review of The Avengers here.

I don’t envy the fourth collection of Avengers Assemble! On one side of this collection, you have three volumes of work featuring the collaboration between writer Kurt Busiek and artist George Perez. On the other side, you have the epic conclusion to Busiek’s run, The Kang Dynasty. Between the two, you have this collection – which features only six actual issues of The Avengers, the rest padded out with annuals or specials or miniseries. It’s something of a transitional time. A lot of the story is about the impact of what has happened so far, while foreshadowing what’s to come.

One 4 all?

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Matt Fraction’s Run on The Invincible Iron Man – Vol. 2 (Hardcover) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Darren

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.” Today, I’m focusing on one in particular, Iron Man.

Read our review of The Avengers here.

In many ways, Matt Fractions’ Invincible Iron Man run feels like a spiritual counterpart to Ed Brubaker’s celebrated Captain America tenure. Of course, there’s similar thematic ground covered by the character arcs, with both leads dealing with the fallout from Marvel’s crossover-driven continuity, but there’s something more fundamental in the style and goals of the works. Indeed, both read better in big chunks, with each of the “acts” in Brubaker’s Captain America saga conveniently broken down and released in their own omnibus collections (his opening Captain America run, The Death of Captain America and Captain America Lives!). I can’t help up feel like perhaps Matt Fraction drew the short straw when it comes to collected editions, with the release of his material dictated by Jon Favreau’s Iron Man 2 and Joss Whedon’s The Avengers, as the two hardcovers seem strangely structured, creating a second volume which seems to contain the end of one act and the start of another.

It's got a lot of heart...

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Kurt Busiek’s and George Perez’s Avengers – Avengers/JLA (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Darren

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

Read our review of The Avengers here.

Avengers/JLA is about as nerdy as a comic book crossover can get. Really. It takes two teams of superheroes which were both formed to allow existing heroes to team up… and then teams those two teams up. It’s pure geek chic, after all. I have no shame in admitting that I enjoyed on a purely fanboyish level, my inner eight-year-old ecstatic at the idea of taking so many toys out of so many different boxes and bashing them together which such delightful cheer. It’s not an essential story, nor a brilliant one, nor a creative one – but it does exactly what it says on the tin. It gives us a gigantic crossover between two of the more recognisable Marvel and DC superhero teams.

The very definition of awesome...

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Non-Review Review: The Avengers (aka Avengers Assemble)

Posted on April 20, 2012 by Darren

The Avengers has a lot of geeky charm to it – the sort of giddy “this is so cool!” spectacle that appeals to the popcorn-munching child in each of us. That’s more than enough help it coast through a somewhat muddled first act, through a stronger second act and into a truly awesome finale. I think that the carefully choreographed large-scale action sequence that caps the film off might be worth a ticket alone. While there seem to be some very fundamental problem juggling a cast this large in a movie that technically a sequel to at least four films, Joss Whedon knows his audience well enough to ensure that most of the individual moments are satisfying, even if the overall film feels a tad uneven.

Three of a kind...

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Brian Michael Bendis’ Avengers – New Avengers Vol. 7 (Hardcover) (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on April 19, 2012 by Darren

April (and a little bit of May) are “Avengers month” at the m0vie blog. In anticipation of Joss Whedon’s superhero epic, we’ll have a variety of articles and reviews published looking at various aspects of “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.”

Read our review of The Avengers here.

And so, this is it. The end of Brian Michael Bendis’ first run on New Avengers. And, to the writer’s credit, it actually feels like an ending – something you very rarely get in mainstream comics, particularly when the writer’s going to be producing another book the following month. While I’ve had more than a few issues with the individual chapters in Bendis’ run, I think his New Avengers holds together remarkably well when examined as one big story – because it is one big story. The issues are paragraph breaks in the arcs, which are themselves chapters in the unfolding epic Bendis was weaving through the heart of the Marvel Universe, a bold attempt to redefine “Earth’s Mightiest Heroes”for the twenty-first century.

Happily ever after?

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