Marvel 2005 Week--New Avengers #10!!

Marvel 2005 Week has presented me with a challenge unlike any other I've ever faced. Namely:

Why is this one so difficult? Well, during my Marvel Weeks, I've never had to cover a story quite like this one...which is 21 pages of people just standing around talking. And of those pages, 7 are of people having extended conversations in an all-white space. Take a look at a couple of full-page scans:


Seriously, that's it, guys. The entire issue is just that.

Now, I'm not saying it's a bad story. But, doing that thing I do, how exactly can I do panel excerpts and synopsis for a comic story that is essentially one long "My Dinner With Andre" done to super-hero psychobabble? Any panel I excerpt becomes pretty out of context, and hey, the entire issue synopsis is literally, "Emma Frost talks the Sentry back to sanity, and he joins the Avengers," so I'm already done before I start.

Well, I'll muddle through somehow. Who was responsible for this comic, anyway?

Now, this isn't going to be one of my trademarked anti-Bendis screeds. At this point, he hadn't succumbed to his "everybody banters ceaselessly in the same voice" phase. And this is a good story...but I question whether it was a good story for this magazine at this time.

By the way, props to Steve McNiven. Given the script requirement "Show people sitting around in someone's all-white subconscuious just talking for page after page," he does a yeoman's job of not letting it get as visually boring as the concept sounds. The choreography of the characters, the way he keeps the "camera" moving without going nuts with it, all make it an eminently readable issue.

Now, as to the Sentry...

Let's just stipulate that most people find the Sentry a generally terrible concept. I myself found it a decent enough concept for a one-off, but the insistence on making him a real, regular part of the Marvel Universe baffling.

Especially given this context: we're in the first half-year of a brand new team of Avengers, characters with diverse and conflicting personalities, and we're unclear on how they'll mesh together. And instead of putting focus on those characters, or on team-building, that's when Bendis decides to do a 4-part Sentry retcon/origin story, in which virtually none of the "New" Avengers have a single thing to do?? In this particular issue, Spider-Man has one word of dialogue, and Spider-Woman has 2 three-word sentences, while Luke Cage and Wolverine don't utter so much as a single syllable. 80% of the dialogue, and the big save, goes to someone who's not even on the team, Emma Frost!! All I'm saying is, that's a funny way to establish a new team.

Another reason to question why there was such a hurry to do this story is the fact that Sentry did virtually nothing in the pages of the Avengers for the next few years. Seriously...go back and look for any significant impact Sentry had on any Avengers story before Dark Reign. Even when he was in The Mighty Avengers, Sentry was used just like DC uses J'onn J'onzz--he flies in and the bad guy neutralizes him quickly so we can understand what a bad-ass the villain is. (Plus, of course, there's the "ridiculously overpowered" problem, because why would the Avengers have a problem fighting a bunch of ninjas and take three issues to wrap it up when Sentry could mop them up in three milliseconds? So they usually left him behind.) So I'm not sure what the hurry was (unless the wanted Sentry back in action in time for the new Paul Jenkins mini-series to start...). This story could have waited, and instead Bendis spent 4 issues essentially ignoring the Avengers at a time he should have been focusing on them.

But what we've got is what we've got, so on with the 20-page dangling conversation. While the combined forces of the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and anybody else who happens to be hanging around tackle the Void, Bob Reynolds has retreated into his own subconscious.

In a bit of meta-self-referentiality, comic writer and Sentry creator Paul Jenkins appears in these issues as comic writer Paul Jenkins, who has unknowingly been telepathically receiving info from the Sentry in order to write the Sentry comic book. Damn, Grant Morrison doesn't get this meta...anyway, he's hanging with Bob's wife, Lindy, when he bores her to death...


Just kidding. That's when Emma Frost pulls Lindy's mind into Bob's subconscious, too, and no doubt left a hell her with a hell of a bruise from that face plant. Thanks, Emma.

So, understanding that I'm leaving out an awful lot here, we get some exposition:


Then a double-page spread of the fight that we don't actually get to see any of...

Then it's back to Whitesville:

We get a flashback to Lindy and Bob's meet-cute...well, third-date-cute...

...which is enough to stir Bob's subconscious, so the Void freezes--thus ending any hope of any action in this issue:

Then it's on with more conversations...brought to you by the color white!!


And here we see that Bendis is completely retconning the Sentry already. In the original mini-series, Reed and Doctor Strange and the Sentry willingly brainwashed everybody in the world, including themselves, to prevent the Void from escaping and destroying everything. Now, it was one of the Sentry's enemies, The General, who hired the mutant Mastermind to plant a "psychic virus" that would cause Sentry's vast psychic powers to unconsciously brainwash everyone on Earth into forgetting him.

(Someone, however, didn't get that memo, because in flashbacks during OMIT, Reed and Doctor Strange remembered what they had done for the Sentry and used that as their basis for the "make everyone forget Peter Parker is Spider-Man whatsis.")

Anyway, back to the conversation:


So...it would be wrong to put everybody's mind to the way it was before?? Because even if you were writing a wrong, doing it on purpose is bad...? And no one will remember the Sentry's past?? (But it was OK to hijack Lindy's mind into Bob's subconscious without permission??)

Question: if Bendis didn't like Sentry's origin, and didn't like the explanations from the mini-series, and didn't want to use the character's past...why the need to use that character at all?? He couldn't find someone else, or create a new character, to be the repository for the Angel of Death?? Just askin'...

Anyway, it's time to resolve this talk-fest:


And then, we learn that Bob Reynolds' situation was like constipation!



Awww, a happy ending!!

Plus--free architectural add-ons!!

Then, the Illuminati have a serious meeting:



SPOILER ALERT: He won't. Tony Stark fraks up again!

Well, I guess that wasn't so tough after all. And look--Bendis can write an entire issue of literally nothing but talking, without breaking out the "funny" constant quipping and bickering. Whatever happened to that guy?

BONUS: Coolest Halloween costume ever:

If this was in adult size, I would TOTALLY wear this!!

ELSEWHERE IN THE MARVEL UNIVERSE:

Speaking of hastily-thrown-together assemblages of characters who make you go "huh?", there's this:

I enjoyed Kirkman's romp through the attic of the Marvel Universe. Both Marvel and DC really need mags like this, I would say: comics that routinely rummage through oddball pairings of characters and have fun. The Batman: Brave And The Bold show is like that. Brave & The Bold the comic is sort of like that (except that JMS doesn't do fun stories there, and B&TB is apparently coming out quarterly now, if that).

And I understand why, from an economic standpoint, editorial would insist that you have one popular anchor character, who can sell the book.

But come on...when you can have an issue like this...

...which features Daredevil and Luke Cage teaming up to fight the Stilt-Man, as well as Sleepwalker stopping Black Cat during a burglary, and cameoes by the Punisher, Blade and Sunfire--well, why can't we have more?

The Big Two need to release more writers to go crazy frolicking through the vast, vast, vast supply of un- or underused characters. You guys have entire Universes at your disposal--USE THEM!!