I Would Go On Strike But...

Brian Michael Bendis needs to retire. Seriously.

I commend his dedication to Marvel and the effect he has had on the direction of the line, but enough already. Even Geoff Johns limits himself to the characters he's working on at the time. The entire DCU isn't subject to his viewpoint. Bendis has taken Marvel and sent it into this incredibly depressing downward spiral. And I don't buy into any of those generalizations that Marvel is always depressing, because that is just not true. There were down swings and up swings like any other company.

I think the main problem I'm having with Bendis' Avengers(New Avengers) is that they seem so truly inept. For every situation, they have the same solution: pick up your beating sticks, it's GO TIME! The last three issues could have been a regular-sized Dr. Strange one-shot without the Avengers, for all the good they were. Spider-Man is written like he's fifteen, Bucky Cap apparently has never worked with superheroes, and the most of them are interchangeable since they never seem to have any kind of personality, except occasional jealousy.

What I'm getting for his run is that he has overwritten the Avengers with his superteam from Powers. Now the team who was called in to deal with a biological attack(Red Scare by Geoff Johns) can't stop a juiced-up gang leader and a supervillain with finger waves. It's time for someone else to take the reins.

Also, I can do without Dan Slott throwing dirt on every superhero in the Marvel U. First, Starfox is played up like a rapist and now the Inhuman royal family basically stole the throne from a benevolent king. Before, War of Kings just seemed like Black Bolt and Co. overcompensating for being stepped on for three years. Now, they have a history of douchebaggery. They wanted to use something called a "slave engine" for God's sake.

It's All Been Done Before(Or At The Same Time)

Remember how Deep Impact and Armageddon came out around the same time? It was weird.

Even weirder, there are four series this year about Golden Age(World War II era) superheroes finding themselves in the present. Even if the same guy is on two of the books(not Dynamic Man, though he, too, is in two of the series), it is still kind of overkill to have four books sharing the same premise. The only saving grace is that all four are actually interesting and worthy of being rated on a rarely updated blog. So here we go:

4. There has to be one in last place, but don't let that mislead you. I have rededicated myself to cutting the chaff out of my pull list so I no longer keep with a series to the end even if it reaches Countdown level of crap.

Avengers/Invaders is at the bottom because it has yet to wow me, even though it has such potential with a timeslipped Captain America in a world after Cap was assassinated. Everyone comments on Cap's "return", but no one has yet confronted Cap with the revelation that he is now deceased and the circumstances behind it. A fight between Namors aside, the only other thing I truly loved about the series is commando Bucky hiding explosives in his leg. Hardcore.

3. Project Superpowers is a great story about superhero The Fighting Yank getting duped into trapping his comrades in a mystical urn to prevent the spread of evil, only to (surprise!) leave the US unprotected against the former hero D(ynamic)-Man and his Dynamic Family subverting the government and pretty much turning things to shit. He finally releases his former colleagues when he's in his nineties and they are all slightly annoyed about being trapped for sixty years and missing out on the lives of their love ones.

Not only does this series bring back the awesomely costumed Black Terror, but the superheroes are not awakening to the modern 'real' world, but one where the bodies of dead soldiers are used as zombie troopers and the Dynamic Family have become the ruling class of the United States. It's more action-oriented and seems to be the setup for future books, because they have a lot of work ahead of them.

2. I was surprised at how much I liked Number of the Beast. Having read Wildstorm Armageddon and Dark Revelations, I was prepared for another setup miniseries but the story of the Golden Age Wildstorm heroes who went missing after the bombing of Hiroshima is not only messed up, but also well-paced and intriguing.

The return of The High is what hooked me into this series, but just the personality and background details put into these characters who pretty much debuted in this series is amazing. It is still a setup series, but a well written one, and if more crossover tie-ins were as good as NOTB, we probably wouldn't complain about them as much. Just a wee less.

1. J. Michael Stracynski's The Twelve is the top dog of reawakened WWII heroes stories because (1) it's just a better story and (2) it's the B-league of heroes, the guys people outside their city of operations wouldn't recognize. While Captain America and the Invaders were storming Nazi headquarters, these guys raided some Count's laboratory and were put into suspended animation for their troubles. Upon waking up, they're recruited by the military to promote government-sponsored heroes and have to deal with the lives they slept through.

The best thing, to me, about the series is the way Stracynski incorporates the original Golden Age stories of these characters, especially when some of them don't make a lick of sense, and drama pulled from life in the 40's. Again, it's the complexity of the characters that makes this such a good series. Add to that a murder mystery and another Dynamic Man appearance(who must have been a real asshole in his original series) and you get the Best Golden Age Heroes Reawakening Series.