“Yesterday’s” Comic> The New Avengers #2

The closest thing to sunlight in this comic.

New Avengers #2

Marvel Comics, (February, 2005)

“Breakout!” part 2

WRITER: Brian Michael Bendis

PENCILER: David Finch

INKERS: Danny Miki & Mark Morales

COLORIST: Frank D’Armata

LETTERING: Albert Deschesne

ASSISTANT EDITORS: Nicole Wiley & Molly Lazer

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Andy Schmidt

EDITOR: Tom Brevoort

It’s rare that the only thing nice I can say about a comic is “I like the plot” and the characters are visually on model. Because nothing else is.  I’m going to have to go over this a scene at the time, but the overall issue are out of character things that are the norm for Bendis and the fact that everything looks like the “camera” is covered with a soft layer of mud. I know this is supposed to be nighttime but when I can’t tell Luke Cage from the not black dude he’s fighting something’s wrong.

On the surface of the Raft, Captain America and SHIELD prepare to enter the prison, but because Spider-Man has issues with people taking death for him (due to previous events I guess like Uncle Ben and Gwen Stacey among a few others) he just jumps right in and promptly gets the crap beat out of him by the prisoners there, many of whom have a grief against Spider-Man. Oh, and they also remove his mask, which means now many of his enemies know what he looks like until the whole Mephisto deal. Nice going. Captain America takes forever to come in to help just as the other heroes finally make it to the surface.

Yeah, while this was going on Spider-Woman, Matt Murdock, and Luke Cage are trying to fight off the villains below. The only one I recognize is Carnage, who isn’t able to get through Cage’s skin. For some reason Bendis also seems to think he either eats people or drains their essence like Parasite over at DC. He also thinks Luke swears (at least I think it’s Luke–it’s so dark I can’t really tell what’s going on.) Somehow Foggy manages to convince the Sentry, a Superman-like hero who put himself in solitary supposedly after killing his wife, to join in the battle, with some heavy hitters I again don’t recognize among them. As mentioned they finally make their way to the surface.

On said surface the heroes are now working together but it still isn’t going well. Cap gets knocked skyward and is grabbed by Iron Man, and the two actually banter about ending the Avengers, which apparently was Tony’s idea after the events of “Disassembled”. Back on the ground the Purple Man uses his mind-control powers and orders Luke to kill the remaining heroes and them himself. End of story.

Characters acting out of character, visuals so dark sometimes I don’t even notice the scene has changed, Peter losing his mask in front of a lot of supervillains, none of it really interesting to read. I’m seeing more of the same for the rest of this arc but maybe I’ll be wrong. Right now recommending this as something good is highly unlikely.