This is the first part of John’s pull list comic reviews for the week. The second part follows tomorrow.
Pull of the Week:
New Avengers #52 – Marvel – $3.99
Score: 8.5
If there was ever a team book that could get away with next to no-action and still consistently be the best read of the week, it’s the New Avengers. Brian Bendis knows these characters and knows how to bring them to life. The amazing part is that he does it with brief action sequences and is able to dive into the personalities of the New Avengers by simply sitting them down at a dinner table and meet as a team. Everyone fits a role whether it be a cool and collected leader, a partially insecure spaz, the quiet bad ass or the person everyone thought was dead but was actually only just abducted and replaced by a Skrull. The magic is that Bendis has such a grip on these characters that his conversations between these characters feels like they have known each other for years.
The story revolves around the team being filled in by Doctor Strange, the former Sorcerer Supreme, about the attack he suffered at the hands of the Hood. Mystical cameos seemingly abound in this issue, the New Avengers head south to find another magical character who may be the next Sorcerer Supreme (who wasn’t actually who the reader was suspecting from the clues given pages before). Bendis exhibits great understanding of character building and does it in an entertaining way in this issue.
This truly is a book that could still be enjoyable to read even if no action took place much like Bendis’ control over the characters has proved time and time again. Also, like the last issue, the dual art teams give the book a feel all of its own. Having two art teams seems like it’d be disjointed in the story telling but by splitting the teams between the conflict of Strange and the Hood and the other team working on the rest of the book, it only helps the “magic” of storytelling.
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