Dark Avengers #9

Ares* is one of Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers. His 10-year-old son Phobos** is in superspy training with Nick Fury's Secret Warriors, unbeknownst to his father until now. In Dark Avengers #9 (Brian Michael Bendis), Ares finally follows his son to the Warriors' base, and has the confrontation with Fury that readers have been waiting for ever since the Secret Warriors were introduced in the pages of Bendis' Mighty Avengers.

Except there's no fight. The fetching cover at the top of this post is just a cover. After bashing his way through the base defenses and b*tch-slapping another of the Warriors, Ares engages Fury in a remarkably level-headed discussion. He asks the spymaster what the Warriors have been up to, what Fury has been doing with his son. Fury explains. Ares the God stands there, head hung low, actually ashamed - a powerful image, and clearly one that resonates with his big-eyed son.

Ares admits that he doesn't really know how to be a dad - it turns out Zeus wasn't such a hot role model - and doesn't know how to help his son deal with and make use of his emerging powers. And so long as Phobos is happy with the Warriors, Ares gives Fury his blessing to train the boy (while of course promising vengeance should any harm come to his son).

It's a wonderfully unexpected done-in-one tale. Who'd'a thunk Ares would worry about being a good father? Bendis makes it work, reminding us that sometimes admitting his weakness is the strongest thing a father can do.

- JC

* The Greek God of War.

** The Greek God of Fear, though I don't believe it's yet been established if he's an ancient deity in a 10-year-old's body, or a 10-year-old-child with the same powers as some older or purely mythical Phobos. He mostly acts like a kid.

Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Exodus

The Dark Avengers/Uncanny X-Men: Exodus one-shot (Matt Fraction) establishes yet another new status quo for Marvel's x-tended mutant family, and it might just bring the X-Men's mission statement back into focus in the process.

For years, the X-Men fought to make the world recognize that no matter if you're black, white, blue, have gills, or shoot lasers from your eyes, we're all just people. It was Magneto who tried to divide "homo superior" from the "flatscans," until Grant Morrison's team in New X-Men started using that derogatory term as well, and teaching their students that mutants don't act or think or learn like humans.

Say what?

I get the intended metaphor about cultural/orientation pride, that in the modern age we need not assimilate and act like the majority so that our voices can be heard. The problem is, it doesn't work for the X-Men. There are subsets of mutants who have shared common experiences and developed their own unique cultural identities: Xavier alumni, Morlocks, the Brotherhood, etc. But outside of a small handful of telepaths, why should mutants think or learn differently from anyone else?

The X-Men's core metaphor seemed even more muddled in the Decimation that followed House of M, as the mutant population was severely reduced and rebranded as "endangered."* Aside from a few genetic markers, how are mutants a species? What is the "mutant culture" that they fear is now doomed to die out? With all this focus on survival, a series that had been a provocative exploration of issues of race and identity suddenly and strangely seemed to be more about life in our uncertain age of global terror. Not an unworthy metaphor in its own right, but I wasn't sure it had much to do with the X-Men.

Yet Matt Fraction may just be pulling it all together again. In the wake of proposed anti-mutant legislation, riots, and the imposition of martial law in their city by Norman Osborn, Cyclops has officially divorced the X-Men from the United States altogether. He's established a new mutant sanctuary on an island off the coast of California and issued a statement of intent to the world: here the X-Men will stay, with any and all mutants and their families who will join them.

"We have been, and always shall be, sworn to protect a world that hates and fears us. Only now... we shall all be free."

The idea of an emancipated mutant homeland is not quite new; in the late '90s, Magneto bullied the world into allowing him to run Genosha as his own mutant kingdom. And of course Norman Osborn immediately tries to paint Cyclops' new "Utopia" in the same light, as a militant state of crazy people. But this isn't a former terrorist running a mutant dictatorship, it's the X-Men, trying to save the world like they've always done without any government legislation or angry mob around this time to interfere with how they live at home and off duty.

The idea of the X-Men and their fellow mutants building a new nation seems far more in keeping with the series' base metaphor than the "there are only a few of us left, we can't make powered babies no more, and crazies want to kill us all off" schtick of the last few years. (It's Star Trek IV, and the X-Men are the whales?) Can one small band simultaneously serve as superheroes and Founding Parents? It's going to be fascinating to find out. And in the process, the X-Men might just be inventing that distinct mutant culture they've been so emo about saving from extinction ever since the Decimation.

The sequencing's a little off, sure, but I'm willing to forgive that.

- JC

*Let's not even talk about the fact that Joe Quesada supposedly encouraged the decimation because there were too many mutant characters in the Marvel U, yet only a small fraction of the dozens of current and former X-Men actually lost their powers. And a few of those joined new teams anyway. Huzzawah?

Dark Avengers #1

In Dark Avengers, Brian Michael Bendis essentially reinvents the original Thunderbolts with a twist.

When Kurt Busiek created the Thunderbolts, they were a team of Marvel villains pretending to be a new team of heroes. It was meant to be a Cunning Plan, Pinky & the Brain style -- only many of the villains found, for right or wrong reasons, they actually liked being heroes and the way the public reacted to them in that role. In time, the team became a legitimate and U.S. government-sanctioned avenue for villains seeking to reform and do time in public service. Not to mention villains who'd just rather be out there kicking other bad guys' butts than rotting in prison.

Norman 'Green Goblin' Osborn became a Thunderbolt during the Civil War event, and soon after maneuvered his way into command of the entire Thunderbolt program. Now, in the wake of Secret Invasion, he's been put in charge of the H.A.M.M.E.R that was S.H.I.E.L.D, giving him oversight of not just the Thunderbolts, but the Avengers Initiative as well.

So here's the twist: Norman takes some of the most vicious killers currently serving as Thunderbolts and turns them into the official Avengers for the U.S. of A. He does this by giving them the identities of established heroes that the public already knows and loves. Moonstone is Ms. Marvel. Wolverine's unhinged son Daken stands in for his dad. Venom becomes the Amazing Spider-Man. Bullseye, the psychopath who murdered two women Daredevil loved, is now Hawkeye. Up is down and black is white.

There's a fantastic two-page spread where the new Avengers are introduced to the public, with a neat trick you can really only pull off on a comic book page. As the name of each ersatz hero is called out, we see it printed in the colorful logo used on the cover of the original hero's comic. It really drives home the identity theft, the stunt that Norman Osborn is pulling on the public.

Not only do we have the old Thunderbolts questions hanging over this team -- how many truly want to be heroes? How many will discover that want over time? Can they overcome their own pasts and darker instincts? -- but we also have to wonder how long it will take the citizens of Marvel America to realize these aren't the heroes they know and love, and how they'll react when they figure it out.

Of course, not every member of the team is a pretender. Ares and the Sentry, two former Mighty Avengers, have stayed with Osborn. Ares, the actual Roman God of War, doesn't really care who's telling him to fight or why, so long as there are battles to be fought. The Sentry is more or less Marvel's schizophrenic version of Superman, and it's hinted that Osborn is manipulating his fractured mental state in some way to keep him around. I hadn't thought about it before Bendis brought them together in this book, but really the Sentry and Osborn's Green Goblin are two sides of the same coin. Osborn has also displayed signs of a schizophrenic disorder, as well as a possible multiple personality; when he started out committing crimes as the Goblin, he supposedly didn't know he was doing it. If Osborn is at all stable or integrated now, he's achieved that mostly by giving in to his darker impulses. Can the Sentry resist such a role model? Let's hope so.

And then there's the Iron Patriot, the new amalgam of Captain America and Iron Man. I have to admit Bendis had me completely faked out on this one. After the end of New Avengers #48, I was expecting to see Luke Cage in that armor, betraying his own teammates to make good on his promise to pay Osborn any price for help in finding his kidnapped child. (For a moment or two, I even entertained the notion that the new Ms. Marvel might be Jessica Jones, stealing the sobriquet of her best friend as part of the same Faustian bargain.) But no -- the Patriot is Osborn himself, because anything Tony Stark can do, Osborn must now prove he can do better. How did I not see that coming?

Plot-wise, Dark Avengers #1 is the first twenty minutes or so of a two-hour TV pilot episode. We've got the players on the board, and hints of who they are and what they want. What happens next is the story, but so far the set-up is more than solid.

- JC