New Avengers: The Reunion #2

There's not a lot of action in issue 2 of New Avengers: The Reunion (Jim McCann). It's primarily the infodump issue, answering a number of questions that have built up in the few months since Mockingbird's Secret Invasion return. And it's still completely enthralling.

Ronin (Clint Barton, formerly Hawkeye) and Mockingbird (Bobbi Morse) hop a plane to Europe to stop some super-terrorists from taking out a world scientists' convention, and we finally learn who Bobbi's been working for since her comeback: herself. Turns out she's the one who rounded up the former Skrull captive S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, and started a brand new counter-terrorism agency, complete with flashy new James Bond style toys and a nerdy support staff. (Who needs a H.A.M.M.E.R. when you've got a blonde with a big stick?)

At the same time, flashbacks reveal just when in 1990s Marvel continuity it was that Mockingbird got nabbed by the Skrulls. These scenes could have been full of horrible fanwankery, but instead they served to ratchet up Reunion's emotional stakes beautifully: Bobbi had been on her way to inform Clint she'd just filed divorce papers. It's not melodrama for the sake of melodrama, either, but grounded in the relationship's own tempestuous history. Granted, it's a history I only know from Wikipedia entries, so I can't say how much of the flashback dialogue is lifted directly from old comics and how much is reinterpreted. But either way, the basic events are well-established, and McCann does a great job weaving the relationship's past and possible future into one cohesive tale.

He also packs a lot into the details. At one point, getting ready to infiltrate a swanky party, Clint goes off on Bobbi for the blue and purple outfit she's picked out for him. Ronin may finally have moved beyond his 1960s-1990s colors, and Bobbi may be the one insisting they're no longer a couple, but part of her is still looking for Hawkeye and the years the Skrulls took away from her.

More subtle is the page on the plane where, though Clint and Bobbi in fact sit facing one another, a simple panel reversal makes them appear back to back, turned away from each other and isolated. It's one of those simple visual tricks that only really work in comic books. Film and TV can use a split screen to similar effect, but split screens always look like gimmicks. It can never look as natural as it does on the page.

Clint and Bobbi's story moves one step forward and two steps back in this issue, but the reader's ride just keeps getting better.

- JC

Agents of Atlas #1 and #2

The titular Agents of Atlas are without a doubt Marvel's most unique superhero team, consisting of a rejuvenated 1950s FBI Agent, a human gorilla, a robot, an Atlantean, a mythic beauty, and a man raised on Uranus (you don't even have to go there, 'cause writer Jeff Parker is already doing it for you, frequently yet tastefully). They operate out of a secret lair full of warrior scholars, mystics, servants, and a dragon - when they're not zooming around in a bone fide flying saucer. And they all originated in Marvel comics from before there was a Marvel comics, at a time when the company was called Atlas, hence the name.

Or rather, hence half the name, because the "Agents" part is really just as important here. The book intersperses it's modern Marvel Dark Reign tale about the Agents attempting to infiltrate Norman Osborn's H.A.M.M.E.R. with flashbacks to their oddball '50s adventures as a special FBI task force. In doing so, it manages to play with the two greatest FBI storytelling tropes at once. The clean-cut 1950s "G-Men Are Hip, Daddio!" stories both contrast with and sit comfortably beside a modern "Donnie Brasco" style undercover-with-the-mob tale.

The Agents have recently been given control of a former enemy's mysterious Atlas Foundation. The ancient Foundation, part cult and part multinational business conglomerate, traces its lineage back to Genghis Khan and has been dedicated for centuries to world conquest. Now the Agents mean to use its powers for good - convincing their new followers that world peace is a kind of world conquest - but with shady men like Osborn on the rise, they're also finding it useful to keep up the Foundation's image as villains. There are shades of season five of Joss Whedon's Angel, as the characters struggle to turn the resources of corruption to noble purposes.

It's the genius of Parker's set-up that makes it possible for such an unusual and distinctive team of heroes to go undercover, and it's the genius of the Dark Reign scenario that this time, the mob the Agents are trying to infiltrate IS the legitimate government. It's Marvel's most exuberantly retro heroes in a delicious conspiracy tale for our troubled, paranoid age. Or do we just hope we're paranoid?

- JC

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