Avengers Worst Character Assassination, The Sequel

[Ravin' Ray]

The way Stark's been going up against Hulks (Original Sin, She-Hulk's nanite depowering and even their first meeting in her original series where his initial impression of her was a brutish bimbo, World War Hulk, Red Hulk), one would think he has something against them, even subconsciously.

[Rochedalaix]

Like Civil War, AvsX was all around character MASSACRE!

Peace

No it wasn't Cyclops came out perfectly fine if not better because of AvX. During AvX he did nothing wrong and made all the right decisions.

[Rochedalaix]

Captain America and Wolverine's character have been assassinated to make Cyclops look awesome that is what really happened in Schism and AvX.

I agree, in CW Cap really had NO plan as to what to actually do, except "not register". His reaction was childish.

On the other hand, Tony cloned his dead friend, then allowed/helped Reed lobotomise the clone, then used it as a weapon against the original's friends. Clor was basically as bad as what happened to Bucky or X-23. IE some of the most tragic characters in Marvel.

It's like AvX both sides can agree that their characters were trashed.

During AvX Cap really had no real plan either but take Hope off planet, and Cyclops knew that was a stupid plan, Wolverine knew that was a stupid plan, and Cyclops knew that Wolverine knew that was a stupid plan and Cyclops knew that Wolverine was going to kill Hope once the Avengers took her and that is why Cyclops blasted Cap he had to save the world from Cap and Wolverines stupidity. The real tragedy of AvX is that the only one besides Cyclops that knows he saved the world is Cable.

[The Sword is Drawn]

Rick Remender's utterly abyssmal treatment of Captain Britain on Secret Avengers (and his Uncanny X-Force run before it).

Through Secret Invasion and Dark Reign Brian Braddock was a headliner of his own series. He was a poster boy for 'The Heroic Age', being given a variant cover for Age of Heroes #1 (In which Steve Rogers invited him to become an Avenger like 2 years before he actually debuted). He had long since been shown as a fully developed and responsible leader, with ties to Spider-man, The Black Knight, the X-Men, Captain America. At no point were these negative associations. Far from it. At that point he was a well-rounded character, who after Captain Britain & MI13's run felt like he had finally been put right, after years of inconsistent usage. Clearer powerset (power levels now determined by personal confidence, but plausibly limitless), less complicated role (no more interdimensional adventures, just a guy protecting one Country), simpler costume (we actually got see a more human, more expressive face), greater recentered sense of purpose (working for the British government, sorting out supernatural and superhuman threats). He was all set for any new writer to pick up the character and run with him. Simple.

Here's his fact file from the 'The Heroic Age: Superheroes' handbook.



It's a rightfully pretty glowing report. It's a few years ago now, but even a fair number of neutral fans were interested to see his inclusion on The Avengers.

And then it didn't happen. The rosters were slowly revealed for the Avengers titles and Captain Britain was not on any of them. Confusing as hell to readers, but that's how it happened. With each new roster change on each Avengers title the question would get raised, when would Captain Britain be showing up? So when Rick Remender finally announced Brian would be on his Secret Avengers roster a lot of people were kinda psyched about that. In interviews it genuinely seemed like Remender was enthusiastic about including the character, and seemed to be a bit of a fan. Which is ultimately why the end result of the character we saw in print was so utterly bizarre.

Read back over that character profile. That's the Brian we expected to see. The Brian Braddock that Marvel comics wanted to show. That is the image of Captain Britain that was fresh in people's minds before Secret Avengers and Uncanny X-Force. One of a man of great humility, courage and decency. But a guy who would NEVER boast or brag about such things. To coin the phrase from Brian himself, upon facing off against the Skrull 'Sorcerer Supreme' he may be all these things but he doesn't '...Make a Fuss'.

Look back at it, because that is absolutely not the character Rick Remender chose to deliver. The first, and more obvious, examples would be to undo a lot of the positive changes which had been made in Brian's previous series. The new costume dumped for the old. A return to confusing mulitversal universe jumping adventures. No longer working with the British government. All undone (though thankfully partly redressed since).

Through first Uncanny X-Force and continuing in Secret Avengers readers were treated to the following bizarre and inconsistent actions:

Brian demand not only the death of Fantomex, but his complete erasing from all history and reality - without listening to any kind of explanation of the reason for his actions either second hand or from the man himself.

Brian actively bullying his sister, unrelentingly, into towing some kind of sense of a bizarre (and alarmingly brutal) 'Family Line,' which has simply never existed in any part of past continuity. Remender also appeared to believe that Captain Britain and Psylocke had long term intimiate knowledge of the father's life in Otherworld. As if they had always known about it. They had not.

They saw Brian regularly behave with an oddly uncharacteristically pompous and arrogant attitude. He was seen to actively brag about his many past roles and achievements in a manner which definitely does not fit with his trademark humility.
Brian showing contempt and disrespect toward the entire World War 2 generation, with sweeping generalisation that they are all '...sodding arrogant'. Apparently. You just don't do that. British people don't do that. Certainly not those of Brian's generation. This was just bizarre.

Brian being informed that no other heroes ever call upon him for aid because apparently everybody knows that he doesn't play well with others. Something which his past history of team-ups with the likes of Captain America, Spider-man, The Black Knight, Black Panther, The X-Men, Excalibur's teaming up with the West Coast avengers, his time working WITH Excalibur, or the Knights of Pendragon, or MI13 amongst others would seem to quite clearly contradict in droves. This is utterly illogical.

With each new issue it seemed to be another new element of an increasingly brutal and unwarranted character assassination. Brian was shown to be uncharacteristcally inept, unreliable, impetuous. It was nasty stuff.

I think it would be pretty clear to anybody reading that the intention here was probably to break the character down and build them back up again. But a) That was completely unneccessary, so close to his having been successfully reshaped and rebuilt, and b) The knock 'em down to build them up approach only works if you have a long run of stories in which to do that. Remender didn't. He only really had 3 complete stories on Secret Avengers, before moving on. It was never going to work.
Captain Britain as an Avenger is a total no brainer. But waiting two years for his debut, and the delivering this? That was a huge wasted opportunity.

[Agent Z]

I found it to be the opposite in a way. To me, they said over and over again why Stark felt the way he did. He had seen that the registration act was a forgone conclusion, so he decided to help guide it rather than fight it. And a lot of time was given to his reasons for doing so.

Cap fought the act pretty much "just because" for all the reasoning they gave.

Steve reacted badly to the SRA when Hill tried to arrest him before the act was even made law. He seemed really neutral about it before.

[Raffi Ol D'Arcy]

Rick Remender's utterly abyssmal treatment of Captain Britain on Secret Avengers (and his Uncanny X-Force run before it).

Through Secret Invasion and Dark Reign Brian Braddock was a headliner of his own series. He was a poster boy for 'The Heroic Age', being given a variant cover for Age of Heroes #1 (In which Steve Rogers invited him to become an Avenger like 2 years before he actually debuted). He had long since been shown as a fully developed and responsible leader, with ties to Spider-man, The Black Knight, the X-Men, Captain America. At no point were these negative associations. Far from it. At that point he was a well-rounded character, who after Captain Britain & MI13's run felt like he had finally been put right, after years of inconsistent usage. Clearer powerset (power levels now determined by personal confidence, but plausibly limitless), less complicated role (no more interdimensional adventures, just a guy protecting one Country), simpler costume (we actually got see a more human, more expressive face), greater recentered sense of purpose (working for the British government, sorting out supernatural and superhuman threats). He was all set for any new writer to pick up the character and run with him. Simple.

Here's his fact file from the 'The Heroic Age: Superheroes' handbook.



It's a rightfully pretty glowing report. It's a few years ago now, but even a fair number of neutral fans were interested to see his inclusion on The Avengers.

And then it didn't happen. The rosters were slowly revealed for the Avengers titles and Captain Britain was not on any of them. Confusing as hell to readers, but that's how it happened. With each new roster change on each Avengers title the question would get raised, when would Captain Britain be showing up? So when Rick Remender finally announced Brian would be on his Secret Avengers roster a lot of people were kinda psyched about that. In interviews it genuinely seemed like Remender was enthusiastic about including the character, and seemed to be a bit of a fan. Which is ultimately why the end result of the character we saw in print was so utterly bizarre.

Read back over that character profile. That's the Brian we expected to see. The Brian Braddock that Marvel comics wanted to show. That is the image of Captain Britain that was fresh in people's minds before Secret Avengers and Uncanny X-Force. One of a man of great humility, courage and decency. But a guy who would NEVER boast or brag about such things. To coin the phrase from Brian himself, upon facing off against the Skrull 'Sorcerer Supreme' he may be all these things but he doesn't '...Make a Fuss'.

Look back at it, because that is absolutely not the character Rick Remender chose to deliver. The first, and more obvious, examples would be to undo a lot of the positive changes which had been made in Brian's previous series. The new costume dumped for the old. A return to confusing mulitversal universe jumping adventures. No longer working with the British government. All undone (though thankfully partly redressed since).

Through first Uncanny X-Force and continuing in Secret Avengers readers were treated to the following bizarre and inconsistent actions:

Brian demand not only the death of Fantomex, but his complete erasing from all history and reality - without listening to any kind of explanation of the reason for his actions either second hand or from the man himself.

Brian actively bullying his sister, unrelentingly, into towing some kind of sense of a bizarre (and alarmingly brutal) 'Family Line,' which has simply never existed in any part of past continuity. Remender also appeared to believe that Captain Britain and Psylocke had long term intimiate knowledge of the father's life in Otherworld. As if they had always known about it. They had not.

They saw Brian regularly behave with an oddly uncharacteristically pompous and arrogant attitude. He was seen to actively brag about his many past roles and achievements in a manner which definitely does not fit with his trademark humility.
Brian showing contempt and disrespect toward the entire World War 2 generation, with sweeping generalisation that they are all '...sodding arrogant'. Apparently. You just don't do that. British people don't do that. Certainly not those of Brian's generation. This was just bizarre.

Brian being informed that no other heroes ever call upon him for aid because apparently everybody knows that he doesn't play well with others. Something which his past history of team-ups with the likes of Captain America, Spider-man, The Black Knight, Black Panther, The X-Men, Excalibur's teaming up with the West Coast avengers, his time working WITH Excalibur, or the Knights of Pendragon, or MI13 amongst others would seem to quite clearly contradict in droves. This is utterly illogical.

With each new issue it seemed to be another new element of an increasingly brutal and unwarranted character assassination. Brian was shown to be uncharacteristcally inept, unreliable, impetuous. It was nasty stuff.

I think it would be pretty clear to anybody reading that the intention here was probably to break the character down and build them back up again. But a) That was completely unneccessary, so close to his having been successfully reshaped and rebuilt, and b) The knock 'em down to build them up approach only works if you have a long run of stories in which to do that. Remender didn't. He only really had 3 complete stories on Secret Avengers, before moving on. It was never going to work.
Captain Britain as an Avenger is a total no brainer. But waiting two years for his debut, and the delivering this? That was a huge wasted opportunity.

Excellent writeup Sword.

Remender was totally out of his depth when it came to Captain Britain. Now, it would have made some sense if say, Doc Ock had occupied his body, but alas that was not the case.

[Panic]

It was Claremont who did the real damage way back in Excalibur. As much as I dislike Remender's portrayal of CB, it really isn't very different to Claremont's, which really was one of the most ruthless character assassinations I've come across in Marvel, only rivalled by making Bishop a murdering maniac , and of course, Hank Pym's descent into wife-beating loser.

[Mark]

She was attacking him and he told her to stop and then he injected her with the nanites. It wasn't to turn her powers on and off. If I recall it shut them off all together.

Then he dumped her in New Jersey as bait to catch Amadeus Cho and sicked Doc Samson on them. This was before tricking her into sleeping with him by pretending that he didn't know what had happened to the Hulk.

In reality I think a lot of the problem was multiple writers and not an editor in sight. Some writers wanted to write Tony as a full out villain, others wanted to explain what he was doing and portray him as a tortured soul and others were just living the fantasy of what they'd do if they were Tony Stark. The last I suspect is why the She-Hulk thing was written and why she never did anything to Tony after that. If you were willing to spend all of your money on every single cw main and tie in issues and if you were willing to go online and read all of the interviews from the writers then you probably saw a pretty well balanced story. Of course to do that you'd have to ignore the complete lack of understanding or knowlege of the American legal system and just about every bit of past characterization, and you'd have to accept that Captain America was completely clueless on tactics.

[hawkeyefan]

Steve reacted badly to the SRA when Hill tried to arrest him before the act was even made law. He seemed really neutral about it before.

Yeah, I think if Stark had approached him about it beforehand, and explained the reasoning behind it...Stark had seen a glimpse of something called Project: Wideawake....then maybe Cap would have played ball. Like I said, both sides made terrible mistakes.

Then he dumped her in New Jersey as bait to catch Amadeus Cho and sicked Doc Samson on them. This was before tricking her into sleeping with him by pretending that he didn't know what had happened to the Hulk.

In reality I think a lot of the problem was multiple writers and not an editor in sight. Some writers wanted to write Tony as a full out villain, others wanted to explain what he was doing and portray him as a tortured soul and others were just living the fantasy of what they'd do if they were Tony Stark. The last I suspect is why the She-Hulk thing was written and why she never did anything to Tony after that. If you were willing to spend all of your money on every single cw main and tie in issues and if you were willing to go online and read all of the interviews from the writers then you probably saw a pretty well balanced story. Of course to do that you'd have to ignore the complete lack of understanding or knowlege of the American legal system and just about every bit of past characterization, and you'd have to accept that Captain America was completely clueless on tactics.

I think you have to pretty much ignore most of the peripheral tie ins in favor of going with the main series. She Hulk's tie in sounds like it was designed purely to cash in on the event, and added nothing to the overall story. Seems to me like most of the tie ins were like that.

[AcesX1X]

sounds like you just want to ignore the stories that make the heroes look bad? there was really no excuse for what tony did to she-hulk. but canon is canon.

[Panic]

sounds like you just want to ignore the stories that make the heroes look bad? there was really no excuse for what tony did to she-hulk. but canon is canon.

Except we know that Marvel are playing fast and loose with canon these days, and canon is no longer canon. Certainly not in the hands of superstar writers these days.

[hawkeyefan]

sounds like you just want to ignore the stories that make the heroes look bad? there was really no excuse for what tony did to she-hulk. but canon is canon.

No, I just want to ignore the stories that were tacked on and served no real purpose. As I've already said, both sides were wrong at times. I don't think the story can exist without the heroes looking bad.

And I couldn't care less about canon. There's a reason that She-Hulk story May as well not exist for all it's impact on canon.

Canon stinks.

[AcesX1X]

Except we know that Marvel are playing fast and loose with canon these days, and canon is no longer canon. Certainly not in the hands of superstar writers these days.

i think you mean continuity, not canon.

[Punisher007]

One of the big problems with CW is that Marvel could never decide what exactly the SRA entailed. How it was described varied depending on the writer and thus who seemed to be the more reasonable one also varied depending on the writer. It all got quite confusing.

[Nomads1]

No it wasn't Cyclops came out perfectly fine if not better because of AvX. During AvX he did nothing wrong and made all the right decisions.

Heck, I never bothered to read that piece of drek, however, even I know that is not true. To begin with, he fired the first shot that led to the whole war. Cap was being a tool, Wolverine had set him up by pettily providing Cap with inacurate intel, sure, all these arguements are valid, however, Cyclops didn't have to act all biggest man in the beach and fire the first shot. That was a stupid move, that a master strategist and tactician such as Cyclops should never have made.


As for Civil War, Iron Man and his gang (Reed, Hank, etc...) come off as border-line nazis in that mini-series, even though I agree with Hawkeyefan that, at least, their reasons for supporting registration were better exposed than the oppositions. However, nothing said explains why theey felt they had to turn their backs on all decency and become pratically jackbooted super-villains to get it done. But I think Cap came off just as bad as Tony in that one, if not worse (even though he was supposed to be the one that "was right"). Cap's position obviously was based on the premise that everyone should have the freedom to choose. However, what the hell did he expect to accomplsh by kicking the ass of those that disagreed with him. It was evident that he had no gameplan, no end goal. Something hard to belive comming from the greatest strategic mind of the MU. And that last battle... Seriously, he couldn't have thought of a better battlefield than the crowded streets of New York? CW was a very pretty book, with Steve McNiven's art, but, IMHO, it was a piece of crap in terms of writing, and AvsX is in the same boat.

Peace