Rate it: Avengers/New Avengers by Jonathan Hickman

[LifeIsILL]

The Infinity event was pretty average....and pointless.

I just remember the New Avengers book being a lot better than the Avengers one.

[CentralPower]

Hickman's Avengers (both series) was the first time I can recall giving a rat's ass about the Avengers in years. Bendis' run(s) was Bendis, readable but light on ideas and follow-through. (I find that Bendis has few runs that I am inclined to keep and refer back to. Sampling over time works well enough.)

Hickman took full advantage of the fact he was writing the lead-in to a reboot, and put the Avengers through a no-win hell. Letting the team lose was not a big deal. It was a reboot. But, he had the team lose badly. (There is a saying about only being able to see a great boxer while they are losing. Not much Golden Gloves material on Hickman's Avengers team.)

Planning to go back and pick up his Fantastic Four and SHIELD runs at some point. And, "East of West".




[/QUOTE]

If that holds any water, there is no reason to bother with comics (or tv, or movies...) at all.

[TakoM]

"Well done but not for me" is how I'd describe it.

It didn't feel like the Avengers to me, even in the way that Bendis's did, because Hickman made a deliberate choice to go that way and not refer to past Avengers history. (He said his Fantastic Four run was nostalgic and he wanted his Avengers run to be forward-looking.) That's his decision and probably even a good business decision after the 2012 movie redefined what "the Avengers" were. But I'm personally more interested in continuity with the past of the team.

Also the basic structure of a slow buildup to a big crisis is not really for me either. Again, it's well done if that's the kind of thing you like.

I always wondered if this joke from Uncanny Avengers was aimed at Hickman Avengers. Probably not but I've seen it used that way. Anyway I think Hickvengers is better done than most traditional Avengers books, like, well, Uncanny Avengers.

The books had great tension but what the tension made was the great amount of contradictions on various levels. People wanted to see the resolution of it. The art was also great but the decompressed style was clearly a money grap. In the end for the most part we didn't get a closure of all the contradiction(which were patly impossible) this is where its fails.

This is also the reason most of those I can't read again there is no point in it and from a story perspective some problems got dragged into the next universe. This is also the reason people believe this was meant for a reboot besides that DC also use such stories for their reboots.

The books itself with another end could have become really interesting with rereadability but the way it is the comic panel says the truth.

[Nomads1]

I'd describe it as ambitious, however, personally, I think it was a bit souless. While enjoyable, i have no emotional attachment to it. It was without a doubt a step up after the dredge that were the Bendis years, however I really didn't find it memorable. Ewing's Mighty was my favorite Avengers title during those years. I also wish Hickman had worked more with past Avengers, instead of introducing so many new members that ended up being throw away characters. All in all, I'd rate it as a 7, maybe. Good, enjoyable, but, IMHO, not memorable.

Peace

[George Ndebele]

What do you think about his run in The Avengers titles ??



I personally liked it a lot and place it alongside Kurt Busiek´s run as one of the best runs on The Avengers.

Its Great and if you look at it ,Hickman's Avengers is actually the biggest story in marvel history (probably DC too) It ran through two series ,had two events and it included probably the biggest line up ever....many people might hate it but you cannot deny that it was huge

[JKtheMac]

A couple of people have said this isn't for rereading. I can only say I have read it right through three times and parts much more. That for me is part of the appeal. Much of the resolution and many of the layered themes are quite subtle and rewarding to explore fully.

[scribbleMind]

4.5/5

Some of his criticism is legit. He didn't take a character-first approach on this, but I think that's alright every once and a while as long as you don't Bendis it up. After all, we know these characters pretty intimately already. I don't mind it when once and a while a writer pulls what Warren Ellis did with Moon Knight and says, "screw character development, let's just be accurate and awesome." Really, I wouldn't mind it with other solo books either. Steve Rogers doesn't NEED anymore great stretches of character development. He could totally pull series of rad single issue stories. That said, Avengers World patched up that flaw a bit. Sure it wasn't written by Hickman, but he helped guide it, and it played largely into the tapestry of what was happening then and what is happening now, and was a lot of fun compared to the seriousness of the other two books.

[Iron Maiden]

His New Avengers was so much better than Bendis. The moral discussions about the Incursions always generated very engrossing posts here with each issue. And not once did the Illuminati order Chinese.

I think his Fantastic Four / FF was a shade better but I think combined with Secret Wars makes an impressive body of work that will be hard to top or even attempt. If one could call any storyline epic this is the one that is the Father of all Epics.

[Vic Vega]

It had pacing issues and in a odd sort of way actually it often felt like it had lower stakes than Bendis' Avengers. Because so much of the Avengers side of the
run felt kinda impersonal. The New Avengers stuff was a lot better on that front.

Tho I really enjoyed Steve Rogers Ahab like devotion to get payback against Tony Stark (to the point of being willing to die killing him).

But I give plenty of props to Hickman for taking the idea of the Avengers as a world protecting force to its ultimate and somewhat unnerving logical conclusion.

And his humorous issues were actually funny. So there was that.

I guess the main problem with his Avengers run was that in the end it wasn't about the Avengers, it was about the Marvel Universe in general.

[CentralPower]

How was Hickman's SHIELD run?

Bendis' run on "Avengers" was a different type of series. When a series changes creative teams, it helps to see it as a half-clean start using different characters. (Bendis Iron Man =/= Gillen Iron Man =/= Hickman Iron Man) Bendis was "street", hence his Illuminati (effectively super executives in a boardroom) ordering take-out. Hickman was high concept cosmic, hence his Illuminati (effectively gods) not eating on panel.

In a way, Bendis was more traditional Marvel, in that the heroes interacted with the real world. (His Avengers would gather around a television and banter-comment about what they were watching (such as news reports about Osborn's Avengers). Hickman's Avengers read newspapers and watched the news. But, we only saw them planning and working around what they saw/read. Hickman's team is a pantheon, similar to the Justice League.

his is also the reason most of those I can't read again there is no point in it

The point of the run was to put the Avengers in to a no-win scenario. The resolution was that "everything dies".

ts Great and if you look at it ,Hickman's Avengers is actually the biggest story in marvel history (probably DC too) It ran through two series ,had two events and it included probably the biggest line up ever....many people might hate it but you cannot deny that it was huge

"Crisis on Infinite Earths", "Secret Wars" and "Infinity War" might match Hickman's run for size. (The first two had central events that ran for a year, and crossed in to every concurrent series.) Anybody wanna sit down and count issues?

A couple of people have said this isn't for rereading. I can only say I have read it right through three times and parts much more. That for me is part of the appeal. Much of the resolution and many of the layered themes are quite subtle and rewarding to explore fully.

I did not read the early issues as they came out (started with "Other Worlds"). But, if somebody had read them from the beginning, "Avengers World" would be worth rereading after "Everything Dies" (which was published after but set before "Avengers World"). Tony waking Steve up in the middle of the night to talk about his great idea reads much differently if one assumes "Everything Dies".

[George Ndebele]

I think Hickman's run was just what the Avengers needed after Bendis' street level Avengers run and i am still upset that Hickman didnt write a Black Panther solo as he had a good grasp on him

[Iron Maiden]

"Crisis on Infinite Earths", "Secret Wars" and "Infinity War" might match Hickman's run for size. (The first two had central events that ran for a year, and crossed in to every concurrent series.) Anybody wanna sit down and count issues?

But did "Crisis on Infinite Earths" and "Infinity War" have one writer? I wouldn't count cross over issues of those because if you do there were quite a few crossovers done by other writers when you're talking about the last phase of this multi issue epic. You can almost go back to when Hickman was writing Fantastic Four: Secret Invasion because that is when Reed developed the Bridge. But that might not be a solid enough link. I should go back and read that because he may have dropped a few things in there. He did the FF: Secret Invasion before starting on Fantastic Four.

Maybe it's just me but IMO the Avengers don't fit as "street level" heroes. That's what you have Spider-Man, and Daredevil for. Of course for a sales boost and fan interest, they got added to the team anyway. The Avengers should be more for national/global and up types of events.

[MindofShadow]

Some of the issues I've had with it were...

- Non infinity Avengers issues until TRO. The first arc dealing with the Golden Ram dude was solid. I found everything after that to be a waste of time minus Infinity, which I thought was great, all the way up to TRO. I've recently reread it and I found myself bored compared to the much larger issues New Avengers was dealing with.

- Time jumps are a cop out, both in preTRO and SW. Way too much happened off panel because hickman got bogged down in minutia at times.

[CentralPower]

Fair point about how much of the event/arc was written by one guy. Hickman wrote almost all of the relevant "Avengers" series, with "Avengers World" being passed between 3 or 4 writers. By that standard, Hickman would likely win.

Maybe it's just me but IMO the Avengers don't fit as "street level" heroes. That's what you have Spider-Man, and Daredevil for. Of course for a sales boost and fan interest, they got added to the team anyway. The Avengers should be more for national/global and up types of events.

1970s Avengers were "street". They used to walk in to the mansion wearing over-coats (because....uh, street clothes). There is precedent for how Bendis handled it.

[gurkle]

If anything the Avengers have more history as a small-scale team fighting small-scale threats. From the Cap's Kooky Quartet era to the Busiek era where they often fought kind of lame villains (Moses Magnum, the Exemplars). They sometimes get caught up in cosmic shenanigans and universe-threatening villains, but not nearly as often as the Justice League or for that matter the Fantastic Four or the X-Men.

So there was precedent for what Bendis was doing and there was also room for Hickman's approach, which was to treat the Avengers as the biggest fighting force that takes on the biggest threats, because that hadn't been done much before. To me that's part of why it doesn't "feel like the Avengers" but that's just personal taste; there was a good argument for trying something new with the team, especially since Hickman's more comfortable with that approach than the soap opera stuff.