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Terry Hooper-Scharf

Thursday 9 June 2022

Avengers #56 The Saga of Jane



JANE FOSTER TAKES THE SPOTLIGHT! She once famously wielded Mjolnir as Thor, Goddess of Thunder. Today, she guards the worlds of the living and the dead as the winged Valkyrie. Now, those two versions of the same mighty hero somehow find themselves face-to-face, in a desperate bid to save the soul of Jane Foster.

And here we go again. Since this new volume started we have had the "one million years ago" saga where the Avengers did not appear. And every so often we get an issue or two where...the Avengers do not appear. Guess what? the Avengers do not appear in this one either.

We had interesting stories develop with inconsistencies such as Gorilla Man pounding Tony Stark to the point that there were huge blood spurts everywhere...but Stark recovered enough next issue and his beating was not referred to...or how he recovered. Hey, new Black Panther movie -Black Panther seems to have his own title called The Avengers. She Hulk gets TV series announced and guess who features solo or more heavily in the title formerly known as The Avengers?

We know have a new Thor movie featuring Jane Foster as...Lady Thor or whatever and here we have an entire solo story. A one off (I hope) in the title formerly known as The Avengers.

At times the writing seems inconsistent at best. It's almost as though there is no editor involved...oh. Tom Brevoort so no editor involved as Tom specialises in trying on silly little hats that he thinks makes him look hip and cool rather than a clown.

As for the writing...in the old days (up until Marvel's fall in quality in the mid 1990s when continuity and writing really hit rock bottom) an editor would read -READ- the scripts to insure continuity and not just sit back and look in a mirror and say "I'm hip! I'm cool!"- the scripts would have plots presented by the writer and anything "off" would be spotted and corrected.

I think that what we are seeing is Jason Aaron's burst of creative writing flicker down to a dying ember. there are sudden glimmers of hope with a good story that then seems to be tossed aside for something...far, far less.

What made The Avengers such a success? It was a title where there was a group of heroes -it broke the mould by having ex-villains join and reform. It dealt with the Cold War and it dealt with issues such as racism, social deprivation BUT always delivered a good, solid story that was part of continuity.  Now its just "throw it all around who cares -the movies and TV make the money!"

Continuity and good solid story telling has been thrown aside ever since Avengers Assemble became a success. Hawkeye's appearance had to change to fit in and...it became a mess. The Avengers was a good solid read and fun -the art in the current series has been okay so far with the odd major bump- and it beat Justice League of America because of that hands down.  Having said that, after the 6th (?) reboot of Justice League I dropped following the book completely.

The comics are the comics NOT the movies and those going to the movies do not give a wet damn over the comic and never read them.

To me this is one long drawn out and slow death of a title that deserves more.

Tom Brevoort's resignation would help.

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