Meet the new teams, mostly like the old teams.

[colonel_green]

Two new covers for the upcoming relaunches of Avengers and New Avengers, revealing a few more potential team-members.


First, for New Avengers:



Four of the five were previously announced, but this clears up any lingering speculation that Ms. Marvel is going to be Siege cannon fodder.  I never thought that was likely, but nice to see it put to rest.

Over in Avengers:



Are Peter and Logan pulling double-duty, or are they just guesting?  I'm guessing the generic blond guy in the back there is Steve.

Hi Simon...oh dear.




 title: new avengers, title: avengers, creator: john romita jr., creator: stuart immonen, publisher: marvel comics

Comments

[cainofdreaming]

Hi Simon...oh dear.

"My hands are growing out of my back! Oh the humanity! I never should have taken those ionic steroids."

[valtyr]

Man, in that second one, I love how even the armour has the same expression. HEY EVERYONE CAN YOU MAKE YOUR MOUTH RECTAGULAR? SPIDEY, YOU'RE NOT A TEAM PLAYER. IRON MAN, YOU'RE CHEATING.

Also, I sort of want Steve to be heroing in a t-shirt and jeans. Eh, why bother with a costume.

And everyone's fingers are rolled flat. I see you, John Romita Jr. And I don't know what position Wonder Man's legs are meant to be in but I guess it might explain all the looks of shock.

I like the first one. Wolverine's jaw is a little alarming, but overall, I like it. That's an absolute tank of a team.

[tacobob]

It's not as bad as this cover. Ugh. I do not like this artist's work. Not a bit.

[dalf]

Ah, good old Humberto Ramos.
I like him on his own creator owned projects. His art is very interesting, and he has a good eye for storytelling. But I really don't like his art on established Marvel characters.

[tacobob]

His characters always have that wind-tunnel mouth thing going. Ack.

[dalf]

Yes, exactly. Weird anatomy, crazy expressions, stuff like that. His art is way too distracting to work on mainstream superhero comics--it should be more functional and to the point.

[20thcenturyvole]

Dear God, it's like Liefeld took cartooning classes. That, or Cap's wearing a sumo suit under his armour.

[phosfate]

That's not a cookie, Cap.

[tammy_moore]

So Thing, Luke Cage and Ms Marvel hit people, Wolvie slashes them and Spidey...tickles them when he isn't getting ready to whack Iron Man in the back of the head with his crotch?

[valtyr]

Spidey ties up the villains.

[lamashtar]

He'll be the brain of the team.

[akodo_rokku]

I still think Ben and Luke are redundant in more ways than one. Not only do they have the same powerset and roughly the same power level, but Bendis has made Luke very similar in character and personality to Ben over the last few years as well.

[jlroberson]

It's Ben's turn once a decade.

[icon_uk]

My first thought was "The first team's got THREE people whose powers are, essentially, super-strength (Luke, Ben and Peter), and one whose power is superstrength and flight (Carol). That's not limiting at all."

[colonel_green]

And Jewel.

Carol has energy blasts too.

I agree it's not a diverse lineup, but I imagine Bendis will be using this team for lower level crime stuff.

[bluefall]

Pete is very agile and sticks to things - not as good as flight, but still more to the table than just strength. Plus, he has a decent immobilizing ranged attack. Carol's a bit more diverse than just flying brick as well; aside from her blasts, she can also absorb energy, which is a rare and useful trick that is pretty much never used as impressively and ingeniously by writers as Carol should be capable of.

But, yeah... lotta tanks there.

[xammax]

Finally... their abusing Spidey like the abuse Wolverine.... and not that other way they usually abuse him.

[lamashtar]

Maybe Spidey's just following Wolverine! Next, he joins the X-men!

[crabby_lioness]

That's the only Big Three team he's never tried to join.

[lamashtar]

Well, there's no major celebrity or money in it. But he totally should! I'm so sick of the artificial division between mutants and altered-humans.

[crabby_lioness]

Longshot already broke that barrier. But it exists to remind us that all the artificial distinctions humans discriminate against are stupid.

[skalja]

It's never really made sense to me. Like, mutants are scary, but if you got bitten by a radioactive parakeet? No problem! And you'd think altered humans with secret identities (like Spidey) would get a lot of mutant hate on top of everything else.

[tzipwich]

There's a funny bit in Generation X about that. Skin uses his powers to save a drowning kid, and the kid says he doesn't want to be rescued by a "mutie", then Skin says something along the lines of, "I'm not a mutant! I was just bitten by a radioactive elephant when I was younger!" and the kid is like, well okay then, proceed with the saving.

[jlroberson]

Well, I for one wondered when they'd give Wolverine more exposure. An obscure character like him deserves his due.

[dcbanacek.livejournal.com]

Which ones Wolverine?

[sailorlibra]

Like you're one to talk about hair, Thor.

[flidgetjerome]

I was keeping my peace before because Tony was in a coma and it seemed reasonable to assume that that was Rodney in the Iron Man suit but now Tony's back and . . .

The Avengers roster is going to be an all-white team? Okay, admittedly, that's certainly very retro. I'd hardly say it's something I'm nostalgic for, though.

I just have to...

[aulayan]

Re: I just have to...

[neo_prodigy]

*falls the fuck out laughing*

Re: I just have to...

[skywaterblue]

Seeing this scan again makes me wonder why Spider-Man couldn't be black.

[bluefall]

Look, at least one of the teams has more than one woman, that is already more than reasonable concession to your crazy hatred for straight white males, WHY CAN'T YOU NUTJOB PC POLICE LEAVE US ALONE.

[aulayan]

This was my second thought. I, of course, went with the scan above because it's funnier.

In all honesty, this is sad. Maybe I'm wrong, I probably am, but when I came into comics in the mid 90s, it seemed the Avengers were all characters who I (Mostly) had not heard of before. And it *worked* for me. That became the type of team book I want. The one whose full of heroes who don't have their own books. In a better selling system, maybe their own mini series, but not their own books. It made the book seem more...important.

Because for me, I'm all about the character. I don't care what gender the character is, or the colour of their skin (Unless the writer just loves stereotypes or colorist can't handle it. Hi Monet, and Conner), I just love *characters* and the story arcs they can go through. So team books always felt to me as if they were a deal. You got the same amount of story in 22 pages as other books, but more characters, so (possibly) more character development.

Of course this was the 90s. So maybe the development wasn't always good....

[mullon]

How the Hell can you get sameface on a man, a woman, and an orange rock guy?

[kingrockwell]

I'd hardly call that sameface. While they're wearing similar expressions, they certainly have very distinct facial builds, which is the complaint sameface describes.

[tacobob]

It's called TEAM WORK!

And Luke needs his old name back. I like "Power Man". And he needs a costume. Not that ugly thing he used to wear, but something cool. I remember they had a crossover where he was wearing PRIME's costume. Very cool.

[lamashtar]

I thought his old costume was gorgeous.. :( But yeah, tired of this 'i'm a dude in shirt and jeans' stuff. He needs to recognize that he's a role model as a superhero! He needs to put on the tights!

[bj_l]

Why does he need a costume?

[lamashtar]

Because his grunge look is old and tired. He looks like Generic Black Man. Because superhero comic books have a tradition of pretty costumes and if I'm not getting that, I feel like I'm not getting my money's worth. I mean, it's okay to go normal clothes as a change or if that's that character's characterization, but Power Man is a superhero. Superhero's have costumes. If they do not have costumes, they aren't exactly superheroes. It's some book about people with supernormal powers. Again, not what I'm looking for in this particular title or character. If he doesn't want to wear the tights or name, then I'd rather he be phased to some other role.

[bj_l]

Is--is this a joke post?

[lamashtar]

::smacks the troll::

[bj_l]

I'm not trolling, I'm genuinely curious, this is the kind of post I'd see on other websites taking the piss.

I mean the idea that superheroes have to wear a costume is just ridiculous. I don't see a problem at all with Cage wearing just casual clothes. I've never really seen what he's wearing as grunge either. The casuals fit his character extremely well, and if anything, I would love for Jessica to go into battle wearing casuals, alongside of him.

Costumes are all well and good, but, really I don't read superhero comics for them. Especially since most of them are horribly impractical and stupid.

If he absolutely had to wear a costume, I'd prefer it be a team-wide, low key affair like Quitely's X-Men designs.

Ask ME a rhetorical question will you

[lamashtar]

::has to look up definition of 'taking the piss'::

Ah. Yes, I was being slightly mocking. But 'there is truth in humor!'

The problem is definitions. Stories about people with extranormal powers are either scifi or fantasy. People who dedicate their lives to heroic altruism are often termed 'adventurers' in modern settings; to my knowledge, only the Greeks called such people 'heroes' (I expect this is where the definition of the hero as the protagonist came from. The protagonist might be the hero of the story, but he does not have to be a hero.). There was no expectation of a particular moral code, killing the enemy was pretty much expected. The morality play part came in from the conflicts with the orders of actual gods or large-scale politics.

However, the modern definition of 'hero' is different. Quickly checking the dictionary to avoid rampant stupidity..

1. a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.
2. a person who, in the opinion of others, has heroic qualities or has performed a heroic act and is regarded as a model or ideal: He was a local hero when he saved the drowning child.
3. the principal male character in a story, play, film, etc.
4. Classical Mythology.
a. a being of godlike prowess and beneficence who often came to be honored as a divinity.
b. (in the Homeric period) a warrior-chieftain of special strength, courage, or ability.
c. (in later antiquity) an immortal being; demigod.

For this conversation, I shall define hero as a person who attempts brave, noble deeds. Feeding the hungry is noble, but not brave. Jumping over Niagara Falls is brave, but not noble.

The superhero genre is a particular form. Not mere scifi or fantasy, it's characterized by a costume, probably originally meant to be part of the 'show' of the story, but definitely underlining that this person was outside the norms of society. Not all superhero-types have powers, the pulp heroes fall within this genre. To give an example, I love the anti-hero Mike Hammer, who runs around shooting bad guys, but he isn't a pulp hero. He's just a a guy. His setting is--I think--noir, meaning he is the only one who sees injustice and is willing and able to do whatever is necessary to combat it, the cops usually being useless or corrupt. In order for Hammer to be a pulp hero, he'd have to wear a distinctive outfit and deliberately go out looking for injustice, instead of nonchalantly waiting for it to be brought to his PI office.

So, thinking as I go...the 'superhero' is generally defined by looking for injustice in some manner and having a distinctive look, and more narrowly by being heroic--anti-heroes using more ignoble means to combat injustice (ignoble varying depending on your point of view). Nexus and Punisher are super-anti-heroes.

Now, Luke was always a little different. He dressed like a hero, but he tried to get paid for his heroics..things just aren't the same as ancient times, when people felt more obligated by your protection...but he was NEVER just a mercernary. I remember one time when Luke took down some muggers and the cops mocked him by throwing him a dime, because they said that was the only reason he did the heroics. He was deeply hurt and offended. But, as evidenced by those ancients and the modern Avengers' paychecks, getting PAID does not make your actions not heroic. Firemen are always heroic. Police are often heroic. Soldiers are sometimes heroic. But most of us who took the job *for* money wouldn't get offended if someone suggested we *only* did it for the money. People who joined the military because of 9/11? VERY upset at the idea of being used against someone who may not be a bad guy.

What you're talking about is wanting to read a story about bodyguard/private detectives/cops with cool powers. Like the Daughters of the Dragon. But they're not strictly superheroes. Almost..but not quite. The Black Widow is also on the shady side of the genre, but she is portrayed enough acting as a superhero to count. Also, the costume. Defying some conventions can make a character interesting, but too many and the character becomes pointless in that particular setting.

Especially in comic books, the visual is important. We see that these people are different. We see that they have really interesting looks that most people can't get away with in real life. Many of those looks serve double purpose to call back to the gods whose superegos ruled morality. Most unfortunately, when I say Luke looks like Generic Black Man, its due to the poor artwork that means you can't really tell him apart from any other black man who might happen to be in his civilian clothes in the picture. Costumes allow us to figure out that this blond woman is Invisible Woman, instead of Ms Marvel, or any other blond woman standing around. They allow us as fans to feel good when we see the costume, not go "who the hell is that?" They allow marketing, and the publicizing of this particular person. Luke hasn't got a lot of marketing/publicizing ability right now.

Luke as superpowered guy is fine if that's the kind of story you want to read, but in my superhero comics I like when the heroes are actual superheroes. Not just guys. If you're going to read a genre, respect it's conventions.

I freely admit I've never been to college and I might be wrong in my literary assumptions.

[kingrockwell]

Wasn't Luke supposed to be leading the Thunderbolts?

[colonel_green]

He's in both books.

[jlroberson]

Because Marvel certainly doesn't have enough characters to go around.

As there's already plenty of Avengers books, why not make every team book an Avengers book and cut to the chase?

[pyynk]

Dear JRJR,

If you have two people who run around in very similar costumes, if only a small piece of the full costume is show, it's best if you get the elements that are visible right. Head wings, for example, aren't interchangeable.

Signed,

Fans of Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes

[punishermax]

This looks god damn awesome.

[arilou_skiff]

Is Bendis doing both Avengers titles?

[colonel_green]

Both of these.

[arilou_skiff]

:(

I don't really mind Bendis as much as some, but I could use SOMEONE else too on the Avengers.

[neuhallidae]

Wait, so Bendis is doing both of the "primary" team books (as much as Mighty was probably supposed to be a primary book, I feel Dark was much more hyped as one) and Gage is doing Academy? So, really, the only things that changed at all for this "shining new direction" are Brubaker and Parker.

[colonel_green]

In terms of creative teams, pretty much. It seems more like a change of theme/status quo in-universe than at the creator level (which, if Marvel was happy with how the books were being written, I wouldn't want them to change things just for the sake of it).

[jlroberson]

That'll help me tell them apart.

[shadowpsykie]

aweee i really wana see Jessica on a cover :(

[icon_uk]

Maybe she is, and is wearing a padded out Spider-Man costume on one of the covers, just to confuse people! :)

[punishermax]

She and Peter slept together and her costume got lost so she had to borrow one of his.

[myniamh]

That's an awful lot of binding to put herself through. :(

[alienist]

Is there a reason Ben's joining the Avengers?

...Also, are there going to be two Hawkeyes now?

[colonel_green]

The answer to both questions is "don't know".

[alienist]

I thought it might be.

[valtyr]

Nothing bad better happen to Kate. >:[

[alienist]

Quite. >:|

[halloweenjack]

It's almost as if Bendis is pulling cards at random out of the Marvel deck. Nova will eventually show up, even though he's supposed to be a couple of galaxies away dealing with the Cancerverse.

[comicoz]

The overuse of spidey is getting annoying..

Personally, I like WonderMan as a good guy. One of the very first books I made sure I had a full run of was Wonderman, back when I first got into comics. I found him to be an interesting character for one reason or another. I'm a bit bummed that it looks like he will be eeeevvviiillllll now.

[koschei]

WEll, guess we have our first nominee for next year's Dailies.

[bj_l]

Based on a promo image, with no idea of the story whatsoever, of course!

[thatnickguy]

I'm more excited for the announced line-up for the upcoming Guardians of the Globe. Invincible, Spawn, Barack Obama and Gary Potter!

[theanswer]

Romita Jr. has certainly lost his touch.

Ugh, Romita Jnr

[jazzypom]

His art has crossed over into fug.

[elsewhere7.livejournal.com]

2nd cover, who is that behind Cap and Jessica?

[magus_69]

Presumably Steve.

[r0b666]

Ok, so let's review...

Wolverine is on 4 teams (X-Men, X-Force and the 2 different avengers teams) and appearing in in six different team books. Not counting his other titles.

Spider-Man is on two Avengers teams has a million of his own books and is guest starring everywhere. So much for being a loner.

The Thing is on the FF *and* the Avengers now. What is he the Flash???

Luke Cage is an Avenger and in charge of the Thunderbolts.

All the characters that Marvel has at their disposal and these are the teams we get?

Guess Hank Pym is going back to being a nobody again, huh?

[neuhallidae]

He could be in Academy, since we have no clue whatsoever who the teaching staff is yet. Or maybe he'll look at all the roster crap and be like "You know what, screw this," and go have SCIENCE! adventures in space or something.

A girl can dream.

[r0b666]

Yeah. While I thought some of the stuff in Mighty Avengers was a little forced *cough* Scientist Supreme *cough* I am all for Hank getting more respect and being used properly by creators.

[neuhallidae]

Until that stupid plot note came up, he reminded me of his West Coast Avengers incarnation, which is one of my favorite versions of him ever. I missed the dude who was actually a genius and could pull off shit like carrying around an entire Quinjet in his shirt pocket.

[r0b666]

I loved that incarnation. It shows Pym can be competent (when written properly) without them trying to force status on him.

[aaron_bourque]

The Thing.
Luke Cage.
Ms. Marvel.
Wolverine.
Spider-Man.

EARTH'S MIGHTIEST HEROES!!!

That's a weak, weak-ass team.

[protogarrett]

Better hope a scientist or telepath doesn't attack. They'll be fucked eight ways from Tuesday.

[aaron_bourque]

This is The Champions, not The Avengers!!!

[protogarrett]

I think The Champions had more firepower...

[aaron_bourque]

They at least had some supernatural linebackers . . .

[colonel_green]

The Avengers rarely have a telepath, surprisingly. The X-Men are the only one of the MU's big three teams to consistently make use of that powerset.

[aaron_bourque]

But they usually have Captain America or another guy with massive willpower.

[phosfate]

Carol and Peter both have a bit of telepathic defense. Peter's got his Spider-sense, and Carol her rarely-used Seventh Sense, unless that's been written out.

[janegray]

Normally I'd say "but Peter is a scientist!", but since Marvel has turned him into an idiot...

[protogarrett]

I have to say I am not excited about either of these teams. Logan and Spidey on both? Really? No other viable candidates in the entire MU?

As for the Thing? Why?

Honestly though, I was very meh when they debuted the cast for the current Mighty Avengers and that, IMO, has been the best Avengers team in a long time.

[palabradot]

That first team there is very...*tanky*. You know, the ones you throw in and say "Okay, hold the line while we get Team Two to back you up."

"Where is team two? We'll..ah...get back to you on that."

Three issues and lots of shredded clothing later, they show up.

[theanswer]

I think some S_Ders need to be educated on what a mullet is.