Marvel NOW: New Avengers #1

[superboyprime]

By Jonathan Hickman (writer) and Steve Epting (penciler).







Suddenly, a rhinoceros appears out of thin air, having stampeded through a portal floating in mid-air.





As the specks in the sky get closer, it becomes apparent that they're people. They float down towards Earth, until landing.

Comments

[rainspirit]

This... this isn't written by Hudlin, right?

It's okay to go back to considering Black Panther to be a legitimate bad-ass, isn't it?

[darkknightjrk]

Hudlin would have never written something this badass. It was Hickman.

[ablackraptor]

Well, in fairness, while Hudlin was the worst for it, other people wrote him wrong. As much as I liked the series, EMH take on T'Challa was very Hudlin like, but without all the focus on race.

[kevinroc]

EMH felt more like Chistopher Priest/James Owsley's take on T'Challa. Priest described his take on T'Challa as being cool. And he didn't have T'Challa win every battle (in fact, sometimes even when T'Challa won, he lost. Such as his battle with Iron Fist.)

EMH depicted a T'Challa who oozed coolness. He was intelligent. He was snarky. He was charismatic. He was honorable. But he wasn't without his flaws and he didn't win every battle for the Avengers. (His response to the Skrull Invasion was the biggest example to demonstrate his character flaws. He really couldn't see the forest for the trees in those episodes.)

[cypherfdp]

EMH T'Challa was Batman.

[kevinroc]

Somebody said the best way to describe T'Challa (not just in EMH but in general) was to imagine Prince Akeem (Eddie Murphy's character from "Coming To America") crossed with Batman.

[majingojira]

That's a beautiful description.

[biod]

Wasn't his response to Secret Invasion "Be a bigger badass than everyone else".

[mrstatham]

His response to the Skrulls was basically sending a ship back full of dead Skrull with a message essentially reading 'YOU DON'T FUCK WITH WAKANDA'. Naturally, it was a highlight of the previous volume of Black Panther.

And naturally, not written by Hudlin.

[darkknightjrk]

Wasn't that Jason Aaron?

[shadowpsykie]

This seems.... interesting but... I don't know....

[ablackraptor]

T'Challa, on a team with Namor, after AvX, when everyone seems hellbent on blaming the P5 for their actions when possessed. Right.
If I could attach sound clips to my post, a slow, sarcastic clap would be added right here.

[kevinroc]

Have you seen the unlettered preview pages of T'Challa and Namor in New Avengers #2? Shippers are going to go wild over the obvious tension between them.

[shadowpsykie]

..... Imperious Sex? :D

[darkknightjrk]

That is kind-of the point--Hickman's said that at the start, everyone is at least mildly distrustful of each other and it's only going to get worse from here.

[cainofdreaming]

"Tell me... If I told you I came here to kill a world, would you try to stop me?"

Well, that's one pick-up line I've not heard before.

[icon_uk]

So is that Galactus being described perhaps?

[silicondream]

Yeah, there's no way Panther can't put "great destroyer," "endless appetite", and "kill a world" together and not be thinking Galactus--even if it turns out to be misdirection. If he doesn't mention it here, I figure he's being disingenuous.

[darkknightjrk]

Galactus' involvement in this story has been mentioned in the last New Avengers solicit (#5, I think), and it's not quite what you'd expect...

[wizardru]

Ah, a Black Panther who seems like a hybrid of Neil deGrasse-Tyson, Aquaman and Batman? I APPROVE.

[biod]

Hello, new favorite definition of Black Panther.

[tammy_moore]

I really like the aesthetics of this. The artist/writers look like they have really tried to ... evolve ... traditional styles to reflect technological advancement. Sometimes SF dealing with non-Eurocentric population either have them all wearing the same clothes they would have generations back* or they suddenly all wear jeans and t-shirts.

This is a fairly good try at how the clothing styles would develop with minimal westernizing influence and a lot of hi-tech.

* Is that clear? It's like sometimes the only design aesthetic they can think of is Western? So either people become fashion homogenized or their clothes go static at some historical point in the past and never change?

[thatnickguy]

I'm likely in the minority, but I never liked Panther's gloves and boots. It always looks like he's wearing black socks on his hands. I miss his design from Christopher Priest's run.

[silverhammerman]

This doesn't look particularly interesting to me, it seems kind of been there done that for Hickman. Maybe the rest of the issue was really good but just looking at this it seems like New Avengers is not the book for me.

[mrosa]

Hickman is really obsessed with utopianism, isn't he?

[darkknightjrk]

Sorta--he's said that Avengers will be the optimistic, utopian book, and New Avengers will be VERY dystopic.

[mrosa]

It's really indifferent to me what each will be. What I'm saying is that all three books by Hickman at the moment are concerned with people trying to improve the world: in TMP you have the American and Russian scientists trying to achieve an alliance; in NA there's the villain who wants to restart the universe or whatever to make it evolve; and in Avengers you have Black Panther's spiel about 'old men' and 'children' and the 'future,' always the future with this guy. Does he actually have other ideas or is he just a one-trick pony?

[darkknightjrk]

I get what you mean--I think I can live with the Avengers one more than TMP because with those two at least he isn't doing "action hero" versions of historical figures again like he did with SHIELD, which makes it far less trite.

But you're right in that I would like to see Hickman do a story that doesn't immediately link to futurism.

[doodleboy]

I don't necessarily mind the futurism, at least in moderation.

If you look hard enough every creator has tropes that they go back to. Rucka's are dead mothers, father issues, and daughters. Miyazaki's work is about flight, war, the environment, childhood memories. Mark Millar... let's not get into Mark Millar.

When done in moderation it becomes the writer's voice, when not done in moderation it becomes the writer's formula.

One thing I don't care for in his writing is the whole "Boy's club" aspect of it though. Alot of his comics seems to be great male leaders doing great things.

[darkknightjrk]

It's funny, that last part is something that Hickman is seemingly going to address in his Avengers/New Avengers books. His idea is that the Illuminati are the old guard, the conservatives, and the Avengers are the new, the progressives. It should be noted that a lot of the new cosmic characters, like Smasher and the new Captain Universe are women.

[doodleboy]

I have mixed feelings about this issue. On one hand Hickman is doing a great job of selling the illuminati, much better then Bendis.

On the other hand, while I know it's supposed to be a counterpoint to the Avengers, it really does have the exact same plot as Avengers #1.

Cosmic omnicidal villain with vague motives appears, heroes come in all badass, heroes get their asses kicked, hero calls for help.

[skemono]

Wait, this is supposed to be different from Avengers #1? I thought for sure this was the same villain they were going up against, and the books were just tie-ins!

[doodleboy]

Haven't read many interviews so I'm not sure about tie-ins.

Seemed like it to me. Double checked. The villain here is Black Swan, and an alternate version of Maniforld. The villains in Avengers 1 is Ex Nihilo, Aleph, and Abyss. Plus Tony Stark makes an appearance in this book.

Knowing Hickman the titles may share the same plot at some point though.