The Mighty Avengers #4

[history79]

8 pages of 24

Comments

[byc]

I find the lack of butt shots disturbing :)

[scorntx]

Tony's little weather-control experiment is really just sort of random.
Like, it's part of the plot, but it's so utterly irrelevant to the actual proceedings and then never brought up again...
(Why, it's almost as if it were brought in to take up an extra issue!)

I could see why Tony'd keep it a secret, given the tenor of the Marvel universe someone would inevitably come along, hi-jack it and everyone would swear off trying to control the weather forever.

-"Plan B"-
"Which, in hindsight, should've been Plan A."
Look, I took over Tony Stark's body, so excuse me if I'm too distracted by his sheer wealth of issues to be firing on all cylinders.
(Another idea that hasn't turned out too great in execution. Not my day...)

Still not absolutely clear why Ultron's plan is to murder Lindy Lee.
... like, what is Ultron expecting to gain from it?
"I will make the nigh-unstoppable superman violently angry with me... why is this my plan?!! Oh, Pym, this is because I took over Stark, isn't it."

And does it really take six increasingly smaller shots of a screen to establish Ultron is hacking the missiles? Really?

[byc]

The Sentry is semi-well known for being mentally unstable at this point. Ultron (for reasons I cannot remember or forgotten), wanted to unleash the Void to end humanity I believe.

[mesmiranda]

Legit question: do these thought bubbles actually add anything to the story? Half the time they're just stuff that should've been apparent already in the dialogue, like "Oh my God!", "Oh, no..." and "@#(! Tony Stark." Why is Bendis doing this?

[scorntx]

Given the abundance of thought bubbles through this run of Avengers, compared to much of Bendis's work, it's possible he was trying them out for the sake of variety.

Either that or he's trying to sap what morsels of morale the Cho artwork hadn't taken and turn the reader into a dry cloth.
... probably the former.

[dc2houseofmystery]

I remember an interview when this title launched where Bendis explained he was trying something new with the thought balloons, and it's not something he carried over in other titles.

Because it's terrible.

[jlbarnett]

I like thought bubbles

[wizardru]

I fricking LOVE thought balloons...but these are not very well done. I mean, I grew up with them as a standard tool in the box for comics. Their gradual removal has been something I think it's kind of a loss. But their use should be for an internal monologue, to carry more value than just something the character wouldn't just mutter under their breath.

I mean, 'Fuck Tony Stark' is clearly contextually obvious and adds nothing to the scene, to Carol as a character and is presented in a way that's actually distracting from the narrative flow, IMHO. Having Carol think something useful that would either illustrate something about her character or her thinking would have a better choice. A thought balloon for the Sentry when he finds his dead wife? That might have been a good idea. We'd find out what he's thinking, how he's processing this moment, maybe an internal conflict...but instead Bendis is basically writing it as a movie/TV show, so we don't get anything from it.

Virtually every use of a thought balloon here is something the character could say out loud and it doesn't really change the story in any way, except maybe some characters would be more direct about their sexual attractions. When Black Widow takes control of the helicarrier, it wouldn't have been great to hear what she was thinking there...but instead it's written as a movie scene...and then we get Ares admiring her ass. Sometimes Bendis dialogue works and sometimes it doesn't...but if he wanted to use thought balloons, he should have used them effectively.

[speedingtortoise]

I'm glad I'm not the only one slowly being driven crazy by these

[angelophile]

At the time there had been quite a lot of discussion how thought bubbles had completely disappeared as a story telling device in Marvel comics. So Bendis appears to have taken the attitude "If you want thought bubbles, I'll give you thought bubbles!" Quite a number of people interpreted this as deliberate self sabotage or parody to back up the argument they were an outdated concept and that he wasn't exactly acting in good faith, but...

[razsolo]

I kinda think this title was Marvel's response to complaints about the classic Avengers setup no longer existing and that Bendis was going for old-school good guy vs bad guy superhero comics...which in theory is great, but back in the day thought bubbles added something other than yet ANOTHER layer of Bendis-speak to a scene. Also, the heroes weren't massive douchebags who weren't even remotely likeable. I'm imagining this story done by Roger Stern and there's a whole lot less "god I hate Tony Stark, my long-time ally and founder of this actual team" in it :p

[every_spiegel]

I scrolled through the pages absent-mindedly and just by looking on the frames and bubbles thought "That's Bendis, right?" - so I guess we can call it an artistic style :D

[shakalooloo]

It was meant to be a lead-up to Secret Invasion, to give readers an idea of who might or might not be a skrull. The way to tell is that non-skrulls think inane, stupid exclamations.

[mesmiranda]

Oh, well. Today I learned I'm not a Skrull, so that's a good thing.

[captainbellman]

I feel like, if you're subjecting us to this mess, you ought to balance it out with the equally messy run on "New Avengers" with Leinil Yu that happened concurrently.

[mizerous]

That's Femtron's Plan C.

[thehood]

So who do you think came up with the idea of a Female Ultron? Bendis or Cho? Because there's argument for both.

[razsolo]

I could see Bendis coming up with the concept of Ultron basing itself on Jan but I think the nekkid booby big butt lady is all Cho....I don't like Bendis's writing at all generally but I'll give the dude credit that he doesn't generally treat women characters whose names aren't Tigra as first and foremost eye candy

[thehood]

Yeah, i can see that. Especially the naked bit, that seems all Frank Cho.

[katefan]

Oh, that's right. I forgot that Bendis pitched any and all Tigra character development and also turned her into a victim when she was terrorized by The Hood.

Just when I think I've run out of things to hate about BMB someone points something out or reminds me of one I forgot. :)

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Seems everyone's ignoring the important question here.

Namely: What the hell is Ares using as a trigger?