Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers books are high-minded and interesting, but if you crave good old-fashioned banter-filled team-book shenanigans, Al Ewing’s Mighty Avengers is the place to be. Luke Cage’s fledgling offshoot team is trying to establish themselves as a new street level team that isn’t restricted to street level threats – whoever needs them will get them – and he’s insisting that they’re not heroes for hire, and they won’t accept money from clients… and that puts Superior Spider-Man in the haughty ‘told you so’ mode. In fact, Supey Spidey is insistent on actually leading the team, which nobody else really wants. It seems everybody’s noticed that Spider-Man is a huge jerk these days, and Mighty Avengers #4 contains the best theory I’ve heard from anybody in the Marvel Universe about why he might’ve had such a drastic personality shift.
A guy named Dave Griffith, part-owner of The Gem – an old movie theater that the MAs are trying to make their new headquarters, asserts it was probably Atlas Shrugged. “It’s ‘changed his life.’ Saw it all the time in film school.” I love the notion that someone could go from Peter Parker to Otto Octavius by becoming an Ayn Randroid.
MA #4 is all about ‘well, we came together during Infinity, so what now?’ While the team is trying to set up and figure out who’s on it – Falcon wants to join and remind everybody that he’s more than just a permanent adjunct to Captain America, and Cage insists that they may call themselves Avengers, but they want independence from the Tony Stark team, etc. – there’s also some Inhumanity-related mystical shenanigans going on with the ruins of Attilan in the Hudson River, something our Splendiferous Spider Hero has to deal with eventually. Oh, and the big news is our mystery member – who the team knows but the readers don’t (which is a nice twist) and who dressed up in that Bootleg Spidey outfit just because he can’t be seen in public – gets a trade-up from the green-and-purple knock-off look to Hawkeye’s old gear, meaning we’ve got a new Ronin. My money’s on this guy turning out to be Blade, due to his penchant for wearing a black trenchcoat and being able to talk shit with Cage while also consulting with Kaluu The Immortal Black Magician through a crystal ball. Then again, why would he need to hide from the government? Then even more again, this is a high profile superteam, and usually Blade works in the shadows.
It’s all entertaining banter, albeit with Greg Land busting out his douchebag smiles on everybody’s faces again. Seriously, Land cannot draw a genuine warm smile – it always has some layer of smug-ass to it. Ewing’s dialogue and plotting balance it out, though, because the book is fun – and the final page is another example of jeezy creezy but Superior Spider-Man is such a dick.
So check into Mighty Avengers, because it’s a damn good time featuring a nice mix of very popular characters and folks you don’t often see – including a Blue Marvel team-up with Hauptmann Deutschland, The Captain America of Germany. That happens in Mighty Avengers #4. You know you want to see that.
