New Avengers 4: The Collective [Anglais] [Broché]

The Collective, the fourth collected volume in Brian Michael Bendis' run on New Avengers, bridges the fallout to come from the conclusion of House of M, with the catastrophic events to come in Civil War. Strange and bad things are happening across the globe, and the New Avengers are dispatched to try to fix everything. As far as the story goes, that's about it. It's sad to say that the longer the run goes for, the worse that this book has gotten. Bendis is an incredibly talented writer who has crafted masterful runs on Alias and Daredevil, but with the New Avengers, he's been quick to nearly drop the ball on many occasions. Not to mention that once again, the Sentry, who is basically the Marvel version of Superman and the most interesting character on the New Avengers roster, is basically ignored here. Bendis set up so much promise with the second collected volume which focused on the Sentry, and here it just flounders. Mike Deodato's excellent artwork saves the Collective from being a complete turkey though, and although every volume has been released in hardcover form, if there was ever a story that didn't deserve it, this may not be at the top of the lost, but it's pretty close though. There are a few hinting elements at what's to come in Civil War, so for completists this may be worth a look, but you won't regret passing it up all together.

As with other volumes of the Bendis-led "New Avengers," this is something of a return to the days of good, old-fashioned superhero stories with straight-ahead action and reasonably witty dialogue. In this volume, reprinting issues #16-20, the Avengers face an unknown super-baddie from outerspace, a being so superpowerful that he basically takes the team apart until they use their brains to figure things out. The menace is so super-duper that most of the team's members are sidelined -- Luke Cage, Spider-Woman and Wolverine pretty much do nothing except tag along behind Iron Man (who is the most active member confronting the bad guy; The Sentry is later brought in as muscle). Captain America and Spider-Man lock horns with the new director of SHIELD, but they, too, basically contribute little to the action.

I thought this story was okay -- it didn't blow my mind, but then again I don't think that every comicbook needs to do that... sometimes it's fun just to watch heroes hit things and blow stuff up. Still, five issues is a long time to have most of the team act like hangers-on. Hopefully once the (yawn) "Civil War" story arc and the (geez, another mega-epic?) "Secret Invasion" plot get resolved, the editors can take things down a notch or two and give the "regular" members of the team something to do. Especially Luke Cage: he's one of the main reasons I'm checking the book out, and he's been more or less MIA so far. (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain book reviews)

Reprinting New Avengers #s 16-20, the volume "New Avengers: The Collective" kicks off almost immediately after the newly re-formed Avengers announced their return to the world (see New Avengers Vol. 3: Secrets and Lies, which is another great book), and one week after the "House Of M" event (see House of M (X-Men, New Avengers) for the main story and various other collections/individual issues for an even bigger picture), which is something SHIELD is trying very hard to determine the nature of, and wanting answers from the Avengers, in particular Tony Stark. SHIELD Director Maria Hill is also quite peeved with Tony for basically going over her head, with the public revelation that the Avengers are back in action.

Any questions Hill or anyone else has about the new Avengers wind up having to wait though, as, from out of nowhere, the world is confronted by a sudden new threat. 'Out of nowhere' threats sometimes come off bad, but if you've read the previous 15 issues of New Avengers you pretty much know the creative team is going to handle this right. In the dead of the Alaskan night, some kind of force never before encountered comes from space and strikes the small town named North Pole. From the ashes rises a single living being. This being will become known as The Collective, and the initial destruction of North Pole is told in eight wordless, full-page shots, one of the most awesome displays of this kind of wordless, splash-page storytelling I've ever seen. (The rest of the tale is told in more conventional fashion) The Avengers team is reluctantly contacted by SHIELD to deal with this new menace when other options fail, and, along with ally Ms. Marvel, head off to face an enemy that they have no idea the true nature of. Although most Marvel fans probably know by now exactly what the Collective is, if you don't, I can only urge you to add this book to your collection all the more quickly, before you find out someplace other than reading the original story. This is some pretty grand stuff, and the ideas behind it all make the Collective crisis worthy of being presented as one of the most monumental threates the Avengers have ever faced.

The art - with Steve McNiven handling pencilling duties on some issues and Mike Deodato on others, and with great color throughout - what can be said about it? It's great, the Avengers look iconic and heroic, both the Collective and Avengers member The Sentry look sufficiently intimidating given their incredible power levels, the action is epic, even the most 'mundane' scenes have a certain dynamic energy to them, and if Spider-Woman keeps looking this hot they're going to have to start printing New Avengers books on flame-retardant paper.

This particular story arc has special meaning for me, and probably for a lot of other fans, because it's the last Avengers tale before the "Civil War" mega-crossover kicks in and changes so much in the Avengers and the Marvel Universe as a whole. A lot of times after big changes in comics, things find a way - for better or worse - of working their way back to a semblance of how they were before. But no matter what the future and future writers bring in, is there any even semi-plausible way the Avengers can ever be remotely the same? If this was the last tale of an era, they certainly went out with a big.

Final note: the new aspect Luke Cage starts bringing in to the Avengers's activities in # 17: priceless.