New Avengers Vol. 1 Breakout

This is the start of an absolutely terrific series. I'd highly recommend reading Avengers: disassembled first.

Bendis writes like any Marvel fanboy would dream, his scripts feel like movies and his dialogue is often time perfect, his characterization scratching the itch we all to often unknowingly crave.

Volume two is a thousand times better, but that's only because it's just so good.

Collecting issues #1-6 of this Avengers relaunch, Breakout deals with the formation of our team of New Avengers. Picking up where Avengers: Disassembled leaves off, our new team of Avengers form during a breakout on the island super-prison The Raft, and come together during a subsequent trip to The Savage Land. Reminded of how the original Avengers were drawn together to fight evil too large for any one superhero, Captain America convinces Iron Man to start up this new team featuring themselves, Spider-woman, Luke Cage, Spider-Man, The Sentry and later on, Wolverine.

As far as stories goes, this one is pretty great. we go from from Manhattan to Helicarriers to The Savage Land and back which is pretty good for a 6-issue run. Bendis takes his usual word-heavy style and uses it to give Finch room to draw great battle scenes that lend themselves really well to his penciling style. I’m big fan of Finch’s art, and my only complaint about this book is that Danny Miki’s inks and Frank D’Armata’s colours are often a little to dark. Understandable since most of the first half of the book takes place at night, but the darkness tends to take away a bit of the lush feeling of the Savage Land.

According to Bendis, the New Avengers run (now at issue #39) is chock full of mysteries and moments that will be explained in Secret Invasion. This is pretty bold and intricate storytelling, and makes clear why Bendis is one of the best writers in the game right now. Breakout was originally published in 2004, and was clearly ahead of the game.

New Avengers is one of the best books on the market right now, and if you haven’t been into it up until this point, there are 5 trades to collect. I would highly recommend any of them. Since jumping on at #26, I have enjoyed every issue of the book, but the stories that preceded that point were just as good, if not better, in trade paperback. The next two volumes deal with The Sentry and Spider-woman respectively, both of whom have become big players in the Marvel U, mainly on the strength of these stories.

I can’t wait to re-read these books in light of Secret Invasion and see what I’ve missed!