Comics / Comic Reviews / Marvel Comics

The Mighty Avengers #20

By Hervé St-Louis
January 4, 2009 - 22:20

Hank Pym and the Avengers mourn the death of the Janet Van Dyne, the heroine known as the Wasp. Ex Husband Hank Pym who had been away seemingly for years and replaced by a Skrull impostor, must deal with all of the pain that of his absence and the loss of his lifelong love. Will he make it back or will he break down and blame Tony Stark for all his misery?

I wasn’t sure if I should be picking this series after the dismal end of Secret Invasion. There were no redeeming values to that series. However, Bendis proves that he’s better at writing stories about emotions and the inner struggles of characters, than crafting deadly epics spanning worlds and planets. So in this issue we get a traditional tear jerker fodder, but without the tears coming from this reader’s eyelids. I can’t blame Bendis for that one. It’s mostly to due with being tired of reading some comic books where you know exactly where the writer wants to take you.

Here, we have Hank Pym blaming Tony Stark for the destruction of the original Avengers. Hulk is out. Captain America is out. The Wasp is out. It’s only a matter of time before the surviving three, Hank Pym, Tony Stark, as Iron Man and Thor also fall only to have the classic team revived and brought back to its illustrious glory days in a few years, in some future Marvel Comics company-wide crossover. I can just feel it. Thus, everything Bendis has done with the Avengers, deconstructing them in his story, Avengers Disassembled, House of M, Civil War and everything that occurred next all the way to the Secret Invasion. That’s how it went several times in the Avengers’ history. A writer would destroy everything only to put it all back. The only difference is that it didn’t take half a decade to happen.

I like the use of multiple artists to tell the story. I particularly liked the flashback to the early Avengers when they had just found Captain America’s body frozen in ice. But before we can witness Wanda Maximoff putting all the broken parts together again in two year’s time, we’ll have to go through another annoying companywide crossover trying to pitch us Black Reign. I’m not buying.

Rating: 8 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12