Bendis Spills Avengers News

Comic Book Resources had a nice little interview yesterday with Avengers mastermind Brian Michael Bendis, in which he provided a sketch of the next few months of Avengers storylines. There's some fairly juicy tidbits, pretty pictures, and elaboration on previously teased events, after the jump.



Looks like Cap's picking out a new team. (Storm Please!)



The next MAIN big Avengers event, which will deal with both New Avengers and the core Avengers title (the difference between the two is described by Bendis as the former being a family that sticks together, and the latter more of a gotta-go-meet-Cap-for-my-appointment) is the return of Norman Osborn.

Osborn will be released from jail, for some legal reason that makes perfect sense in comics, and upon his reentry into the world will discover he has more fans than he expected. In fact, groups like AIM, Hydra and the Hand, none of which seem particularly like joiners to me, will unite under his leadership, espousing confidence in the world view Osborn expressed when he was the worlds Top Cop. This is turn will lead to the rise of a new team of Dark Avengers (ostensibily because all these groups have access to supervillains) which will cause trouble for the New Avengers team, and several other martial forces that will trigger what they're calling a HAMMER War, named after Osborn's not-so-defunct-after-all SHIELD knockoff.

Hulk's son? Back to life Bullseye? Taskmaster as Hawkeye?

Personally? I'm still suffering from a bit of OD concerning Osborn and Dark Reign etc., but I'll be interested to see the effect his return has on Victoria Hand who, despite several attempts, has yet to truly fit into the New Avengers book, either as an accepted member of the team or a disliked foil.

In addition to the Hammer War, as previously previewed here and throughout the internet, the story featuring Wonder Man's Revengers will be taking place soon.

As hinted at the beginning of these new Avengers runs, Wonder Man is pretty pissed off with the core Avengers practices, blames them for much of what has gone wrong (probably the breakdown and "death" of his beloved Wanda Maximoff) and is unstable and hugely powerful. Now it seems he's assembled some likeminded...supertypes who intend to be more proactive. Either he means being proactive about fighting crime and making the world better, or he proactively wants to beat the crap out of the Avengers. Regardless, I love superhero books where two teams face off against each other.

Unfortunately, I have to admit I don't know all the characters. D-Man I know, but as I recall he's basically a mentally-delicate oversized fanboy with good intentions, so I'm not entirely sure why he's here. Anti-Venom, or Eddie Brock, is certainly one to take a proactive stance on crimefighting. Goliath is apparently the nephew of Bill Foster, and would understandably be looking for vengeance over his uncle's murder in Civil War (though shouldn't he look to Reed Richards for making the Thor clone?) Atlas I don't know, but I'm told he's similar to Goliath power-wise and used to be a Thunderbolt. Devil-Slayer, Captain Ultra, Century and Ethan Edwards are completely unknown to me, which tells me Bendis is way more of a continuity junky than I am, and I better start hitting some back-issue bins around the city. By the time New York Comic Con is over, I should have something on all these poozers.

So, we've got the Revengers, we've got Hammer Time, we've got the rest of Children's Crusade which seems inevitably to be a game-changer despite taking so long and no one speaking about it, we've got new ("classic") team members to be joining New Avengers after everything shakes down, and we've got Bendis' plans to lead up to next summers Joss Whedon helmed Avengers supermovie.

I thought it was going to be the Year of the X-Men but apparently I was misinformed. No matter. I'd be more than happy if a couple X-Folk, perhaps one or two from Wolvie's upcoming Westchester-based team, could hop on metro north, get down to the city, and Assemble.