The Secret of the Wednesday’s Haul

Avengers Disassembled was a bloody mess. There’s no other way to put it. As the name suggests, Bendis began his era of the Avengers by tearing down nearly everything which came before him, whether it was as old as the venerable mansion or as new as the Scott Lang Ant Man. Absolutely nothing was sacred as evidenced in the first issue where friends and foes tear through the Avengers. Look at even the Avenger team that Bendis inherited from Chuck Austen: She Hulk, the female Captain Britain, the Wasp, Hawkeye and Ant Man. Opening up the book with this team assembled at the breakfast table discussing who they’d sexually do if they had a freebie certainly was not a high point in Avengers’ history.

Then all hell breaks loose. The recently-blown-up Jack of Hearts seemingly returned from the dead only to blow up again and take half of Avengers’ mansion with him. The Vision crashed a quinjet into the other half of the mansion and released a lot of Ultrons upon the Avengers. The She Hulk went crazy, ripping the Vision in half and rampaging over half of her teammates before being K.O.ed by Iron Man. Yeah, it was a bad day; we get it.

Maybe it’s because this was Bendis’ first really big superhero team book but he had absolutely no idea where to let up in this book. Iron Man got drunk without taking a drink, yelled at Yellowjacket, called him a “wife beater,” and threatened to blow the Latverian ambassador out of his U.N. seat. The Mansion got destroyed. The Wasp got seriously injured and the “wife beater” said at her hospital bed that the only thing she was worse at than being a wife was being an ex-wife. The Kree attacked, killed Hawkeye (don’t worry, he doesn’t stay dead for too long.) And the big bad was revealed to be one of their own; a seriously unbalanced Scarlet Witch.

Take a moment to catch your breath.

Bendis essentially threw everything including the kitchen sink at the Avengers for 4 issues (500-503) but the Avengers didn’t come out stronger. That won’t happen for a while until New Avengers and there’s still a bit of story to get through before we get to the new book. At the end of the fight with Scarlet Witch, there were no winners and the team certainly lost something. There was an innocence lost that Bendis forced the Avengers to lose. It’s not like they were ever been betrayed by one of their own before. Heck, Quicksilver had practically made a living by betraying his friends whenever possible. It’s not like the Mansion had never been destroyed or even the Vision. But this time it was different. This time it was “important” or so we’re led to believe as stalwarts Captain America and Iron Man hung their heads in shame as they walked off into the night.

Bendis attached an odd coda to this story with Avengers Finale, a navel gazing celebration of what the Avengers were and an examination of what they aren’t after Disassembled. The surviving members of The Avengers took one final bow essentially and Bendis forced them to talk about “the greatest Avenger moments” but the majority of them ring horribly false. Too many characters talked about missions that they weren’t on and call out the fact that they weren’t around for those missions. Jarvis, the lovable butler, said his favorite Avengers moment was the time the mansion was overtaken by The Masters of Evil and he was beaten close to death. Really, that’s your favorite? Not the Christmas where Tony got drunk and sung Sinatra tunes while Hawkeye made a pass at the Scarlet Witch?

Bendis’s first stab at The Avengers is his attempt to do a big budget action film. It’s loud and boisterous and rather clumsily put together. This isn’t yet Bendis’s Avengers but it’s on its way.

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