Mighty Avengers in the 2000s
In the mid-2000s, Marvel was kicking a lot of ass. Brian Michael Bendis had breathed new life into the Avengers with the New Avengers series. With the completion of the Civil War event, the team was still divided, with the renegade anti-registration New Avengers, Bendis gave us a second on going Avengers title for the first time since Avengers West Coast was cancelled back in the 1990s (yeah, there were short run series, but those don’t count). Mighty Avengers was supposed to be the opposite of New by showing Iron Man’s pro-registration team. However, while New Avengers proved to be a massive hit, I feel like they didn’t exactly capture lightning in a bottle a second time. Don’t get me wrong, the stories are fine, but I think that this series — and a lot of Marvel books during this period, so you’ll hear me repeat this a lot — suffers from not being able to breath. We don’t get much time to see this team gel and develop as the title was hit with one event after the other and suddenly changing scope.
The series starts up during the Initiative event, which is all well and good, and sees the formation of Stark’s new team. But we just barely get through two story arcs before Secret Invasion hit and we get 9 issues of Mighty Avengers basically without the Mighty Avengers as Bendis used the title (and New Avengers) as exposition dumps to explain the wider conspiracy that was going on in the event.
Then, once Secret Invasion over, we Bendis leaves and Dan Slott takes over as writer for the series. This means an entirely new team and new direction for the book. I actually quite like Slott’s work but the art Khoi Pham isn’t really my thing. It’s not bad, I’m just not much of a fan. Slott decided to focus on Hank Pym, who takes over the Wasp identity because his ex-wife was “dead” at the time of this series (that won’t last long, as these things tend to go). This is another one of those Hank Pym redemption story arcs where Pym has to prove himself to be every bit as much of a hero as the other founders of the Avengers. We’ve seen this song and dance more than a few times since Hank’s fall from grace in the 1980s (when he has forever been tainted by the stink of an abusive spouse) But where past attempts to make Hank something important failed, Slott’s treatment of the character tries to push the envelope further. I think that past attempts to redeem Hank were short sighted, always trying to keep the character in the same size-changing superhero mold that he has had for decades. There was no attempt to aspire for something higher than being a guy who is really good at changing his stature and talking to ants.
Slott presents a tale where Hank becomes the “Scientist Supreme”, which would put Pym up to the level of Doctor Strange in the scheme of cosmic importance. Which is an interesting tale, it’s only too bad that this journey gets mired by the title being dragged into both Dark Reign and Siege. We don’t get to see Hank do a whole lot with his new title before the series is then scuttled by the conclusion of Siege and a line wide refresh of the Avengers brand. Since being given this prestigious title, Marvel really hasn’t done much with it in the years since, which is a shame as there was so much story telling potential. I admit, I haven’t given much time to pour through more contemporary books (my reading list having kept me in the 2010s for quite some time, I haven’t had time to do a deep dive) so maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like over the last 20 odd years they have been just doing the same shit with Hank that they’ve done since the 1980s: Have bad shit happen to him, then have him redeem himself, rinse and repeat. Only now he has a beard because the Pym in the movies is a Michael Douglas (DFENS! DFENS!), but I digress….
Anyway, this series had some potential here and there, but it suffered by never being given enough time to properly breathe before the title goes on a three year hiatus in the 2010s and becomes something all together different. But that, friends, is a story for another time.
