Clearing the way

“There are scores of titles featuring hundreds of characters coming out each and every week, and it can be pretty confusing”

It’s hard not to notice, but the obvious has to be stated to get to the point. There is a lot going on in the Marvel Universe these days, and people are taking an interest in what Marvel is doing (and not just in the DC “how can we try to copy their movie success” kind of way).
Let’s put it this way: when a change in a person called Thor gets a segment on your nightly news, it’s a pretty good indicator that Marvel comics are a big deal. But for many, that’s as far as it goes: interest. People see a Marvel movie, or a report about a new comic on TV, and they think “Cool, I wish to know more,” but if they do get to the step of visiting their local comic shop, that sentiment quickly changes to “Where do I even start?”

There are scores of titles featuring hundreds of characters coming out each and every week, and it can be pretty confusing. For all the popularity of comic characters in films and on TV, the actual comics they are based on, or at least inspired by, sell pretty low numbers when put against their past highs, or sales numbers of things such as Manga in Japan. A huge problem is the simply gargantuan collection to select from. Pick up a random issue of Avengers, and you’ll likely see a dozen characters you don’t recognize debating events you are completely confused about.
There’s a hack for everything right? So why not about Marvel comics as well? This, then, is part one of that primer. I don’t intend to cover everything, not even close, but this should give a basic outline to begin the exploration into the world of Marvel comics. In addition to giving the modern Marvel Universe a summation, I’ll also be rating the big events based on their impact and character changes.

The Preamble: Let’s start in 2004, with Brian Michael Bendis. Apart from being incredibly prolific, and writing some of the best dialogue and comedy scenes, he is also probably the most influential writer of the last decade, and please note that I didn’t limit that to comic books. In 2004, Bendis took over Marvel’s flagging Avengers franchise. I know, those words sound ridiculous. The Avengers? Flagging? But they are one of the most famous teams in comics history! They’re also some of the best comics and characters out there, and the cornerstone of the Marvel Universe that they should be, both in the comic and cinematic universes. Everyone now knows Captain America, and Iron man, and Thor.
Now, is the key word in that last sentence.

But this is 2004 we are talking about. Iron Man wouldn’t come out for 4 more years. The comics industry had undergone a huge crash less than a decade before, which had forced Marvel into chapter 11 bankruptcy, and it hadn’t fully recovered yet. The Avengers comics of the day, frankly, weren’t great.
In order to try and stabilize The Avengers line, Brian Michael Bendis did what he usually does: the unexpected. Issues 500-503 were a storyline called Avengers: Disassembled, which devastated the team, both physically and emotionally, and paved the way for a whole new era of comics by ending that series. A new series, aptly called New Avengers, was born out of the rubble, with characters (such as Luke Cage, Spider-Man and Wolverine) whose inclusion spoke volumes about the new direction Marvel was taking, one of true cohesion of their disparate comics lines which during the prior years had become totally disassociated turning basically into almost unrelated Spider-Man, X-men, and Avengers universes. It wasn’t a huge deal at the time but, as it flourished, the new direction of Marvel would again attract creators who would build storylines that have been, and will continue, to be reflected in movies and TV shows, and reach far more people than the comics themselves did or likely ever will.

1. Avengers: Disassembled
The Heroes: Ant Man (Scott Lang), Yellowjacket (Hank Pym, the original Ant Man), Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Captain America, Falcon, She Hulk, Wasp, Vision, Iron Man, and Captain Britain (Kelsey Leigh, more usually known as Lionheart), Doctor Strange, Magneto.

Isn’t this basically the same team that will appear in Captain America 3 over in the MCU ? Hmm.

The History
Here’s what you need to know to understand this story: Scarlet Witch is incredibly powerful, and occasionally a total nutter. The original Avengers were Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, Wasp and Ant Man, who came together to fight Loki. A few issues later, they found Captain America encased in an iceberg and thawed him out. He became the leader of the team and, when the others became busy with their own things, recruited a new team of Avengers consisting of Hawkeye, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.
Scarlet Witch is Wanda Maximoff, a mutant, and daughter of Magneto. Her powers are basically a conscious and subconscious ability to warp reality to suit her, and also to shoot blasts of magic power, because hey, wouldn’t you, if you could warp reality to allow you to? The problems with this became apparent when Scarlet Witch got into a relationship with the android Avenger, the Vision. As an android, the Vision is a human shaped robot, so while it is possible for them to become intimate (as long as he is man shaped everywhere, and “fully functional”), he is still a robot and when Scarlet Witch craved children she was of course out of luck.
Except that she wasn’t.

She got pregnant, and had twins. Eventually, it was revealed that her subconscious desire to have kids had caused her to get pregnant via her magic powers, and that revelation caused her children to fade out of existence, since they weren’t real. Scarlet Witch had a breakdown, and the Avengers brought in a magic user to erase the whole “I totally had kids a minute ago, I swear” thing from her mind, which is always a good idea as it never backfires with catastrophic results.

The Story
It backfires, with catastrophic results (insert shock here). Basically, Wasp accidentally mentions to Scarlet Witch that she once had children, which allows her to unlock those memories, which convinces her subconsciously that the Avengers, who admittedly brainwashed her a bit, are her enemies and deserve to suffer. Once that decision is made, her power starts working to accomplish that all on its own, without her conscious mind realizing it.
The Avengers begin losing control in ways both embarrassing (Iron Man spontaneously gets drunk while giving a speech at the U.N., and threatens an ambassador) and dangerous (a deceased Avenger shows up and blows up both Scott Lang, Ant Man, and half of the Avenger’s base, Vision then crashes a jet into the other half, She Hulk then goes berserk and rips Vision in half, and Hawkeye is killed when illusory aliens invade and he flies a jet into them). Doctor Strange arrives and reveals that Scarlet Witch is behind everything, at which point she has a total meltdown, again. Doctor Strange puts her to sleep using his magic, and (in a first hint that the different parts of Marvel are about to come together into a single unified story-world) Magneto shows up and takes her away so that he and Charles Xavier can help her. In the wake of this, the Avengers disband.

The Verdict
Filled with characters whose storylines will soon be irrelevant, and deaths that will soon be reversed, this storyline is most notable, not for itself , but for clearing the board of the old Avengers, to make way for a new direction. That said, there are some cool scenes, even if some of those don’t actually happen, even within the context that none of it happens because comics are fictional.

Therefore:

2 out of 5

part 2