Miles’ Book
The New Avengers #41
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Billy Tan
Marvel Comics, 2008
Here we see Bendis returning to his favourite writing technique — the fill-in. Not “fill-in” in the sense that this is an issue where nothing happens, but an issue where he guides the reader through the things that happened when he was busy telling other stories. He did it for the last two years of his Daredevil run, and he’s been doing it in almost every issue of New Avengers. If there’s one man who loves jumping around in time, it’s Brian Michael Bendis.
It’s not the worst thing to do as a writer. In this issue he does it fairly well, but I am getting a little sick of the dog and pony show.
The issue focuses on what’s been happening in the Savage Land (a place in the middle of the Antarctic where dinosaurs and characters based on Tarzan live) since the start of New Avengers. Apparently, the alien, shape-shifting Skrulls have been setting up shop down there, and it’s been up to those Tarzan-based characters to hold them at bay. The big revelation of this issue is that Skrulls have been behind almost everything that has happened in the last four years of Marvel history, and this gives you a piece of that.
This issue won’t set you on fire with “AMAZING”, but it’s interesting if you’re invested in the Marvel universe. One thing that might be exciting for people of more discriminating taste is Tan’s action sequences. I don’t think the author’s beasts needed to be as big as he thought they did, but he still wrote a fluid gun fight.
If you’re not reading Secret Invasion, feel free to skip this issue; you’ll be pretty lost as to what is going on. If you are reading Secret Invasion, however, you will probably need to read this issue as I can’t see how any of this information will be self-contained.
Isaac’s Book
The Immortal Iron Fist #15
Written by Matt Fraction
Pencilled by Khari Evans
Inked by Victor Olazaba
Marvel Comics, 2008
The story follows Bei Bang-Wen, the Iron Fist between 1827 and 1860, who manifests his powers chiefly in the “Perfect Strategy Mind,” and his failure to fend off the English during The Second Opium War (an actual war, just so you know) at the Forts of Taku. Finding himself alive and captured when all his men were killed leaves Bang-Wen dispirited and powerless. During his time at a slave labour camp he meets Vivatma Visvajit, a man whose story is exactly like Bang-Wen’s: the mortal avatar of a holy power which he can no longer access since failing at his own mission.
Having found each other, Bang-Wen decides to help Vivatma escape and save his emperor, so they lead a rebellion in the prison and escape, travelling to Burma to save the day. Vivatma “followed his instinct” and so the two found the palace where the emperor is supposed to be, but it’s a trap set by an empowered woman named Tiger Jani who wants to feed off the powers of Vivatma and Bang-Wen in their super forms of the Brahman and the Immortal Iron Fist.
With no emperor to save and no way to atone for his past failure, Vivatma is freed from whatever mental blocks stopped him from transforming into the Brahman, he gets all powered up and we get a pretty cool little fight scene.
When Bang-Wen gets into the fight he kind of gets his powers back? He has two mini epiphanies and gets sliced a bit by Tiger Jani, leaving him kind of dead. Thanks to the Brahman it isn’t permanent, and so Bang-Wen gets to go home and relinquish his powers, get married and have kids.
The final caption in the book is “That he died in the mud and the blood at the forts of Taku remains an essential part of his immortal legend.”
That final caption sends me reeling, wondering whether Bang-Wen actually died at the beginning of the book, and all the rest is just a kind of vision he has on his way to an afterlife, which certainly explains the multiple coincidences of a counterpart like Vivatma just appearing. I may be over thinking the whole thing, but when the hero is a guy who goes on and on about his “Perfect Strategy Mind” and how smart he is, while always being wrong, you know the writer is preoccupied with writing something “clever.”
I really did enjoy this issue, the art is beautiful, and a rollicking 19th century adventure is always welcome, I just wish I could sit back and trust that this writer wasn’t trying to trick me.
