The Four Color Media Monitor

While Marvel's throwing the Spider-Marriage out the window has been the leading focus of many alienated fans, we may have overlooked another problem on an almost similar scale: Tom Brevoort is telling us that they have no plans to return to classic Avengers lineup:

We’ll use any and all of the classic Avengers characters as the situation demands it, of course, but those folks who are hoping for a full-blown reversal of the last ten years and a complete return to the Avengers of a decade ago are sadly in for a disappointment. And the reason for this should be obvious: in the last decade, AVENGERS has become the leading franchise in comics, and that’s in large part due to the alterations we made in the basic formula. I love the classic Avengers as much as the next person-and I edited them for a good, long time-but there are clearly so many more readers who are interested in the team and the book since we turned over the apple cart that there really isn’t any good reason to go back, other than nostalgia.

Oh, but of course there are so many more readers interested in the Earth's Mightiest Heroes. Namely, the Bendis fans who'll lap up his work no matter what, though even that's luckily worn down since he made such a mess of the book 5 years ago, beginning with Avengers: Disassembled. If they really must take the Avengers and cast it with already obvious choices like Spider-Man, Wolverine, and even Luke Cage, that's one thing, but doing it at the complete expense of cast members like Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Ant-Man and the Wasp is another. And none of them have been very well treated within that time.

All they're really telling is how little faith they have in the original cast of co-stars to carry the book on their own and be popular with the audience, and that they don't know how to promote it to a wider audience, so instead they gather a bunch of characters already starring in their own franchises to star in it, even if it doesn't make sense continuity-wise. Or, as in the case of Luke Cage, characters who don't exactly fit the science-fantasy theme the Avengers are usually built upon, and make their urban-style setting the tone the book will go by much of the time, which is hardly what the Avengers was intended to be.

It's bad enough what they're doing to Spider-Man's own book, but we shouldn't overlook the damage that began even before One More Day to the Earth's Mightiest Heroes. I wonder if "classic" is just Brevoort's excuse to justify the current Bendis direction by implying that the regular cast is outdated and old-fashioned? If that's what he's doing, I fully disagree. Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver, Vision, Ant-Man, Wasp and Hawkeye, among others, are still cool as ever, and claiming they're antiquated is just insulting their own properties. I do hope maybe Disney Corp's buyout might put a stop to this nonsense, but there's no telling if it'll happen.

Labels: Avengers, bad editors, marvel comics