adamwarlock's Avengers #23 - The Hammer Falls! review

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    Not your typical superheroics

    After multiple issues of showing each and every member of the fresh Avengers lineup (with the exception of Quake) being systematically beaten to a pulp by Osborn's united AIM/Hydra/Hammer/Hand forces, the team gets to start fighting back. All readers knew it would work out this way eventually, as if the heroes definitively lose, then the successful title is over and done with, and that won't happen. Bendis has skillfully managed to do some things differently in this story, however, so that while there's little suspense as we know the heroes won't truly lose in the end, he's showing us things we don't get to see very day.

    1. Our heroes have been SEVERELY trounced. Like pathetically. That's something we really don't get to see very often; and it's been done in clever ways rather than the usual highly unlikely ways where the villains get to win somewhat arbitrarily because the story says they have to in order to build dramatic tension.

    2. The few heroes who aren't defeated in particularly demoralizing ways (or at all) are the lesser known ones (Quake and the newly revived Vision); allowing these less popular characters to earn some noteworthy spotlight time and prove they really have chops to be in Marvel's premier team.

    3. Superheroics kinda take a backseat to politics. A good chunk of the issue deals with the American President and his advisers deciding how to deal with Norman Osborn's demands, and the blend of politics and superheroics is an interesting angle we don't see much of, or at least not realistically.

    So Bendis makes lots of interesting choices here and while it still doesn't amount to making this the most groundbreaking and innovative action story ever, it does stand out. Admittedly, it stands out for the art as well. Daniel Acuna's dark and expressionistic art, while it does at times put particularly strange and unintentionally comical facial expressions on the characters, almost always gives each and every panel a very strong "pop art" element. Acuna's work on the page showing Quake really cutting loose with her powers is HIGHLY impressive stuff.

    With Bendis on his way out as far as most of the Avengers titles are concerned, he's actually going out strong if this Norman Osborn thing finishes out at this quality level.

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