Mighty Avengers - Volume 1: The Ultron Initiative

While the x titles keep repeating the same story over & over again. The avengers have come up with a great new team & new storyline.

This volume collects the first six issues of Marvel's 2007 "Mighty Avengers" launch. Tony Stark/Iron Man and Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel assemble yet another new team of Avengers including Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, Janet Van Dyne/Wasp, Simon Williams/Wonder Man, Ares and the Sentry. Having first appearing in 1968's Avengers #54, in this plotline the maniacal robot Ultron returns to Earth to destroy all organic life. Ultron assumes Iron Man's body before changing into another familar form and hastening Earth's demise. A helicarrier crash leaves Natasha as temporary head of S.H.I.E.L.D. as the heroes try to stop Ultron. Brian Michael Bendis and Frank Cho are the writer and penciler/inker, respectively. Though the story is above-average for this sort of six-issue superhero arc, Bendis' dialogue is marred by intermittent thought balloons that grow tiresome. Frank Cho's art is superb, most notably for a few characters.

Bendis is, without a doubt, the most brilliant writer in the comics industry today. I loved his work on Daredevil, and followed him over here when The Mighty Avengers started. I'm glad that I did. I haven't always been a fan of the Avengers, in fact during the eighties and nineties when there were the Avengers and the West Coast Avengers, I thought that it might have been the cheesiest series around. Not to mention that I'm not die hard Iron Man fan and I think Captain America is boring. But this new group is great. I love Carol (Ms. Marvel) fronting the group (under the protective eye of Iron Man of course), I love Wasp, Ares kicks !@$, and I could really care less about Wonder Man. Jessica Drew is awesome, Natasha is awesome too. I'm just curious about the Sentry. This dude is something else. Obviously, he's powerful, but he's crazy and his uniform sucks. I'm waiting for something either really cool or really terrible to happen to this guy. I could care less if he lives or dies. Anyway, back to the story. The return of Ultron is...HOT??? Just read it. Great story. Peace and Love, Jake

The Mighty Avengers Vol.1 is a well written, fast paced Avengers with great writing and solid art. The characters manage to convey a pretty wide range of emotions, despite the fact that the whole collection is a battle royale. It has a nice twist (this isn't a spoiler)in that it starts out with the full team going into battle, and over the course of each issue explains how the team was settled on. To top it off, the writers even insert a dash of humor into the story, not enough so as to be annoying or overwhelm the story, but enough to still be refreshing to the story. P.S. Even though this is rated All Ages, it contains a few mildly racy jokes, fine for a teenager or above, but some parents might not like their children to see them. It seems to be more oriented to teenage readers and older.

I want to preface this review by simply stating that I often don't give graphic novels these days 5 stars - so please know that I don't rate lightly. Mighty Avengers Vol. I, I think, is probably the best graphic novel I've read in the past 2-3 years, and I buy quite a few. It combines all of the elements you'd want - great writing, superb artwork, spot-on dialogue, and that certain intangible quality you look for in a comic - the "fun" factor. This volume starts off with Iron Man and Ms. Marvel starting to re-form the Avengers, a putting together a great crew - in addition to those two heroes, they choose Sentry, Ares, Wasp, Black Widow and Power Man. Almost immediately, however, the team is thrust into battling two foes at once: Mole Man and a resurrected, super-powerful Ultron. Add to this the fact that Iron Man is knocked out of commission, and you have something of a problem. While this set-up sounds like common comic book fare, believe me when I say that this comic blows almost all comic books of the past few years out of the water. Writer Brian Michael Bendis (most famous, probably for his work on Powers) puts an extra spark in this title, letting us see the character's inner monologues and insecurities (by way of thought balloons) while they're talking and really making it feel as though we've known these characters for years - and that they themselves have tremendous history and group cohesion. Famed penciler Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows and Shanna the She-Devil, to name but a few) shines brighter than ever in this title; he not only pencils but also inks this title, and his artistry is probably unmatched by anyone in the business today. He captures something essential in each of the characters, and his grasp and application of human anatomy makes them seem almost tangible. This comic reminds me of the halcyon days when Chris Claremont and Alan Davis did their run on Excalibur in the late 1980s and early 1990s - to my mind, the standard to which all superhero comics should be held. This is a fun, funny, thrilling and entertaining volume, and all comic book fans would be wise to pick it up, I can't recommend it enough.