SSDDR: New Avengers #19 Review

I had a moment reading The New Avengers #19 where I just about completely and totally checked out. I just suddenly had had enough of Norman Osborn and the Dark Avengers and different made up villains in Avengers costumes and doing the mental clean and jerk required to buy into a story where a man who is known to have killed a woman in cold blood in broad daylight follows a master plan of winning over public opinion to prove he leadership material when in reality we demonize leaders for taking pictures of their junk.

That moment was at the end of the book, when Norman and his Dark Avengers are standing in front of a crowd and announcing that they were here to make the world a better place, and I realized it was the same Goddamned moment as when he introduced the Dark Avengers back in Dark Reign. And my enthusiasm for this story, as precarious as it was to begin with, just vanished.

Seriously, I know what I said last month, but I don’t think I have it in me to climb back on board the Norman Osborn PR gladhanding and the Dick Avengers train again. I stuck with it for what felt like forever in Dark Reign and I just don’t care anymore. This doesn’t feel like anything interesting or new or that I didn’t read a dozen times over in the earlier story, which I didn’t like the first time around. The whole thing was like watching your uncle use his AA chip to crack open a Bud before Thanksgiving dinner: you know what’s coming, you’ve seen it before, and you know it’s not gonna be fun.

Assuming you don’t have an innate and visceral weariness and mistrust of Dark Reign and it’s ilk, on an individual issue level, there’s nothing wrong with this comic book. Bendis continues to write excellent dialogue and character moments. Seeing Daredevil wandering by Avengers Mansion and being hit on by Squirrel Girl – while being overwhelmed by the stench of baby shit and squirrel funk – is a nice little moment showing that sometimes superpowers aren’t all they’re all cracked up to be… while knowing all the while that yeah: he’s gonna hit that. Daredevil’s already fucked every woman that’s walked, moved or crawled; why wouldn’t he add “skittered up a tree?”

I also enjoyed the standard Bendis sequences of the Avengers hanging around, shooting the shit. It’s where he shines, because they’re pure showcases for dialogue and character. Spider-Man needling Victoria Hand is always fun, and there’s a little moment between Daredevil and Wolverine that makes me wonder what might become of it.

The problem is, between those moments is more fucking Norman Osborn and his Dark Avengers making the same plans as last time with the same megamaniacal ends in sight as the last time with people who should fucking better know better. And I simply cannot believe that anyone could look back in history – history being 2009 – and think that the plan that destroyed Asgard, killed Sentry and landed Osborn in secret ass-pounding prison would be a GOOD IDEA.

But at least the same fucking thing looks good. I’ve raved about Mike Deodato’s art before, and I’ll do it again here. His fine detail work is exquisite, his facial expressions excellent – seeing Squirrel Girl’s fuck-me face for Daredevil was so earnest it was almost heartbreaking, and Jessica Jones’s worried look at her baby made me concerned enough to forget that I hate kids and couldn’t care less, or that that kid’s been an infant since 2006 and may therefore need an exorcism.

But where Deodato’s strongest is his action sequences… which is a Goddamned shame because there aren’t any in this book. We get an awesome Daredevil pose early in the book, but it’s a depiction of him on his way to Avengers Mansion to see if they have anything for him to do. Other than that, the only action is Tony Stark throwing his helmet, which unfortunately is not a euphamism. But regardless, even though this is a book of costumes bantering, Deodato makes it look as good as it can.

I hope I’m wrong about this book. I hope that it’s just the vagueries of decompressed storytelling that mean we got a chapter break right where it looks like SSDDR (Same shit, different Dark Reign), but that in the next issue it turns out that no one buys Osborn’s line of shit and he completely loses it and does something interesting. But at this point, it looks like we’re gonna get another X months of Osborn playing the press, smarming it up in a way that would get him pilloried in any realistic blogosphere.

If you liked Dark Reign, you should buy this book. Because so far, it’s exactly the same thing.