Is it possible to enjoy a book when you don't like any of the characters? Apparently so. I'm rather surprised that I liked it at all, but it's surprisingly entertaining considering. This is Norman Osborn's group of Avengers, and they consist mostly of psychopaths and murderers (but not in a fun, Secret-Six-kind-of-way).

I forgot how annoying Bendis can be on team books. Or with villains. Or in general.
Still, this is a great read, with tones of action and character moments. The idea is such an evil one you have to love it, even if you can't wait to see the characters get their heads kicked in. The art is just gorgeous and makes this book so enjoyable.
Bendis, on the other hand, writes dialogue that makes me want to beat my head into a wall. Not all the time, but when he writes a team book, it just shows up more often than not. The "..." and "um" use goes on to the point of insanity. But when you have a character like Norman Osborn and Venom using those tics, it's just ridiculous.
Either way, it's still good and great to look at, even if the characters talk like a teenager in a mall.

A decent outing from Bendis and his team. It was a solid foray, if not inspiring, into the "(reformed?) villains as heroes" model of comic writing. I enjoyed the contrasting approaches to this shown by the various characters, from Norman Osbourne, who is an evil, manipulative man masquerading as a good one, to The Sentry, a good but deeply disturbed man, to Bullseye who is still an evil man and doesn't care much who knows. This volume starts strongly with good comics up to halfway but tapers off pretty poorly after that.

Overall: Three stars

Issue #1: This was a good read where, for once, Brian Michael Bendis actually took the time to fully introduce the full cast of new Avengers and the storyline thus far. The way Norman Osbourne dresses each of his dark Avengers in the mantle of a former Avenger is interesting and so there's some fun choices to be made here like giving Bullseye a Hawkeye outfit and so on. The artwork here is the same as in Secret Initiative and I'm simply not a fan.

Three stars.

Issue #2: Enough exposition time for some action. Morgana Le Fay is angry at Von Doom and the Dark Avengers are deployed to help a brother out. The artwork is transformed here and we see Le Fay in all her glory plus all her fell beasts. The Sentinel also gets to flex is considerable muscle. Decent spots of humour in places.

Four stars.

Issue #3: This, I really enjoyed. Here we see Norman Osbourne as master manipulator. In this issue we get to see how Norman Osbourne took advantage of The Sentinel and convinced him to remain with the Avengers after all of the morally upright characters left. Really well written. We also learn more about Le Fay vs. The Dark Avengers. Really nice artwork here.

Four stars.

Issue #4: Not much happens here. The battle concludes and that's about it.

Two stars.

Issue #5: The cliffhanger from issue #4 is followed through on. Again, some good stuff from Norman Osbourne here as we start to see that he's definitely not all above board. He also plays a blinder in front of the TV cameras dissembling as regards the origins of his Dark Avengers which is pretty hilarious hypocrisy considering this event is post-Civil War/Superhuman Registration Act.

Three stars.

Issue #6: Namor shows up. Thankfully in this issue he's not balding, middle-aged, and overweight but practically elven in his bone structure. (Seriously, what the fuck Secret Initiative?) A bit of consistency isn't to be expected I know but the difference between the two is pretty galling considering both had the same writer. Is Namor tired and middle-aged or isn't he? The cover photo is of Marvel Boy battling some kind of spooky space creature, no idea why as he's not even in the issue. Is it meant to be where he is? I don't know. The Sentinel is put to a pretty depraved use in this one and the wheels begin to come off the wagon of Norman Osbourne's sanity. Artwork is fucking gorgeous. Especially the scenes involving The Sentinel flying around but the comic isn't up to much.

Two stars.

I'm reading this as part of my Venom/Carnage/Toxin/symbiote readthrough of the Spider-Man universe.

This isn't a completely necessary volume if you're just reading it for Venom, there's one moment in the first issue that changes some of the rules for Mac/Venom but mostly this is just an average post-Secret Invasion/pre-Seige Marvel book. It's a clearly short term status quo being set up and dismantled, and the characters eah get a few moments to shine but it feels like filler. Granted, it's Bendis filler, so if you enjoy quippy dialogue and seemingly purposeful plotting, it's a fun read. But it's neither his best work nor the best work for keeping up with Venom.

All Marvel writers were given one simple edict concerning bringing characters back from the dead. That was that only 2 characters were off limits, uncle Ben Parker and Bucky. They had to stay dead. Somehow, Ed Brubaker pulled off a coup by not only bringing back Bucky but making it ultra cool and believable for the medium. Great stuff!

This was decent, but I haven't read Civil War or Secret Invasion yet so will need to get to those before I continue with this series.

For the past 3 years I've been obsessively telling everyone who will even pretend to listen that mcu is gearing up for a dark avengers movie and now I'm throwing it out to goodreads as well. We have most of the characters already!

anyway about the Volume... it's pretty bad, quite dumb, annoying, and edgy at a time when edginess was already edging out. That being said I'm gay and loved it

These characters are mostly very new to me, so I can only approach this at face-value for what I have in hand right now. So, the (Dark) Avengers is Norman Osbourne's attempt to replace S.H.I.E.L.D. with H.A.M.M.E.R. as the new government-sanctioned paramilitary super group in place of Nick Fury/Tony Stark's failure to prevent the attack of the Skrull. However, almost all of Osborne's (formerly known as Green Goblin) recruits are former villains, murderers, and unstable wayward heroes who are essentially given a second chance (of being under Osborne's control). Meanwhile, Osborne/Iron Patriot is also secretly meeting with Victor Von Doom (Doctor Doom) and other malevolent figures. So what is everyone's real secret agenda for this? What is Osborne up to? Why do some of the Dark Avengers willing to participate? What did Doctor Doom do to piss off Morgana La Fey and start a destructive war?

The art is especially attractive to me, with a lot of time spent designing and incorporating personalities into the characters, I can admire the efforts that the graphic novel team put forth in developing this. Personally , Norman Osborne doesn't come off as that interesting of a character to me, but many of the Avengers do spark some mysterious aspects that will keep me coming back to find out what's next. The most confusing and unknown character of the group seems to be Sentry, as he suffers from his alternative side: the Void. While it's not particularly a split personality case, the Void that Sentry/Bob struggles with appears to be a deciding factor on whether he can actually survive as an active participant. I look forward into digging deeper with the story of Sentry. Additionally, I have also been looking into the Dark Wolverine series, so I also look forward to seeing how Daken will be participating in the group (so far, his role has been relatively minor in Vol 1: Assemble).

All in all, very entertaining! Not the best I've read, but it makes me curious enough.

19min