The team up. Oh, how we as comic book geeks CRAVE it. Batman/Superman, Justice Society, Wolverine/Black Cat, and every other crazy combo you can think of. One of the most successful though has been the Avengers. Of course, after Civil War, Marvel took it upon themselves to get us even closer to team-up satiation by giving us TWO Avengers comics, New Avengers and Mighty Avengers. New Avengers follows the group that fought registration and Mighty follows the group that was for. We will look at the Mighty Avengers today since that is what came out this week and also I am going to try to figure out why we love these damn team-ups.
As with the great problem with Marvel, some of their titles are dreadfully far behind the rest of the story arc, and the first 8 issues of Mighty Avengers fell into this category until finally seemingly catching up in issue 9 where they track a symbiote bomb’s origin to Latveria, home of Dr. Doom. Now with Secret Invasion coming to the forefront of Marvel’s grand universal story arc, this looks like it will lead very nicely into that as Tony Stark continues to battle his paranoia and keep everyone else on the Mighty Avengers (aside from Jessica Drew, AKA Spider-Woman, who brought it to his attention in the first place) in the dark.
In the previous comic, Iron Man, Dr. Doom, and the Sentry, are all sent back in time to about the 1960s where Sentry almost goes crazy as he sees himself fighting, what we found out recently, to be himself in the form of the Void. Our unlikely group of allies (again, another forced team-up via enemy of my enemy being my friend; in this case, the enemy being stuck in the 1960s, truly a horrifying foe) finds their way into the Baxter Building where they “borrow” Reed Richards’ time machine to make their way back to the future with explosive consequences. If you are going to get into this comic, now is a good time because the story arc is caught up to the universe and if you are a fan of Marvel, you will want to see what the heck Iron Man does with his Avengers and to find out which ones might be Skrulls. Overall, not a great comic, but it does further the story and leave you on enough of a cliffhanger to see what happens next by buying the next issue. If they had not caught up to the rest of the universe by now though, I would have probably stopped buying this comic. Pick it up and see where it takes you through Secret Invasion before maybe dropping it in favor of something else.
Now to our controversial topic. Why do we love team-ups? Is it the weird situation of having two people who would never normally work together, finding a way to co-exist much like we have to with many of our everyday co-workers? Is it the thought that the threat might be so great that you would need all these people just to handle it? Or is it that we just love to see all the different colors on one page after we lit one up? Marvel pulls this off more successfully and more frequently with having a far greater amount of teams and team-ups in their universe and it works 99% of the time (I’m sorry but Wolverine and Black Cat was just a little much for me). Or does DC’s characters stand well-enough on their own that they don’t need the team-ups? Respond fair reader if you dare! Also, feel free to express your thoughts on the above comic and corresponding review. We look forward to seeing your responses.
-Ray Carsillo
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