Near the end of Al Ewing’s 18-issue “New Avengers” run, Roberto da Costa (Sunspot) pulls off a rubber mask as Mission: Impossible theme music plays and we dramatically discover shocking new layers of his heroic machinations. This of course got me thinking about the Mission: Impossible franchise and its remarkable consistency. Consistency serves the franchise well. When I see a new Mission: Impossible installment, I know what I’m going to get. Tom Cruise will sprint lots of places, mission instructions will self-destruct, and someone will wear a mask of someone else’s face. These things always happen and it’s wonderful.
But consistency isn’t the only path to satisfying entertainment. Al Ewing comics don’t deliver anything close to this kind of reliable consistency, and that’s fine. It’s actually pretty wonderful. Each new Al Ewing series is a reinvention. Like a new Kanye West or Radiohead album, new Al Ewing projects have new goals, new themes, new aesthetics. His take on Rocket Racoon is nothing like his “Ultimates” run. His Inhumans comics are nothing like “Immortal Hulk.”
This trend of innovation, transformation, and newness is particularly relevant when examining Ewing’s “New Avengers,” a series obsessed with those ideas. But Ewing and his artistic collaborators (Gerardo Sandoval, Dono Sánchez-Almara, Marcus To, Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco, and Jesus Aburtov among others) wisely do not attempt to begin their innovations in a void. This series is rooted in the Marvel tradition of comics about profoundly strange spies and intelligence agencies. Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and Jim Steranko began this genre at the company in their “Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.” stories. This thread has lived on through the years, with recent strong examples by Warren Ellis and Rick Remender in the pages of “Secret Avengers.”
Although Ewing’s “New Avengers” is entirely unlike any Avengers book I’ve read before, it still honors some core franchise ideas more sincerely than many recent incarnations of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. These heroes are classically moral. When citizens are transformed into crystal-headed undead drones, the team carefully and intentionally avoids hurting these strange monstrosities since they are unwilling participants in the battle. There are also loving references to Avengers history (the Kooky Quartet are invoked and there is a wonderful nod to “Avengers Forever”). Because of these joyful and heroic touches, one could argue that this series is more of a true Avengers book than Hickman’s intricate, masterful tragedy or Bendis’ slick, modern, decompression.
But the invocation of Marvel tradition does not define or confine the book. Instead, everything this story touches is transformed, sometimes violently and often unexpectedly. To begin with, this is a team book but it orbits closely around team leader Roberto da Costa who is secretive in a very un-Avengers kind of way. He is the core hero of this book and his primary super power is his ability to engineer the future. The core of his plot revolves around his purchase and transformation of the criminal scientific organization A.I.M. into a force for good. As da Costa explains it, “A.I.M. is now a super-scientific global rescue organization, operating from right here on Avengers Island. I know that might be hard for some of you to believe but we live in interesting times. New times. With new threats. New dangers. New opportunities.”
All of this newness drives change and transformation. And transformation is assuredly a core theme of this book. Wiccan is a reality warper. Hulking is a shape-shifter. Power Man turns knowledge, history, and culture into power. The ideas of transformation is even baked into the roster. It’s also a big part of how the plot works. As the series rolls forward, layers of perception are peeled back to expose new truths which repeatedly shift our understanding of reality.
Transformation is seen as the solution to everything in “New Avengers.” A.I.M. is a historically evil institution so da Costa transforms it into a force for good. When the The Knights of the Infinite (who are a team of Kree-Skrull-hybrids) decide that space needs a savior, Hulkling is transformed into the King of Space. Transformation is not always good, however, it’s often violent and disruptive. The Maker warps everything around him to further his schemes. Henchmen become insectoid monsters and the dead become crystal-headed life-minus zombies. S.H.I.E.L.D. tries to transform reality itself with cosmic cube fragments, and a man named Todd Ziller (get it?) is mutated into the American Kaiju. One of the most horrific example of transformation involves the lovecraftian dark wizard Moridun, who attempts to violently take over the mind and body of Wiccan.
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All of this shifting, oozing, surprising, demiurgic change is beautifully brought to life by a large team of skilled artists. Perhaps the most impactful of these is Dono Sánchez-Almara who contributes his explosive, powerful colors to 11 of this volume’s 18 issues. Consistently strong coloring work is also provided by Jesus Aburtov who worked on issues #12-18. The linework to begin the series is done by Gerardo Sandoval, an artist whose cartoonish style I initially had doubts about but who quickly won me over with his action movie energy and flare. Sandoval brings to hyperactive life every bizzare creative impulse that flows forth from Al Ewing’s mind: space squid wizards from past realities, spaceships hidden in fake mountains, biohacking brain surgeries by interdimensional evil geniuses, and corrupted ex-heroes who slay gods. Even though his work only appears on a few pages, I also feel compelled to shout out Phil Noto’s fantastic and ethereal illustrations of Wiccian’s mindscape in “New Avengers” #6. When Marcus To takes over the series, he brings a very different approach, but it’s a testament to the strength of the story that his approach is just as entertaining. Sandoval’s fun bombast is replaced by To’s masterful storytelling clarity, dynamic angles, and fascinating panel layouts. Paco Medina and Juan Vlasco are the third regular team on the volume and as spy agencies battle and insane schemes interlock and combust, they guide readers through with a deft and entertaining modern style.
In “New Avengers,” the various attempts to bio-hack, modify, and reimagine are attempts to mold the future. The stated purpose of the evil organization W.H.I.S.P.E.R. is “Studying the nature of reality… to build a better one.” Roberto states that, “The future is now. The future is us. We’re the New Avengers.” The result of this future fixation is an entertaining spectacle where the good people, the bad people, and the morally ambiguous people are all trying to outmaneuver one another to decide who will shape reality. Forget prognostication, this is competitive world building, like Age of Empires with superheroes.
