Our second New Avenger has arrived, hot off the heels of yesterday’s announcement that Luke Cage would continue to be a New Avenger. Now we have Spider-Man, and we also have a very curious situation on our hand. We know that Spider-Man would be an Avenger, but we saw him on the cover of Avengers by John Romita Jr already… so what’s he doing here?
Bendis has told us that we couldn’t possibly guess as to what is going on, but if I had to venture, I would imagine that we’ll get the Avengers book by Bendis in May with Romita Jr, and within this issue we’ll see why there is going to continue to be a New Avengers title. I’m not sure what the reason could possibly be other than Spider-Man, Luke Cage, and perhaps Wolverine had so much fun working together in New Avengers beforehand that they’ll leave the “real” Avengers title to the big names and go off on their own team adventures.
Either way, we’ll have to wait until June to find out.
Oh, and can I mention that I am pretty sure Stuart Immonen’s art has never looked better? Seriously, compare the above image to recent issues of New Avengers. Immonen is an absolute master at evolving his art and consistently has gotten better over the years in all the work I’ve seen him do, from Ultimate X-Men to Nextwave to even his fill in issue of Fantastic Four. The man has some serious talent, and while I don’t neccesarily think we need this many Avengers ongoings (again), I’m glad to not lose a book with his work in it.