This past week in Amazing Spider-Man, Deadpool showed up in what is quite possibly his most enjoyable cameo in a good long while. As he and Spider-Man ran around the city fighting and bantering, Deadpool did at one time remark that he had Blackest Night themed toe nails, at which point a word bubble popped up from Geoff Johns announcing that he approved of this, and he was noted as the former Avengers writer. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that there is a good chunk of people who saw this and thought to themselves, “Haha… wait… what?” But it is true none the less! From 2002 to 2004, Geoff Johns wrote issues #57 through #76 of the world’s mightiest heroes, and yours truly has copies of all three trades created out of his run. It is with my pleasure that I then present to you a review of the work one of the best writers DC has ever had during his brief stint at the opposing company.
It should be noted, of course, that the Avengers is not the ONLY thing Johns’ has written for Marvel. He’s written a small but fair share. However, the most prolific work he has done has been for the Avengers title.
In Geoff Johns’ Avengers, we have three main story arcs that were concisely captured and three relatively small trades — World Trust, Red Zone, and the Search For She-Hulk. Each arc serves not to bring great upheaval to the world of the Avengers but rather to help flesh out certain characters that Johns likes to work with, and the story has a stable 3 acts before it’s conclusion.
The first part of the story, World Trust, finds the entire world in caught in the midst of a strange anomaly — all of the major world powers have disappeared in black holes that are opening up around the world. With gaps in leadership all around, the world turns to the Avengers to lead them, as reluctant as they may be. But Captain America, always the man to step up to the plate, has no fear that he can do what is right. Meanwhile, a strange being wanders the Earth, commenting on the order and the chaos that it sees, and it eventually has a run in with pre-cuckoo pants Scarlet Witch. What the Avengers find out is that the black holes are created by Scorpio of the fabled Zodiac syndicate, who the Avengers have tussled with briefly in the past. The Avengers, along with the returned Thor, defeat Scorpio. However in the end the Zodiac still gets what it was after — the Zodiac key, an all powerful inter-dimensional key/weapon (which recently reappeared in Marvel comics in Dark Reign — Zodiac #3). The story also ends with the Avengers becoming their own sovereign nation (arguably the biggest change Johns’ brought to the title) and has a slight book end as well in which Gyrich, who had been appointed the Avengers’ diplomatic liaison, is black mailed into spying on the Avengers for a shady government figure. 
The closing portion of this book also features artwork by Gil’s favorite Gary Frank as he ties things together in order to move into the next arc.
The second part is hands down the best. All the crazy build-up, action, and intrigue that always drew me to the Avengers team title is present in Red Zone, in which a mysterious but extremely deadly red airbone virus is released over Mt. Washington, killing thousands of people in nearby towns and on the site itself. Of course the Avengers are some of the first people on the scene to help out but the government immediately steps in pushes them out except for a select few like Warbird (yeah, remember when that was Ms. Marvel’s name?). The rest of the Avengers, including Captain America, the new Ant Man and Jack Of Hearts (one of whom is now a Norman Osborn Thunderbolt while the other is… well… did you read that issue of Hercules when they went to the afterlife casino?) are left with the daunting task of getting through a government cover up in order to find the truth in a catastrophe. And boy oh boy, is it some truth. Previous plans laid out by Johns in the previous volume come to play in this set as the man who is blackmailing Gyrich reveals his true nature, and Falcon comes in to help settle the score. And while I won’t give anything away overtly, the arc is called Red Zone, so gleen what you will from that title. The story arc features great development between Iron Man and Black Panther as the two are forced to put their egos aside, and this is where Black Panther finally becomes a trusted member of the Avengers Consortium.
Continued belowOnly problem? Well, most of you probably don’t remember Jack of Hearts by now, considering he was dead before Bendis came over to mastermind the entire universe (although that was Jack of Hearts suicide bombing the gates in zombie form during Disassembled if you remember correctly), but his powers involve intense radiation that require him to be quarantined for 14 hours of any given day, or else he goes boom and kills everyone. What is one other side effect to him? His powers make She-Hulk go ballistic, and thus creates her savage breakout during Red Zone, disappearance, and subsequent arc The Search for She-Hulk. During this arc, She-Hulk decides to go after her beloved cousin Bruce in order to deal with the demons that lay inside her, and meanwhile the Avengers want nothing more to get her back. As the arc closes after many a battle between the Hulk and the enraged She-Hulk, we see the great return of Hawkeye, which is a more than welcome add to the ever expanding roster.
The last book also happens to feature the death of Jack of Hearts after he and Ant-Man FINALLY resolve their differences (and he’s doing something heroic and selfless!!) as well as expand on the relationship between Hank and Janet in two book ends unrelated to the She-Hulk storyline.
Now, this may shock and awe you, but as much as I absolutely love the work of Geoff Johns’, I really did not care that much for his Avengers run (cue shock and awe). It’s not that it is in anyway bad. Quite the contrary actually — it’s really rather good. But when I hold up Geoff Johns’ body of work, his run of the Avengers is really quite low in the list. I would say that the main reason for this is that he came in the midst of other running storylines and he had the challenge of working with other people’s leftovers as well as trying to do something of his own, and in the end the whole work feels rather unfinished.
One of the major draws to reading just any given writer’s run of a comic book is because you get a complete set arc put in motion by the writer. You’ll have them dealing with other people’s loose ends and elaborating on past experiences, sure, but for the most part you could read an entire run and just that run in order to get a good sense of whatever story it is that you are trying to read. And when you get to Johns’ Avengers, by the end of it it just feels like there was a lot more he may have wanted to do but didn’t get to. I once read an interview with Johns in which he says that he actually has notebooks and notebooks of stories for characters, and that sometimes he will be pulled off a book before he can tell all that he has to do for any number of decisions. Such was the case with the end to his run on Justice Society of America, and I’m going to go ahead and assume that such was the case here.
So while there may be some left over threads hanging (all of which quickly became irrelevant when Bendis came on 9 issues later to disassemble it all), Geoff Johns still proves two things: 1) he is great at characterization (his Hawkeye appearance was magnificent) and 2) the man knows how to concoct a good story. I can only image what else would have happened had his run continued beyond the death of Jack of Hearts, but I imagine that given the time a great story involving the Zodiac syndicate would have appeared, and that could have been truly awesome. However, considering all that he’s done since then, it’s for the best that he got to back to work for mostly DC!
Two final things to note:
1. Marvel is clearly aware of the intense success of Johns and, due to the three Avengers trades I mentioned being out of print, are re-releasing them. You can check out volume 1 in 2010 with Avengers: World Trust Premiere Hardcover.
2. For whatever reason, one of the most amusing things Johns wrote during his Avengers run was cut out of my trade! Probably due to it’s intense adult themes. So, because I’m such a great guy, I’ve found that scene and provided it for you here. Enjoy the dirty side of Johns:
