Avengers (2012) #1-9

Avengers #1-9

Originally released in 2012

Written by Jonathan Hickman

Art by Jerome Opeña (#1-3), Adam Kubert (#4-6), Dustin Weaver (#7-9)

The start of Jonathan Hickman's Avengers run played with my expectations a bit.  In 2012, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was releasing the Avengers, so naturally, the Avengers comics were relaunching at the same time.  It even had the exact same line-up as the movie, even though Hulk is rarely an Avenger (he founded the team, but quit by the end of the second issue) and when he is, it doesn't seem to work out well.

However, when the villain Ex Nihilo (who wants to bring life to the universe, but his second on-screen target after Mars is Earth) sends Captain America back to Earth as a warning, Steve gathers together everyone that will answer the call.  What results is a rather large team, with it clearly being intended that more will be added.

Each issue lists off the Avengers who will be involved, with their names in blue or gray depending on whether they're involved or not.  There's far too many for me to list, so here's an example:

In addition to the six MCU Avengers (who, presumably, were the starting roster of this book to ease people into it), you've got extremely popular characters like Spider-Man and Wolverine, long-time Avengers like Captain Marvel and Spider-Woman, lesser-known characters like Cannonball and Manifold (who has the ability to teleport himself and others - not sure if this is mystical, a mutation, or something else), and new characters (or new interpretations of characters) like Hyperion, Captain Universe, and Smasher.

After the threat of Ex Nihilo is dealt with, the next three or four issues focus on the last three characters, establishing who they are and why they joined the Avengers.  Hyperion has been around for quite a while, serving as a Superman stand-in on a group of heroes from another universe who strongly resemble the Justice League, but by my understanding, Hyperion has several alternate universe versions, so I'm not sure if this is a new version of Hyperion or one that's been seen before.

Smasher is Izzy Kane, a woman from Iowa who discovered an alien device that inducted her into the Shi'ar Imperial Guard.  She gets some good moments with her grandfather, who's been feuding with her father since before she was born.

Captain Universe is some sort of living cosmic power that uses people as its host. (Spider-Man was Captain Universe at one point) The current Captain Universe is Tamara Devoux, an amnesiac woman with a missing daughter. Tamara and Captain Universe behave very differently, making the transformation from one to the other a little unsettling.

The foreshadowing for Secret Wars gets pretty heavy at this point - there's talk of Hyperion trying and failing to hold two worlds apart in order to save his universe, mentions of the Builders of the universe growing beyond it (seemingly implying that they became whatever race the Beyonder is), and hints of a small but growing divide between Iron Man and Captain America. (Steve has nightmares of Namor, Reed Richards, Black Panther, and Black Bolt standing over him, so it seems like the Illuminati did something to him)

It's not all nightmares and the impending end of the universe, though. There's some comedic relief, with Spider-Man providing the most of it. With so many characters, it feels like it would be hard to split the focus, but splitting the team into smaller groups seems to make it easier.

In the early issues, Ex Nihilo launched seeds to Earth to force it to grow and evolve.  It seemed like their effects stopped once Ex Nihilo and his sister Abyss were convinced to leave Earth alone, but the seeds were simply dormant.  In response, a planetary defense system is activated, turning a random inhabitant of Earth into a being of godlike power called the Starbrand.

Unfortunately, something seems to be fundamentally wrong with the universe, and after a few pages hinting at possible candidates at one particular college who have good traits, the Starbrand power winds up in the hands of someone who is overlooked, and simply gaining the power results in the entire college being destroyed and everyone in it being killed.

I'm not sure if it was intended to come across this way, but the creation of the new Starbrand seems uncomfortably close to a school shooter for my tastes. He occasionally shows remorse for what he did, but he almost immediately goes mad with power, more or less.

Once Starbrand is defeated and locked up, the Avengers shift focus to tracking down the remaining seeds, which is where issue 9 ends. The mad scientist organization AIM is also hunting for the seeds (having found one in Norway that nobody else knows about), and I'm guessing other mad scientists like the High Evolutionary could get involved as well.

While it doesn't have as much focus on character development as the Fantastic Four did (likely due to the larger cast - Smasher and Captain Universe get some good development since we get to see their backstories and motivations), Hickman's Avengers run is off to a good start. It really ups the scale of events compared to other Avengers comics that I've read, and I'm curious about how he's going to use his cast (some characters, like Spider-Woman, haven't done much yet, so I'm hoping they get at least one story arc), along with who else will fill out that diagram showing symbols for each Avenger. (I'm thinking where each icon is placed will be important, such as Spider-Man's icon connecting to Iron Man's or Captain Marvel's icon being connected to Captain America's, though maybe the icons are arranged randomly and their location doesn't matter)