Let’s close out this block with a good comic. Look at that lovely cover. It’s the wedding event of the century from your pals Brian Michael Bendis, Olivier Coipel, uh, 8 inkers and 3 colorists, wow. I guess that’s what it takes to get an oversized issue by Olivier Coipel to market on time. Couldn’t do it at all today, as complicated as his art’s gotten. The inkers are Drew Geraci, Drew Hennessey, Livesay, Rick Magyar, Danny Mikki, Mark Morales, Mike Perkins & Tim Townsend. The colorists are June Chung, Richard Isanove and Jose Villarrubia. I remember liking this comic, but now I’m just wondering how drastically the art will shift with each change of personnel. But we don’t open with the wedding, with the couple, or with the Avengers, we open on an awkwardly cropped reprint of the cover to 1967’s Avengers #45 by John Buscema and Vince Colletta. The weird crop is clearly to remove the logo and cover copy of the first appearance of the Super Adaptoid, which a floating word balloon names.
Man, I read a brand-new Super Adaptoid riff in a comic earlier today, funny how these things happen. Ok, now we can go see the happy couple and the Avengers. The… happy couple?
MJ on babies: Very consistent with her stance from ASM 265. Man, remember those days? I won’t lie, I miss the Vol. 1 era. It was just more fun to cover, in a lot of ways, for a lot of reasons. Also, Jessica Drew has since become a mom, which is kinda funny. A friend of mine was just like that about kids, and also became a mom, and loves it. That’s just how it goes sometimes. We’re just not gonna bring up the “For sale baby shoes, never worn” elephant in the room.
I think it’s worth noting, for historical purposes, that Olivier Coipel is black. One of a still far too few black artists in comics, then and now (Shout out to Keith Pollard for the purposes of this blog). And I think a good artist can draw anything, but I just think you can tell Coipel is more comfortable with Cage than… every other artist. He’s a real guy! He’s not a cliche of a black man, he doesn’t have rote cliche features. Well, Tony, Steve & Bob are off to meet the mayor, visibly Bloomberg, who has concerns about Avengers Tower. And they probably won’t be assuaged by Yelena Belova showing up right as he arrives to start a ruckus, which she does. But we cut back upstairs before we see said ruckus.
Coipel really seems to be having fun with that baby. His work has become so fussy in the last 20 years. I miss this cartooning. Carol wallops Yelena, who just gets back up and seems to adapt into her. Then she sends all the Avengers flying like Sentry, saying she really wants to get her hands on Captain America. But Cap has bundled the mayor into the back of a car and is fleeing the scene, assuming the attack is on him, not the Avengers. Yelena pursues, thanks to her batwings, which, like, which Avenger is that from? But then she gets smashed into a building.
Really like that Spider-Man joke. Yelena punches Bob like a missile again, but Carol catches him, throws him to Spider-Woman, who throws him to Cage, who lands in a spider web while giving Spidey a thumbs up.
Coipel nailin’ the Iron Man suit. Just keeping track. If that seems mean, I can’t draw it, either, as I have already offered evidence of. It’s hard!
Also very much like that “I wasn’t done stalling yet!” joke. Bendis’ Spider-Man actually being funny was so refreshing in this era where so many people suck at it. I also note no one is drawing the webbing coming out of the back of the hand in this suit except Ron Garney. Spider-Man kicks Yelena in the butt to wake her up, then hops off the roof they crashed on just in time for her to get a Captain America shield to the face. He’s just bait, tho, running to get her in position to get zapped by Spider-Woman, and then Wolverine says “Now.”
I think it’s funny that throwing Wolverine has become such a go-to gag when he weighs so much more than a regular person due to being full of unbreakable metal. I mean, nothing Colossus or Ms. Marvel can’t handle, but still. Throwing anyone else would be easier. Cool roll action at the bottom there.
Can’t go wrong with the ol’ “army of armors” gag. Clearly differentiating between the 1st Adi Granov suit and the Extremis suit feels like showing off when Mike Deodato and Dave Finch couldn’t even draw one of them or keep them straight, but Coipel is top tier. Tony’s not in any of the suits, he’s on a nearby roof coordinating them all. But Yelena manages to even start turning the tide under this onslaught, noting she has Wolverine’s healing factor and Cage’s unbreakable skin.
Using the Void against her is a very novel application of Bob’s whole deal. Good call, Bendis! As Sentry/Void keeps turning the screw, we cut to the Hydra guy who’s controlling Spider-Woman, who tells AIM to pull the plug. Yelena feels it happening, tries to ask for help, and explodes. Everyone thinks Sentry killed her, but Iron Man knows she was destroyed precisely so he couldn’t study her.
Grim! I don’t rightly recall how Yelena went from a puddle to a regular Black Widow with no powers again, but it’s comics, of course she did. But we got a wedding to attend, finally!
A nice moment of happiness before it all turns to crap. Because up next is Civil War, and after Civil War… everything changes… That’s technically the end of this block, but we roll right into Civil War next time. Also shout out to my old internet pal and fellow Bendis Boarder Michael Lapinski for having a question printed in the new “Hotspot” page, which is sort of a modern take on the Bullpen Bulletins page. Michael drew a guest installment of Comics From Space! for me once, aeons ago, and it was maybe the best looking strip I ever posted.