Having said that, Superior Foes of Spider-Man is actually a good idea and, in an even more shocking twist, a well executed book. DC did something similar to this a few years back with Secret Six, basically chronicling a super-villain team working together for....umm...something. It turned out to be a really big hit and Marvel has tried to recreate the magic there a couple of times with Thunderbolts (at least when Warren Ellis was writing it) and Dark Avengers (Brian Bendis leaving that book was like the Comic Curse of the Bambino).
Now, they're taking a very promising swing for the fences with this story about a team of Z-list baddies having a go at being the next Sinister Six...even though there's only five of them. But thus far, it doesn't seem to be an all-out antihero adventure so much a comical yet sad look at a Bad News Bears type group of lowlifes trying to get out of their own ways. Think Matt Fraction's Hawkeye, but for villains. There's no real superpowered showdowns here and more hare brained caper bumbling not unlike that of Jesse Pinkman from Breaking Bad. This issue, in particular, focuses heavily on narrative from the perspective of Boomerang as he tries to get by while cooling his heels in jail. We don't enough fleshing out of his teammates, but given the formula of the inaugural issue, there's hope that each member of the group will be given his or her time in the sun individually.
Speaking of parallels to Hawkeye, Steve Lieber, who did pencils on a particularly awesome previous issue of Matt Fraction's Eisner nominated masterpiece, breathes a similar life into Superior Foes. Lieber is every bit as effective as David Aja at a clean but easily accessible approach to the "sucks to be me" formula that makes both books as strong as they are. It's kinda early judge whether or not this book is as awesome as Hawkeye or Secret Six, but so far so good.
Bottom Line: Funny, charming, cleanly drawn....it's a lot like Hawkeye. That's a good thing. And thank God there's not much of Doctor Spiderpus in it. 8.5 out of 10.
Avengers A.I. #1: First things first....Age of Ultron ended on a "what the fuck" type of note and not in a good "Is that the ending to the Sopranos or is there something wrong with the cable" kind of way. It was more of a "I can't believe I let M. Night Shyamalan pull this sorry shit on me again" kind of way. Essentially, acting as a newsletter for what titles and characters Marvel was going to shoehorn into our longboxes, Age of Ultron ended up doing the exact same shitty thing DC Comics did with Flashpoint except it did it while raising the bar for shittyness. I think if DC holds the book to their ears, they'll hear the sound of Marvel execs singing "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better."
However, if you look close enough, you can find a strawberry in every shit sandwich. So far, Avengers A.I. is lobbying to be that strawberry. Every few years, Henry "I'm a Superhero Who Created a Genocidal Robot and Still Gets to Keep My Job" Pym decides to pick himself up and do something to make up for nearly inadvertently eradicating humanity via the evil iPhone 4 known as Ultron or, in this case, the computer virus that killed Ultron...I think. This time, he's assembled a team of tech-oriented Avengers to fight perversions of technological advancement. Hopefully, we'll see an issue where they take on Windows Vista, T-Pain and Kanye's 808's and Heartbreaks album.
Sam Humphries offers us a fun look at Henry Pym as an adventurous, cocky douchebag scientist whose history of cocky douchebaggery is often stuck in the shadow of Tony Stark's (I'm just saying....read Civil War...hard to get more dickish than that). To the book's credit, it doesn't waste too much time getting the band together and getting right to brass tacks.
There are a few standout elements here storywise. The first is Monica Chang, who some of you will remember from the Ultimate Comics universe as Nick Fury's nigh-psychotic ex wife. This 616-continuity version doesn't seem to have that same baggage here, as far as we can tell and is all set up to be as cast-iron tough as Maria Hill. Also, there are some awesome reworkings of the Vision's powers here that make the action really fun to look at, almost like the Martian Manhunter meets Inspector Gadget. My personal favorite part of this team, however, is the Doombot. Seriously, a repurposed mechanical minion of Doctor Doom fighting for good, berating his team every step of the way....how could that possibly be anything short is hilarious? And Andre Lima Araujo's artwork does a good job of lending itself to Humpries' lighter atmosphere where the stakes aren't quite as "fate of the universe" as other titles in the franchise like New Avengers. Whether that works for the book or against it is yet to be seen, but it's a promising start.
Bottom Line: It has all the right working parts, but it's too early to call it a slam dunk. Pretty good. 8 out of 10.
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