The War At Home: Avengers #32 Review

When I was but a lad, back in the dark and mystical age modern man knows only as the mysterious “Me Decade“, when collars were wide, all toys were choking hazards, and “flame retardant” was but a French phrase for, “If your moronic child lights a match, his polyester pants will go up like Nagasaki,” a four-year war took place in New England. It was a brutal, nonsensical conflict that pitted not only brother against brother but universe against universe. It featured bloody battles such as Superheroes versus Shogun Warriors. Imperial Stormtroopers against Micronauts. Cylon Centurions battling The Six Million Dollar Man. And one time, the entire Rebel Alliance X-Wing fleet versus Barbie, when General Debbie Stinkypants from the Nation State of Three Doors Down refused to respect hostilities and maintain neutrality, leading not only to Barbie’s summary decapitation under the accepted Rules of Engagement, to a brutal and crippling outbreak of incurable cooties to all combatants.

This war, known only as the Battle Of Every Action Figure In My Toy Box Against Every Action Figure In Every Other Neighborhood Kid’s Toy Box, waged continuously from about 1975 until Janine Wilson started sprouting boobs and my fellow combatants and I started focusing on diplomacy and foreign affairs. But in the intervening years, I have learned that this war was waged in every neighborhood in America during that time. It is a war that left many scars – for me, the worst was when Janine said, “Why would I care what an Acroyear is? Anyway, you smell like an armpit. C’mon Debbie; let’s go listen to the Flashdance soundtrack again and moon over older, Junior High School boys!” – but at least my war is over. For some poor bastards, the fighting has never stopped, leaving them broken, unable to maintain standard, acceptable gainful employment, and looking for the enemy around every corner.

Brian Michael Bendis is one of those shattered warriors, still fighting battles in a long-forgotten war. His latest conflict? The Avengers Vs. The Micronauts. He’s put the action figures on the battlefield in Avengers #32, and while it’s too early to tell if it will be good, the fact that he’s fighting the battle is exciting to someone who served on the same army in the 70s (I was with the 77th Awesome Division out of Massachusetts. Motto: “No, you wet the bed!”).

This issue follows the events of Avengers #31, when the Avengers received an Avengers Priority Alert from Inner Space. Tony Stark and Hank Pym do an analysis on the signal and, as predicted, it’s coming from The Wasp, who was thought killed in the Bendis-written Secret Avengers event about four years ago. So the team head to the source of the signal and send Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and Pym to Inner Space, where they immediately find Wasp, only to be discovered by a native with a new name, but with a body type familiar to any red-blooded American boy who entered a Child World between 1977 and 1980 (not as familiar as Janine’s body type, but you get my drift).

So what we have here is the final groundwork laying for an epic after-school, living room floor battle between my Mego Superhero figures and my Micronauts, which has made the story infinitely more interesting to me than it appeared in the last issue, where I predicted the return on Wasp and yet somehow missed the significance of her being trapped in Inner Space vis-a-vis the appearance of Micronauts (probably because while the kid in me would figure Avengers Vs. Micronauts would be awesome, the grown-up in me knows a thing or two about intellectual property rights). And while Bendis seems to have decided to skirt those rights issues by painting Baron Karza white and calling him Lord Gouzar – meaning we can probably look forward to seeing action from Acromonth, Temporal Venturer and Don’t Be Alarmed That When I Become A Tank It Looks Like My Penis Is A Power Drill Bot – the idea of seeing the Avengers take on the toys of my youth gives me more of a thrill than it probably should.

The problem is that this story is two issues in and the only Avengers action we’ve seen is Red Hulk getting his ass kicked by Wonder Man in the last issue. The build on this storyline is slow and talky – not surprising, as it is a Bendis book – but for me, the introduction of the Micronauts hammered home just how slow it is compared to comics from the 70s, as Micronauts was. If this was written by Bill Mantlo, we would have seen someone receive Wasp’s signal and track it to Inner Space in about two panels, with the next panel being Iron Man and Hank Pym setting up the transporter and explaining how dangerous it was, with the next couple showing the transport to Inner Space, and then boom! Karza starts shooting. Compare that to the two pages and eleven panels it takes to show just the transportation process here, and the pacing just feels interminable. And I know that this is nothing different than anything Bendis has ever done, and the dialogue that packs these panels is crackling and entertaining as always, but this is a story that suddenly is trying to appear to my inner seven-year-old, and he has no patience for this dithering.

And a more cynical man than me might look at the introduction of Micronauts to an Avengers story, scoff and say, “Oh, Bendis is just engaging in 70s-era fanboy wanking.” Sure he is… but that’s what he’s always done. There is no purpose to Spider-Man or Luke Cage to be members of The Avengers, as Bendis has made them for years, except for the fact that it is fucking awesome. Hell, there were months during the 70s where my Mego Iron Man was sidekick to my Energized Spider-Man for no other reason than I thought it was cool; why would that change just because I grew up enough to learn words like “dithering” and “interminable”? Sure, the argument could be made that Bendis’s run on Avengers has been nothing but the fantasies of someone who never aged emotionally after 1979… but as someone who also stopped evolving around 1983 or so, I’ve had a blast with it, and going out with a big toy box-emptying battle is something that I’m really looking forward to playing out.

Click to enlarge and see three grown men clearly thinking, “Dat ass.”

The art by Mike Mayhew and Brandon Peterson is much like it was in the previous issue, only with some areas that are a bit more problematic this month. Again, it looks like one artist drew the scenes occurring in the “real world” while the other drew the Inner Space scenes (and I still don’t know which guy drew which), with the real world stuff looking somewhat softer, with a more painted look, while the Inner Space scenes are sharper and packed with distracting parallel detail lines that look like the artist chopped rails on the original art before shipping it off to Marvel. Each style is fine, but the emotional core of the book – the reunion of Wasp with the Avengers – is book-ended by a couple of disturbing choices. The sequence starts with the Avengers seeing Wasp for the first time in four years… in an unfortunate Brokeback pose, as if she wanted to show the guys that, despite spending four years on the run, she still had time to Blast Those Glutes. The sequence ends with a shot of Wasp jumping for joy with her back arched – all the better to show readers that there is no sagging in Inner Space – with Hank, Cap and Thor standing behind her, literally leering at her ass with the crazed derpfaces of men busily ejaculating into their tights. The combination turns what should be a heartfelt scene into a T n’ A session that just feels odd.

Avengers #32 is a slow story, with next to no action and an almost completely failed emotional reunion spoiled by art choices. And yet it teases a battle issue or two that speaks directly to the child in me that enacted this very battle a million times in my back yard. And it is a battle scene that will likely mean nothing to anyone younger than 37 but a generic fight between Avengers and aliens. But to those of us who grew up when Mego figures were something your parents bought you to shut you up rather than as an investment to pay for your college tuition, the battle it teases is epic, and one I can’t wait to see. However, that battle does not happen here. Which means that despite my anticipation, I can only recommend buying Avengers #32 to hold onto, as with the last issue, to read as part of the complete arc when the next issue comes out.

However, I will buy that next issue. Because it turns out that, despite years and miles, my war isn’t over, either.