New Avengers #27

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Leinil Yu

I dropped New Avengers, and everything else on my list, a while back. I’d poked around online and heard this issue would be a decent jumping-on point, what with the Civil War tie-ins winding down, and the debut of the new team.

Well, the new team doesn’t show up until the end of the issue, but it’s a solid enough read.

The book belongs to Maya Lopez, or Echo. Oh, and Ronin. Except Ronin is in the Avengers at the end of the book, only isn’t Lopez. Except Lopez is Ronin up until then in flashbacks. We don’t know who the new Ronin is, like we didn’t know Echo was Ronin at first but now we do, but now she isn’t anymore. ISN’T THIS FUN? The thrust of the book is that Echo is exactly where we left her earlier in the run: taking care of the Hand’s involvement in Japan, and posing as a male ninja named Ronin. The Hand, now led by Elektra, is SUPER PISSED at Maya/Ronin for getting all up in their Kool-Aid and wants her dead.

So they kill her. And then bring her back to life. It’s what they do, you know. As an aside it kind of irked me that Maya was apparently wearing her Echo outfit underneath the Ronin mansuit. I don’t know why that bothers me more than a ninja woman wearing a MAN SUIT and still being able to fight comfortably and well, but I digress.

BOY DO I EVER DIGRESS.

They bring her back to life, and the narrative of the book is an email to (blind, lol) Matt Murdock asking her to track her down and kill her, as she must be either dead or under Hand control if the email was sent.

Bendis’ writing is solid, as I said. The banter (actually bantering about banter) between the Avengers is a little clunky to me, but he still writes the best Spider-Man in the industry. The Star Wars reference absolutely slayed me. The mystery as to who is THE NEW RONIN THIS TIME doesn’t really affect me that much, but he’s making it pretty difficult to figure out at this point.

The team itself hasn’t gelled with me yet, but seeing Iron Fist and Luke Cage side-by-side is worth the price of the book itself. Dr. Strange in the Avengers is a little weird, but i’m excited by it. I just hope he gets utilized well. What an amazing character, and putting him on a team is a bold move, just like Spidey was when New Avengers launched.

It annoyed me that because Civil War still hasn’t wrapped, things like the team roster and Spidey being in the black costume again are still unexplained, but it gave the book a certain level of excitement to me.

Yu isn’t my cup of tea art-wise, but it’s fine.

Soooo Pull or Drop?

Pull. For now anyway. The fact that so much is up in the air is interesting enough to keep me with it, but we’ll have to see how it pans out. I think the book was a decent enough jumping-on point for new readers. But a team book like this is a hard thing to get people immersed in if they aren’t familiar with the characters. Also: God why is Wolverine in this book WHY WHY WH