Avengers by Geoff Johns: The Complete Collection, Volume 2

Avengers (1998) (New Editions) #8-9

by Geoff Johns (Writer), Ivan Reis (Illustrations), Olivier Coipel (Illustrations)

Superstar writer Geoff Johns takes on the Avengers! A deadly chemical agent has been released over Mount Rushmore. Is this a terrorist attack on American soil? That's what the Avengers seek to discover as they brave the Red Zone's lethal perimeter - but the truth they uncover is even more startling! Then: her transformations into She-Hulk out of control, longtime Avenger Jennifer Walters seeks out the one person on Earth who can help: her cousin, the incredible Hulk. But can even the Avengers intervene when two gamma-powered goliaths clash? COLLECTING: Avengers (1998) 64-76

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics

304 pages, Paperback

First published September 3, 2013

About the author

Geoff Johns originally hails from Detroit, Michigan. He attended Michigan State University, where he earned a degree in Media Arts and Film. He moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s in search of work within the film industry. Through perseverance, Geoff ended up as the assistant to Richard Donner, working on Conspiracy Theory and Lethal Weapon 4. During that time, he also began his comics career writing Stars and S.T.R.I.P.E. and JSA (co-written with David S. Goyer) for DC Comics. He worked with Richard Donner for four years, leaving the company to pursue writing full-time.

His first comics assignments led to a critically acclaimed five-year run on the The Flash. Since then, he has quickly become one of the most popular and prolific comics writers today, working on such titles including a highly successful re-imagining of Green Lantern, Action Comics (co-written with Richard Donner), Teen Titans, Justice Society of America, Infinite Crisis and the experimental breakout hit series 52 for DC with Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid. Geoff received the Wizard Fan Award for Breakout Talent of 2002 and Writer of the Year for 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 as well as the CBG Writer of the Year 2003 thru 2005, 2007 and CBG Best Comic Book Series for JSA 2001 thru 2005. Geoff also developed BLADE: THE SERIES with David S. Goyer, as well as penned the acclaimed “Legion” episode of SMALLVILLE. He also served as staff writer for the fourth season of ROBOT CHICKEN.

Geoff recently became a New York Times Bestselling author with the graphic novel Superman: Brainiac with art by Gary Frank.

Reviews

[Subham · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was another epic one!

It starts off with a great solo story of Sam and what he has been upto and I loved that first chapter showing Sam's childhood and all and then we have the big story with some storm coming in and infecting people near Mount Rushmore and Avengers have to save people there and its secret experiments and Red Skull meddling it and I love how that comes about and the way the whole story plays out, plus Cap and Iron man and Black Panther fighting the Skull together was so awesome and I loved the lady's part in it. Johns made Skull such a great villain here showing his racism and how despicable he really is and the way Bp fights him is epic.

Then I loved the solo story with Jan and Hank though they could have used Whirlwind in a better way and then the big story of She-hulk and the return of Hulk and hawkeye and the way Avengers get involved in it and the battle there is so well done. The art by Collins is really good there though his Hulk is weird like less features and all and regardless the emotional core of the story is really good! Plus the big story with Jack of Hearts which was like my favorite of the series!

Overall great stories and I loved the way Johns does it humanizing characters and showing the villains like really well and giving the heroes that moment which they can triumph on plus the art teams he was paired with helped make the book better and it has solid stories which are my memorable marvel stories for sure. A great ending to a short yet solid and epic run.

[Chelsea 🏳️‍🌈 · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't even know what to say about this one.

I thought it couldn't get worse than boring but somehow, this proved me wrong.

This starts with the Red Zone story arc which is fantastic! The plot is A+, the characters' talents are used wisely and there's some much needed development between Tony and T'Challa. Also, it's one of the stories I point to when explaining why Steve and Tony's relationship is so important to Marvel canon. That story gets 4 stars. I took off a star because it still has some of the same problems the last volume did where 90% of the dialogue is exposition/characters explaining the their bios.

Then we get 2 stories in which all the problems I have with the writing get worse + sexism + juxtaposition of Hank and Jan on a date and a man abusing a prostitute + a terrible ending.

Where to begin?

*mentions of abuse*

"Whirlwinds" follows the Red Zone arc and it's Hank and Jan going on a date in Vegas. I've heard many different opinions on their relationship but suffice to say, regardless of whether you think Hank slapping Jan was an artist incorrectly interpreting the script or not, it's uncomfortable to have their scenes inter-spliced with a Whirlwind making a prostitute dress up as Wasp and hitting her. Jan and Hank get involved and Whirlwind licks Jan's face. What the fuck? She kicks his ass but still, why was that necessary? It was gross.

The next story is "The Search for She-Hulk". A lot of dialogue in these books are characters explaining their own backstory but this one decided to have She-hulk tell Banner's story. Okay, to be fair, it was about her too, kind of. Anyway, Jack of Hearts accidentally took away her abilities so she's searching for Banner. As a premise, this is okay. The Avengers come looking for her and she gets scared, Hulks out. Now this town is in danger and they're trying to figure out how to help her.

Hawkeye returns. I love Clint but he's kind of a dick here. It's worth mentioning that She-Hulk ends up fighting in her underwear for some reason. Okay. Anyway, Bruce shows up, Clint decides the situation isn't quite as fucked up as he'd like it to be and shoots Banner. Thanks.

Now 2 Hulks are fighting, everyone's in even more danger and the dialogue is cave man speak. I lost interest in this by issue 2 of it but Wanda was pretty badass.

The last story is "Full House" in which Cap decides Jack of Hearts and Jen can't be on a team together. Jack's a dick but I actually get sorry for him because he didn't mean to hurt Jen. The team argues for a bit, Tony and T'Challa wanna get Jack help, Scott doesn't like Jack at all and Jen feels bad for him. This story is moderately interesting and then it goes from 30 to 100 when Scott's daughter is randomly kidnapped. Scott rushes off to save her, Jack follows and what ensues is incredibly ridiculous.

The ending (I won't spoil it) was meant to turn the relationship between Jack and Scott from an antagonistic one into one of mutual respect. Rather than put the work in, like they did with T'Challa and Tony who were having trust issues, they pushed it too fast and created a ridiculous scenario to force it.

There's development of some relationships in this book. Not a ton of character development but when Johns decides to focus on one character, like Sam in the beginning of this book or some of Jen's stuff, there are hints of it. Still, not enough to sell me on his run of Avengers.

Red Zone is a fantastic story and you can buy that as a trade by itself. I recommend that arc but the rest of this can be ignored entirely. I wish I could unread it.

Red Zone - 5 stars
The rest - .5 stars

[Hannah Call · Rating 4 out of 5]

Red Zone: 4/5
Hunt for She-Hulk: 3/5

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Re-read. Giving it 5-stars this time. Loved it.

[Charlie Santos · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve the read first collection of Avengers by Geoff Johns and was going to review;but it didn't really wow me too much or even think it was downright terrible. Just average, so I didn't review it. Mostly because there wasn't really anything to talk about.
Book 2/Volume 2 on the other hand was quite good from beginning to end.It starts off where book 1 left off. Henry Gyrich is still unsure of The Avengers and Falcon is trying to convince otherwise.Secretary of defense is scheming and being menacing. This leads to the storyline “Red Zone”.
Red zone is, in simple terms, dope. Red Zone is probably one of best Avengers storylines in the past 2 decades. It has drama, suspense, action, a bit of horror and mystery. Plus the art is fantastic. There's some red mist that surrounds Mount Rushmore and anybody who comes to contact with the most, dies or gets infected. Just read it, it’s so good! The villain behind the whole plan is pretty obvious, but nevertheless is a nice twist. I’ll spoil one thing because the next storyline that leads to another storyline. During Red Zone, She-Hulk comes in contact with Jack of Hearts, who can absorb radiation. So when she turns into She-Hulk she has no real control and disappears which leads to the next Storyline.
“Search for She-Hulk” is a decent follow up to Red Zone. Pretty much Jennifer(She-Hulk) goes to Idaho to find Bruce Banner to her help with her dilemma. Eventually the Avengers find her, but when they do, she starts freaking out and hulks out. They have a big battle, Hawkeye joins the battle out of nowhere( He hasn't been a Avenger since Busiek’s run). He draws her out of town where Bruce interrupts the battle. He tries to calm She-Hulk down. He does, but government unfortunately shows up. Hawkeye shoots up Bruce by accident and turns into the Hulk. They have a big battle, yadadada, Captain America brings Jack of Hearts to turn She-Hulk back to normal. It works, the day is saved and all that jazz.
One last thing is there is a recurring plot line with Ant-man(Scott Lang) and Jack of Hearts throughout book 1 and 2. They really don't like each other and can't get along. Anyways they finish this little plot line in the last issue. I'm gonna spoil it, but I think it's pretty good last issue.
To wrap this up I definitely recommend this book. Some issues are okay and the rest are quite great, especially Red Zone. Nothing groundbreaking, just a enjoyable ride from beginning to end. Happy reading guys!!

[Mickey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Johns run continues on in somewhat mixed fashion, but this book gets a much higher rating from me because the first story arc "Red Zone" is really incredible (the first issue centers on a quick Falcon story that sort of sets this up, so I count it as part of Red Zone even though it isn't). I love a good arc where the majority of the action is saving people. It wraps up in satisfying fashion, the stakes are dramatic and well defined, and every character gets their moments. Very much worth your time.

The rest is somewhere between eh and "who cares?". I genuinely wondered if Johns lost a bet and had to write on Avengers for some reason. He brings so little to these characters and is only involving him in his stories because he has to. The Hank/Janet aside (the next issue) is kinda whatever, especially considering that so much ink has been spilled on this relationship already. Why spend a whole issue on this pairing and do nothing to develop it, comment on it, or do anything of interest with it at all? It basically boils down to "it's just them and they fight the bad guy."

"Search for She-Hulk," this book's other big arc is fine but uninspired. The premise is kind of interesting, but again Johns doesn't really do anything with it. If you like She-Hulk, there are so many more interesting takes on her character.

The last issue is the end of the Johns run, and the roster is minorly reshuffled by (spoiler follows) wrapping up the very boring Jack of Hearts storyline in a way that feels both unearned and underwhelming. Johns spent a fair chunk of his run trying to get us to feel sorry for this character, rather than I dunno making him compelling or dramatically interesting, and it never works for even a second. This last issue is no exception.

[Tomás Sendarrubias García · Rating 4 out of 5]

La verdad es que la etapa de Geoff Johns en Vengadores fue demasiado corta. Eso es un hecho. Johns llegó a ocuparse de los guiones de Vengadores para cubrir un gran hueco, el dejado por Busiek después de cinco años, y llegó con buen pie, planteando una nueva situación para el equipo (convertidos ahora en su propia nación), y desarrollando una historia a través de tres sagas, que es lo que le dio tiempo a escribir antes de dejar la colección para volver a DC... de dónde no se ha movido desde entonces.

En la primera de sus sagas, Johns trajo de vuelta a un grupo de viejos enemigos de los Vengadores, el Zodíaco... pero la saga se quedó completamente coja, pues anunciaba una amenaza que nunca terminó de llegar, ya que dejó la colección. Su siguiente saga fue la más interesante, Zona Roja, en la que los Vengadores tienen que hacer frente a un arma biológica desatada en pleno corazón de Estados Unidos. Y por último, La Búsqueda de Hulka, en la que el equipo tiene que acudir en busca de su compañera, desestabilizada por los acontecimientos de Zona Roja. Y una de las grandes bazas de Johns fue su manera de jugar con el equipo, creando una mítica relación entre el Hombre Hormiga y la Sota de Corazones, relanzando el romance entre Visión y la Bruja Escarlata, reintegrando a Pantera Negra en el equipo, y poniendo la mayor parte del peso de este en el Capitán América como auténtico pilar del equipo...

Pero en el horizonte ya se acercaba Bendis... y con él, todo iba a saltar por los aires.

[B · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were a couple of good moments here, but basically everyone is out of character and they all shift their actions in response to impulses too quickly. It feels like half the Avengers are unable to plan and control their behavior and half the avengers are two-dimensional "make any sacrifice with a smile" characters.

Maybe the most disappointing, because I've been reading the Priest and Hudlin runs, is the Black Panther. Johns seems to have gotten about a quarter of the cool and toughness that he exudes in his own title. (He seems to think highly of Iron Man and then Cap and Scarlet Witch are flat characters. Probably, given the miniseries and his Hourman work, his strongest interest is the Vision?)

I will say that this includes the best Gyrich story. Usually, Gyrich stories end with Gyrich feeling like he is a loser with no control over his life but unwilling to make any changes He then continues to "tough guy" himself into another scenario where he is humiliated and proven wrong. I mean, there are Bill Kristols in real life. But no one plays out how bizarre it is that Gyrich keeps doing it, like, say, https://boingboing.net/2015/08/12/tom.... Or the fact that there must be some sort of institutional desire for a Gyrich in the Marvel US. Someone must be supporting his brand of always-wrongheadedness. Here, we get a different ending.

[Marcela · Rating 3 out of 5]

The end of Johns's Avengers run was such a mixed bag. We have two arcs: the first was a shining example of the no-holds-barred approach early-2000s Marvel used to take to writing "controversial" (anti-Nazi, anti-white supremacy, back when we all agreed these were Very Bad Things) political storylines; the second featured She-Hulk in a story peppered with the kind of casual misogyny that I wish everyone had realized was a Very Bad Thing back when and mostly wouldn't pass editorial today. But even worse, the art switch between the arcs made the second half a pretty rough read. This is good supplementary reading as it's really setting the stage for Avengers: Disassembled to come soon after, but unless you're a completist, you'd be just fine reading a summary instead.

[Tom Malinowski · Rating 5 out of 5]

I forgot that Geoff Johns wrote for Marvel years ago just as he was starting his DC career. This is the 2nd volume of his run on the Avengers. The team at the time consisted of Captain America, Warbird, Scarlet Witch, She-Hulk, Vision, Ant-Man, Jack of Hearts, with appearances by Iron Man and Black Panther. The Red Zone arc was especially appealing as the art was by Olivier Coipel.

The friction between Ant-Man and Jack of Hearts is palpable and the other teammates are aware of it. Definitely see Johns' influence on the importance of characterization here.

15 years ago? Sigh, oh the times....

[Blake Bagnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 star rating
Really enjoyed this whole volume Thought for the end of Geoff Johns run before the shitty issues before disassembled this was a home run. Really enjoyed the characters of Cap and the Falcon figuring out about the Red zone being created by red skull and how it ended. And I liked how the story between Jack of Hearts was finished in this story with Antman. Overall enjoyed and thought it was well done and nicely drawn as well She Hulk going crazy was something new to me so I liked that as well especially with She Hulk show just finished

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Passable. The first plotline here starts out in an interesting way, with poison clouds billowing across the countryside. The helplessness of the heroes, having to deal with something they can't punch, is an interesting Avengers plot device. But there is, of course, someone to punch before it's all over. And, while that feels fine, it does seem to undercut what I liked about the first half of the book.

The second plotline is no good at all.

[Robert McCallum · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars due to the “red zone” storyline - one of my favourite avengers stories ever.

Rest of the stuff is ok - the search for she-hulk was average - trashing a town and basically using it for their personal battleground somewhat alters my perception on the registration act - there is no way you could allow these heroes to basically ride into town, level it, then move on to the next episode of destruction !!

[tdr7 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Includes my favourite threat so far (red zone) and is one of my favourite of the books in this series - really enjoyed the use of Wanda's powers in red zone and the she-hulk storylines (and her central role in the book) and the final issue providing some closure to the Ant-man and Jack of hearts tensions. Not a huge fan of the strange wasp Vegas issue though.

[Stephan van Velzen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the Red Zone sequence.

[Jdetrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

These are good, solid issues, but they don't have the flow to them that the really superb issues do.

[Chris W · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some decent parts but overall pretty awful. None of the characters felt right at all. Good thing Geoff Johns left Marvel and went to DC. It's clear he's better with those characters.

[Will Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Red Zone storyline was really great and well handled. The Search for She-Hulk was nice but not earth-shattering.

[Kurt Rocourt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not Geoff best run but Red Zone was good. The rest was not up to Geoffs Johns standard. Which helps explain why he doesn't write for Marvel.

[Brendan Mckillip · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars

Entertaining superhero fare. It’s nothing revolutionary or complex. Just solid, straightforward stories starring superheroes.

[Benjamin Kimble · Rating 4 out of 5]

The back half of Geoff Johns run on Avengers is pretty good. His best arc is Red Zone. It involves a bio weapon being unleashed in the U.S. and the Avengers saving as many people as possible while trying to figure out it’s origin. The Red Skull is involved and it’s pretty interesting and a good commentary on America at the time that’s still relevant today. Johns once again shines when writing both Cap and Falcon here, they’re the definitely the stars of this one. Oliver Coipel did the art on that arc and it was really good. He gives the characters the big imposing silhouettes they should have and I liked it. Next was a side issue about Ant-Man and Wasp in Vegas. Just a filler, the stuff about there relationship was okay, but I’ve seen better. Then we got the search for She-Hulk which involved her going savage and the avengers stopping her. It was okay, there was a good issue with narration from Hawkeye that I liked but the arc was pretty throw away. Scott Kolins on art was alright, I did really enjoy his style of the Hulk though. Lastly we had an issue where Jack of Hearts helps Scott Lang save his daughter and then he dies. It’s pretty good and resolves the final plot point that this run had running. All in all not a bad book.

[Georgie Zakka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Avengers by Geoff Johns - the collection has a few stories including the red zone where red skull releases a bio weapon on Mount Rushmore that kills everyone in it, the search for she hulk where after running away after being turned to human the avengers try and track her and bring her back, ant man and wasps relationship issues where you see some guy assaulting a prostitute and finally one with jack in the box where him and ant man fix their beef.

My thoughts - I read this in preparation for endgame but honestly it just helped me cope with the events of endgame..R.I.P but anyways most of the stories are pretty good but the best one was the red zone. The art in the stories are ok, nothing really spectacular. Then there was the ant man one shot which was really bad, the search for she hulk was pretty cool with Bruce banner and Hawkeye in it, and finally the jack in the box one shot was awesome because he fixes his beef with ant man and sacrifices himself to kill some villain guy holding antmans daughter captive. But a problem was that the avengers felt broken and there was something missing.

Overall good book