The New Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis: The Complete Collection, Vol. 1

The New Avengers by Brian Michael Bendis: The Complete Collection

by Brian Michael Bendis, David Finch (Illustrator), Steve McNiven (Illustrator)

Award-winning writer Brian Michael Bendis transforms Earth's Mightiest Heroes! But before he can build his New Avengers, he must disassemble the old ones! On the team's darkest day, one of their own tears them apart - seemingly forever! But when Electro triggers a breakout at super-villain prison the Raft, Captain America and Iron Man find themselves fighting alongside a new and very different order as the Avengers are reborn! But will the mysterious Sentry add the power of a million exploding suns to the lineup? First HE needs to figure out who he is! COLLECTING: AVENGERS (1998) 500-503, 500 DIRECTOR'S CUT; AVENGERS FINALE; NEW AVENGERS (2004) 1-10, 1 DIRECTOR'S CUT; NEW AVENGERS MOST WANTED FILES

Includes Avengers Disassembled.

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Comic Book, Fiction

504 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 2005

About the author

A comic book writer and erstwhile artist. He has won critical acclaim (including five Eisner Awards) and is one of the most successful writers working in mainstream comics. For over eight years Bendis’s books have consistently sat in the top five best sellers on the nationwide comic and graphic novel sales charts.

Though he started as a writer and artist of independent noir fiction series, he shot to stardom as a writer of Marvel Comics' superhero books, particularly Ultimate Spider-Man.

Bendis first entered the comic world with the "Jinx" line of crime comics in 1995. This line has spawned the graphic novels Goldfish, Fire, Jinx, Torso (with Marc Andreyko), and Total Sell Out. Bendis is writing the film version of Jinx for Universal Pictures with Oscar-winner Charlize Theron attached to star and produce.

Bendis’s other projects include the Harvey, Eisner, and Eagle Award-nominated Powers (with Michael Avon Oeming) originally from Image Comics, now published by Marvel's new creator-owned imprint Icon Comics, and the Hollywood tell-all Fortune and Glory from Oni Press, both of which received an "A" from Entertainment Weekly.

Bendis is one of the premiere architects of Marvel's "Ultimate" line: comics specifically created for the new generation of comic readers. He has written every issue of Ultimate Spider-Man since its best-selling launch, and has also written for Ultimate Fantastic Four and Ultimate X-Men, as well as every issue of Ultimate Marvel Team-Up, Ultimate Origin and Ultimate Six.

Brian is currently helming a renaissance for Marvel’s AVENGERS franchise by writing both New Avengers and Mighty Avengers along with the successful ‘event’ projects House Of M, Secret War, and this summer’s Secret Invasion.

He has also previously done work on Daredevil, Alias, and The Pulse.

Reviews

[Chad · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is where the Avengers turnaround all started. After Marvel left the title to fester and rot throughout the 80's and 90's, Brian Michael Bendis came in and revamped the title, shaking things up, giving the book an epic feel and bringing in some of Marvel's biggest guns to the team. Bendis deserves a lifetime achievement award just for bringing Spider-Man into the book alone. Spidey brings a unique blend of wise-cracking and dynamic action to the book that has been sorely missed since Beast left the Avengers in the early 80's. Marvel also brings in its top artists to the book with David Finch and Steve McNiven both knocking it out of the park on art duties. Collects Avengers: Disassembled and the first 10 issues of New Avengers.

My reviews for each arc:
Avengers: Disassembled
New Avengers Vol. 1: Breakout
New Avengers Vol. 2: Sentry

[Sud666 · Rating 5 out of 5]

The New Avengers was a reworking of the Avengers into a new team by Bendis. It was a really fun read. While I take into account how, in general, deaths and "big events" are dealt with in the comic world, I took this one at "face value" for the sake of the story and you should too.

The Avengers have a really bad day. Members get killed, their mansion is blow up, they get kicked out of the U.N. (this is a bad thing?) and,basically, the team falls apart. Several months later, The Raft (a super-criminal jail) is attacked and 40 super-criminals are loose. Also there are questions as to whom the breakout targeted in the first place. This is the impetus used by Captain America to create a new team. Hence, the title New Avengers. Duh. This bunch consists of Cap, Spider-Man, the Sentry, Spider-Woman, Luke Cage, Wolverine and Iron-Man.

I enjoyed Bendis' take on the Avengers. This volume is an epic ride. Starting with the events that lead to the dissolution of the original team, to the escape from the Raft, to the formation of the new team with a headquarters and then ending with the Savage Land and the Sentry story arc-and all of it done with very nice artwork make this a great read. Bendis' dry humor and the large events make for a fun time.

If you enjoy a good story, dry humor, good artwork, and are an Avengers fan-then you can't go wrong with Bendis' New Avengers. I'm going on to Vol 2. to see where this is all headed.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Avengers classic. Must reading for all Avengers fans. A big feather in Bendis' cap.

[Shannon Appelcline · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty much the Fall and Rise of the Avengers. These three arcs are surprisingly uneven, with the one about the formation of the New Avengers being the best and the one about Sentry being the least. On the plus side, we see Bendis' penchant for ideas, and on the minus side we see his fights that go on for too long.

Disassembled! (500-503) This is a story where I can understand why some people don’t like it, but I generally disagree. Yes, this was a notable change in the Avengers status quo and some well-loved characters died during it. (I actually have more problems with the roll-backs of every single one of these deaths in the years since.)

However, this was also an exciting and shocking story that concluded with a moving remembrance. It set the path for years of interesting, innovative, and different stories that wouldn’t have been possible with the *old* Avengers status quo, and in the process it totally reinvigorated the franchise. [7/10]

Breakout (1-6). Avengers: Disassembled was very exciting, but shallow and ham-handed. However, the point was to get here, and Breakout is quite good.

Bendis' idea of bringing together a new Avengers team by fate, just like the original, is genius. But even more genius is bringing heroes like Spider-Man and Wolverine into the team. Today it seems old hat, but that's because it was so successful. Though these two characters aren't currently involved in the Avengers, the team(s) have been much more diverse than in Ye Olden Days. You can trace the Unity squad and the inclusion of other non-traditional characters all to this single story.

As for the plot: Bendis handily connects up a few major plotlines, from a prison break to the Savage Land, keeping the story from being too decompressed. The prison break is also very exciting, like Disassembled was, but by the time we get to the Savage Land, a nice mystery is developing about what's going on with the powers that be.

One last thing: this comic has humor that shouldn't be underestimated. It's sometimes laugh-out-loud funny and it's generally a nice change of pace for the Avengers. [9/10]

Sentry (7-10). This is a story in two parts. On the one hand, we get the continued story of the New Avengers coming together. There's a fun fight against the Wrecker and the whole team really gels. It's great. But most of this volume is taken up with the Sentry, and his whole great-hero-who-was-forgotten bit. Nowadays, it's overdone, but even at the time this story was dull. That's in large part because it's not actually a New Avengers story, it's a Marvel universe story, and there's way too many people to have much characterization [5/10].

[Xavier Hugonet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brian Michael Bendis makes everything better.

[Matheos G · Rating 4 out of 5]

peak early 2000s blockbuster era marvel

[Milan Konjevic · Rating 5 out of 5]

20 godina kasnije... i dalje je super

[Chris W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solid Avengers comic and a great start to Bendis run with these characters. Avengers comics tend to not be the best so this is exceptional considering the previous content

[Tim Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Living now in the era of the Marvel Cinematic Universe it's easy to forget that before the MCU, even among the Marvel comics faithful, the Avengers hadn't been a popular or respected title/team for decades.

The book had been popular when the comics were still considered a kids-only past time. But where book s like X-Men had been reinvented to critical and commercial acclaim, the Avengers and the personalities that made up the team, had really been languishing for ages.

Enter Brian Michael Bendis, fresh off of Eisner award winning work on Daredevil, and currently killing it with Ultimate Spider-Man.

He took over Avengers with issue 500 and in three issues subjected the team to devastation, and then disbanded them. This makes up the now-collected-as-a-miniseries Avengers: Disassembled. It also kicks off this collection.

It had to be done, to relaunch the team and book, but it's not the best part of this. The team get's everything thrown at it. Members are killed, reputations destroyed, confidences shattered. And it all happens remarkably quickly too.

It's just ok though - for the most part. All of the action and I mean ALL of the action has like this orangey-red filter over it. It's all meant to look dire and chaotic, smoke and explosions everywhere, but it really pulls from any sense of dynamism or liveliness. I generally like David Finch's art, but this was a miss for me.

The arc ends however with the team members reminiscing about the Avengers finest moments, and each memory has returning artist. So a nice ending for the Avengers Finale.

THEN we're into The New Avengers proper. A breakout at the raft. A random number of capes who all happen to be nearby answering the call. That's all the inspiration Captain America needs to put the team back together again.

We get two significant arcs here. The first is Cap putting the team together, and them setting out to investigate the breakout that brought them together. The second is to do with new team member The Sentry.

It's astonishing to see how many Marvel ideas and characters, that are now foundational and essential to Marvel world, came out of BMB's mind right here:

Maria Hill, and her being in charge of SHIELD
The Illuminati (later Secret Avengers)
Avengers HQ being in Stark's tower
The Quinjet
The Sentry
This even lays the groundwork for House of M which occurs between this volume and the next.

So much here, and Brian handles it masterfully.

I recently reviewed Mighty Avengers which I didn't really like. But this is a good example of Brian doing well at non-street level stuff. Very excited to continue on.

Also both Finch and McNiven are great artists, so you can bank on it looking great too.

[Zack! Empire · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've wanted to read this run of comics for awhile now, so I'm really glad to see that Marvel is going to be putting it out in the 500 page complete run format. Part of the reason I hadn't yet was that because after you read Volume one of the originally collected series, Breakout, it can get confusing where you should go next. Hopefully, with Marvel putting so much into each book, this one is the first 10 issues of New Avengers, which was two separate trades, and the Avenges Disassembled trade, they will be including everything you need in the right order.
I have to say, it was a little bit weird reading this given how much I know about what will be happening. I mean, spoiler alert, but I already know that Jessica Drew is really a Skrull. It won't be revealed until later, but I ALREADY know that. I think it just took away from the reading experience to know ahead of time what certain storylines are building up to.
Overall, though, it is an entertaining read. I really wanted to read some Avengers stuff so I will probably be reading more of these collections as they are released.

[Miles · Rating 3 out of 5]

This collection didn't really inspire me. There was lot of action, events, explosions, the destruction of the Avengers, in order to rebuild them, etc., but the moments that really engaged me were sporadic, at best. I enjoyed the artwork, but when I finished reading the book, a phrase from Macbeth came to mind - "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." That being said, I did think that the character of the Sentry (introduced toward the end of this collection) was an interesting addition to the Marvel Universe.

I guess, as I reflect on it, the comics and graphic novels that I am most drawn to have interesting, multi-faceted characters in dramatic situations, complemented by first rate artwork. I think that somewhere along the way, maybe with the introduction of Galactus in FF #48 (1966), there was a desire to constantly raise the stakes in order to make the stories seem more important. Later, around the time that Image Comics got started, the stories seem to veer toward finding excuses for overblown splash pages and fight scenes. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, in this regard, but I'll take a more down-to-earth Spider-Man, Batman, or Daredevil story any day. Okay, I'll get off my soapbox now.

[Jordan Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long time to get to the point where I could read Bendis’s New Avengers storyline. Unfortunately that meant reading things way out of order and trying to search around and figure out the plot(s) and asking friends that are far more knowledgeable about the Avengers and their real comic book backstories (not throwing shade at Marvel studios here, just saying, I wanted the true, canonical biographies).

Anyways, I finally made it and I’m glad I did. The New Avengers is an awesome read and an example of Marvel actually believing in their authors and giving them a lot of leeway in what they chose to write. Giving Bendis a long leash and letting him go with his gut really sets this series apart from any other Marvel work at the time. The New Avengers is mature and far more “realistic” than a lot of previous Avenger issues. Plus, the balls it took to take the titular characters into uncharted territory cannot be denied.

Bendis is widely regarded as one of the best comic authors and this collection is proof.

Onward to vol. 2!

[Rahul Nadella · Rating 3 out of 5]

A friend of mine remarked that The New Avengers initial story arc will read much better as a trade paperback collection than as a monthly serial. For the most part, the book feels like its bubbling just above average - which is better than can be said for the last Avengers arc. However, Brian Michael Bendis throws in a few pages at the end of the first issue which bode very well for the future of the title, creating intrigue around a character who is basically a blank slate for me, yet making his introduction more interesting and full of potential than any of the previous scenes of this fairly predictable supervillain-prison break story. The nostalgia is strong with this one and also David Finch's work really stands out when it's called upon to deliver the raw intensity of the action. I loved how the new Avengers team was assembled and the new additional members along the way added to the intrigue. Overall I would definitely recommend this as a way to start reading this storyline, Bendis does a better job with this team than what I expected.

[Swapnil Dubey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Annnnd my Bendis-run-on-Avengers begins finally. Avengers are pretty cool ride always and I find their stories fantastic. Before assembling his own team, Bendis first had to disassemble the whole Avengers in very ugly way. Heroes died. Team collapsed mentally, physically and financially. But Captain builds the team of new members.. The New Avengers.

Where Avengers Disassembled and Finale suffers the end of the team, Breakout and The Sentry witness the formation of team again. Captain calls new members like Wolverine and not only artwork by likes of David Finch but also text heavy conversation between heroes makes this a complete read.

This complete collection of 504 pages directly leads to House of M story line.

So, here is my recommendation..
Buy it. Read it. Love it. It deserves to be in your book shelf.

[Adora · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this! This collection starts off with the Avengers Disassembled event; I have mixed feelings about it but it packs a huge punch as the Avengers break up in the face of grief and failure. I'm glad it was included, because it adds a lot of context and emotion to them choosing to come back together in a new and fresh form. The only two Avengers remaining from the old group being Steve Rogers and Tony Stark, and the rest are established heroes, but not people used to the popularity and mostly-positive reception of being Avengers, like Spider-Man, Luke Cage, and Wolverine.

This does a good job establishing the team and the dynamic, making everyone pretty likable, and also setting up a future event down the line (interestingly enough, it doesn't really foreshadow Civil War, which comes first. But that's fine with me, because I don't like Civil War).

[TK · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think Brian Michael Bendis is a bold writer, but I'm not sure that automatically makes him a great writer. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great moments in this series. The comedy is especially well written, and really balances out what can sometimes feel a little too serious or a little too out there. The plots themselves are often a bad mash up between overly "adult" and comic book silly.

Still Bendis is bold and that is what makes this work. He isn't afraid to shake things up, or rewrite history, or bring characters together who have good synergy but existed in different world before. His risks pay off here (for the most part) and I think the praise here is well deserved.

[Amy K. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'll confess: There is too much going on, visually, in comic books for me to ever be 100% comfortable with the genre. That said, I have been enjoying the hell out of this series, particularly for the relationship building but also for the comic book tropes and inversion thereof. It's fun to think about the ways in which the genre approaches storytelling--the elisions, the omissions, the implications of meaning attached to image in conjunction with or instead of words.

I'm also enjoying the Steve-Tony relationship, which is why I'm reading this series to begin with. It's so interesting to compare them here to what I know from their cinematic counterparts.

[Ross Cudmore · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strong start to a new era for the Avengers. Bendis delivers a refreshing and exciting take on the Avengers with a new team that features Spider-man, Wolverine, Luke Cage, and Spider-Woman.

This story is a pretty epic ride, starting with the disassembling of the Avengers in a traumatic breakdown of the original team (followed up on in House of M). Then a super villian break-out forces our heroes to band together. A trip to the Savage Land and a world-ending threat with the Sentry cap-off the story.

Great action, good pacing and just the right amount of humor makes for a very strong Avengers comic.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Epicadventure, world building, characters that are put through the wringer, three-dimensional characters and their development from the start, Full of heroics, cunning tactics and Epic Battles on an epic stage, cinematic vistas and close in that marry perfectly up with the script really adding to the story, rib breaking humour, twist and turns you won't see coming, daring do and action! You will be up late to see how things go and what is going to happen!

Brilliant and Highly Recommended! Get it when you can! :D

[Robert Timmons · Rating 4 out of 5]

New Avengers is the first volume of Brian Michael Bendis divisive run on the team. It's the first Marvel team story I've read and I thought it was a great jumping on point and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys the movies. 4 stars ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

[Nicholas Morrell · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of many great starting points for the Avengers run. Spectacular and shocking opening! Birth of a new team and the mystery solved for what happened to The Sentry. Can’t wait to continue and see the other story plots unfold.

[Graham Barrett · Rating 5 out of 5]

The New Avengers was the first Avengers team whose comics I read on a regular basis. I read individual issues throughout high school but finally had a chance to read the entire series in college. This is a great introduction to the team/Bendis' run and I highly recommend.

[Harrison Delahunty · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of fun. Bendis was still at the top of his game here, Finch’s art is stylish and has a lot of scope. His Spidey is very reminiscent of Ditko’s. McNiven is my personal preference of the two artists here, it’s just more pleasant to look at.

[Colin Blake · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great lead up to secret wars

[Jennifer Norris · Rating 3 out of 5]

(3.25 ⭐️Avengers Disassembled)- The Avengers keep getting hit, def an interesting start to Bendis’s run on the Avengers (3.25 ⭐️New Avengers Vol 1,2 )

[Rickey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this build of a new Avengers team after the fallout of Avengers Disassembled. Always been a fan of Bendis for the most part. He just writes fun comics.

[Ryan Hibshman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lot of time spent on sentinel, with no finale. Usually this type of complete collection finishes a story line.

[Barry Bridges · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this when it first came out and loved it on this re-read!

[Jonathan Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was always one of my favorite runs on Avengers. Bendis at his best. And McNiven!!! I love his art. And Finch’s was not terrible either.

[Daniel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fun reading where a lot of the movies and stories of the MCU came from. Still don't like the sentry but besides that a fun set of books.