Mighty Avengers #9 (2008)
written by Brian Michael Bendis
pencils by Mark Bagley (main story) and Marko Djurdjevic (past scenes)
cover by Mark Bagley
Doctor Doom managed to get through Civil War with just a couple of minor bad stories, but he will get heavily involved in the next company-wide crossovers of Secret Invasion and especially Dark Reign. His stories will range from meh to fine to awesome, and it all starts here: in a storyline that ranges from truly awful to awesome. Which is to be expected from Bendis.
The fact that this is penciled by one of my favorite artists, Mark Bagley, really helps… and that is one fantastic cover!!!
Except for a couple of pages drawn by Djurdjevic, which are dedicated to showing us that Doom has been using his time machine to sleep with Morgan Le Fay.
Unlike the Legion, I don’t do “Doom Awards” because there are so many different creators in the retrospective that it would be meaningless.
But if I did, this would easily win a “Best use of time travel” award.
Of course since Morgan is still a witch though, she hopes to get something out of this besides some sweet Doom loving.
These two have a great chemistry! No wonder this relationship will be revisited a couple times.
Don’t you just love the way supervillains flirt?
Doom returns to the present (and to Bagley pencils) only to discover that Latveria is being invaded by the Avengers.
See, in the previous issue a Latverian satellite shot a biological weapon at New York City and THIS happened:
Honestly the only reason people kept their sanity after that incident is that Doctor Strange made civilians forget the worst.
But it was still a strike against the United States, so the Avengers decide to attack Latveria.
The current roster includes an unusual addition to the team: Ares, as in the Greek god of war, who at this time decided to act as an anti-hero.
He’s fun, but it really goes to show how Bendis can write characters as complete idiots because the rest of the team goes along with his shenanigans despite the fact Ares is CLEARLY a psycho.
Like I said I’m a huge Mark Bagley fan, and this is a fun action romp… but THREE consecutive two-page spreads showing the Avengers fighting Doom’s robots is too much!!!
Seriously: one is fine. Two is already a big indulgent.
But THREE!? IN A ROW!?!?
THIS IS STILL THE SAME FIGHT!!!
The best part is undoubtedly when Iron Man crashes into the castle.
Remember when in the Penance story Doom feared a US invasion, I said that even Bendis would write a better Doom reaction to an invasion?
Sometimes Bendis writes a perfect Doctor Doom, and this is one of those moments.
One of the weak points of Bendis’ writing, ESPECIALLY in this period, is when he relies way too much on dialogue to hammer on a point.
But in this fight, most of the heavy lifting is done by the notes that each armor gives its user.
I especially LOVE the fact that Doom has PROGRAMMED HIS ARMOR TO CAST SPELLS!!!
He sure has learned a lot since Triumph and Torment.
Iron Man would easily lose this fight, if Sentry wasn’t in his team.
I won’t go into his convoluted history, but Sentry was explicitly created to be a Superman knock-off (who wasn’t even supposed to be in the regular continuity, but like I said it’s convoluted).
He’s RIDICULOUSLY powerful, often boasting that he has “the power of a million exploding suns”… and while his portrayal is inconsistent, that’s not completely unbelievable.
So the fact that Doom’s shields drop from 97% to just 7% after just ONE BLOW is a more impressive Doom feat than a Sentry one.
Another rare case of Bendis not littering the scene with unnecessary dialogue: both armors giving the same warning to each user.
The fight drops Doom, Iron Man and Sentry into the heavily damaged time machine…
…which sends them back in time in New York. The artwork switches to a different coloring system because this is supposed to be set in the Silver Age. Neat trick!
Doom is not a fan, though.
Doom significance: 8/10
While it’s possible Doom would still get involved with Dark Reign regardless, this is an important step. And it introduces his relationship with Morgan Le Fay.
Silver Age-ness: 0/10
Not really.
Does it stand the test of time? 7/10
Bendis is already a very frustrating writer for how inconsistent he is, and particularly so when he writes Doctor Doom: he either completely nails him or completely misses, there’s no in-between. This is one of the times where he gets him right, from his flirting with Morgan to his holier-than-thouh replies to Iron Man.
But while Doom is not the problem, the Avengers… yeesh.
It doesn’t show up much in the review, but Bendis characters are CONSTANTLY bickering and having random idiotic thoughts. At least now it doesn’t intrude on the Doom scenes, but that will become an INFURIATING problem in the conclusion.
And then there’s the worst offender: three consecutive two-page spreads of a big dumb fight. THREE!!! You never see that aside from early Image books, and for good reason. Even as a Mark Bagley fan, that’s just too much.
It was a Doombot all along
Usually whenever Doom uses magic it’s a sure sign that it’s not a robot, but the fact that his armors can now use spells casts doubts on that method. Considering the ramifications of this storyline, I’m still inclined to think it’s the real Doom.
Number of superheroes who have fought Dr. Doom: 98
I’m kind of surprised that Doom has never met Black Widow or Ms. Marvel until now, but I’m adding both (Carol is under Captain Marvel). Ares is not exactly your standard superhero, but he’s acting as one in this time so he gets added. And obviously there’s Sentry.
But I am NOT adding Spider-Woman, considering we will learn his is a Skrull impostor and not Jessica Drew.
Crazy tech
Plenty of stuff. We have the satellite weapon that can turn a city into Venom knockoffs (it was activated without his consent but it IS a Doom weapon), we have his shields that can take a full-powered punch from Sentry… but I have to give it to his armor’s ability to summon the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak. That’s one of Doctor Strange’s signature spells which is supposed to be really hard to cast, and Doom automated it!!!
We’re very close to 100 superheroes having fought Doctor Doom, then.
Of all the many, many, many things I despise about Bendis’ tenure at Marvel, bringing the Sentry into actual Marvel continuity is near the top. The character was okay when he was the star of an out-of-continuity, very meta miniseries. Once he’s brought into the main Marvel continuity, it basically means that nothing in the established continuity actually happened the way it had been shown to. Did the FF really defeat Galactus? Nah, the Sentry was there, too, but everyone forgot. In fact, he was there in all your favorite stories, you just don’t know it, so nothing about established Marvel history is actually “real.” There was some boring asshole hanging around who actually won all the fights. It’s just an irritating conceit that only Bendis would think was a good idea.
My other most hated Bendis trope is his inability (or refusal) to write anything past the basic outline stage. “I have a broad plot, but it hurts my brain to break it down into anything but the broadest description. There’s going to be a big fight, but I don’t wanna go to the trouble of scripting it, so I’ll just put a note here for the artist to just fill the next six pages with generic double page fight spreads. Phew! I need to rest after doing all that writing!”
I’ve blocked out Avengers vs. X-Men as best I can (the first issue of which consisted of Bendis telling the artist “Fill the first 12 or so pages with an extended shot of Nova crashing to Earth. Let me know when you’re done and I’ll spend a couple of minutes dialoguing the rest of the issue”), but am I correct in remembering that the entire Atlantis-Wakanda war was handled via one double page spread with a caption like ” Atlantis has attacked Wakanda!” It was probably more extensive than that, but I doubt by much.
Yeah bringing Sentry into continuity was a bad idea. I suppose it COULD have worked if they revealed everything that happened in the original miniseries was just in his head, but then again it would’ve cheapened the original even more. The only time Bendis does anything interesting with Sentry is in Dark Avengers, particularly towards the end of Siege. Too bad the character had already overstayed his welcome.
By far the most frustrating part of Bendis is that he CAN write good or even great stories. But so very often either he’s either phoning it in, or he gets stuck on a gimmick that he runs into the ground (in this period it was littering the page with random thoughts from the characters, but he cycles through SO many gimmicks over the years).
I’ve said it before: with Bendis you get 90% crap, 7% just fine and 3% legitimately great.
It’s probably my Doctor Doom bias and my appreciation for Mark Bagley, but I would put Mighty Avengers #9 into the “just fine” category and #10 into “great”.
Mighty Avengers #11 is crap. Definitely not looking forward to reviewing that.
I’m not inherently opposed to the idea of continuity inserts, but something about the Sentry really, really bugs me. I think part of the issue is that Marvel never actually had all that much in the way of goofy Silver Age stuff like Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, so having the Sentry and going “no, they actually did, you just don’t remember it” feels like it actively devalues Marvel history in the way most others don’t.
Of course, it could also be that the Sentry is just really boring and badly written outside of his miniseries and nothing is gained by going “actually, this guy was the one who achieved literally everything of note back in the day”.
I do find it funny how people keep bringing him back, doing nothing interesting with him, then killing him off and going “okay, THIS time he’s deader than deader than dead for real, he’ll never be returning from this one” (and then he inevitably does, because I guess everyone wants a shot at taking him down).