The New Avengers Guest Starring the Fantastic Four – U.S. Military Special
Writer – Brian Michael Bendis
Artist – Dan Jurgens
Publisher - Marvel
Release date – Out Now If You Enlist
Price – N/A
Now here’s a nice little oddity, this comic (which I’m going to abbreviate to NAFF – New Avengers Fantastic Four…) was created to be distributed free amongst the U.S. Military, presumably so the troops have something to do whilst waiting for the order to invade another country.
Usually you would expect this sort of comic to be scraped together with whoever has the time to do it. In this case it was that work-shy bald guy Brian Michael Bendis; maybe they offered to give him his own Exocet missile or something. On art chores we have Dan Jurgens doing the pencils and Sandu Florea on inking duty.
The story concerns the two teams being taken to a spaceship that the US Army has uncovered from a Louisiana swamp and their attempts to open it. When they do, they let loose a dozen Kree soldiers which leads to, you’ve guessed it, an excuse to beat each other up. Needless to say the issue is crammed with Bendis’ witty dialogue, the interplay between the characters is well handled and when you get down to it - entertaining. Which is what the book needs to be, considering its intended audience.
The Kree soldiers had been sent out to Earth millions of years ago to survey the usefulness of the planet as an outpost to defend the empire against the Skrulls. As soon as Reed Richards manages to get into the rediscovered ship the Kree soldiers are awake and kicking ass as they think the Fantastic Four and the New Avengers are Skrull warriors. After a bit of fighting, Iron Man is able to patch into the Baxter Buildings computer systems and download Richards’ universal translator so he can then explain to the Kree warriors that they are fighting a war that has been over for millennia. The Kree warriors make a few snide remarks about the state of our planet and disappear to rejoin their race.
The story is as you would expect for such a limited audience, of no real consequence. Like a super-powered X-Files episode, super-teams probe into mystery, overcome it, world keeps turning, nobody knows any better.
The artwork is functional – Jurgens was the Superman artist for me in the mid nineties, backed by Brett Breeding he produced some of the definitive art for Superman during that boom and bust period. He probably reached the pinnacle of his career when he was allowed to write and draw Zero Hour for DC – which was met with a very mixed reception (i.e. 90% of readers hated it). He has also had the writing gig on Thor for Marvel recently and has also been illustrating Rising Stars spin-off Bright – which was quite frankly awful in terms of script and art.
The artwork here shows some very classic glimpses of Jurgens’ superhero artwork; poses and splash pages, talking head shots, we get his full repertoire. It actually looks like he is enjoying his artwork again. Maybe the choice of inker is a great help, but this is a pretty solid looking book.
Nor is it hugely flag-waving – the story doesn’t patronise by trying to make out how great the US Military are, it simply tells a solid super-hero story. The only exceptions are the awful cover that manages to fit the stars and stripes, soldiers’ faces and the sight of a Canadian super-hero saluting alongside a bunch of Americans.
My knowledge of the set-up of the US Military is limited being a limey, but I have a sneaking suspicion this is more commercialised than I initially thought – all the adverts in the book are for AAFES, which appears to be a Wal-Mart for soldiers.
All in all, NAFF is quite a surprise. I truly expected this to be awful, like one of those charity one-shots that crop up every now and then extolling the plight of this month’s crisis whilst seemingly ignoring the fact that thousands of trees were cut down to print the damn thing. The fact is, it is a good read that would probably fit right into the current run of New Avengers, which would be nice because chances are most of you aren’t going to be able to get your hands on this book. Although, you could always try the local recruiting office and see if they’ll give you a copy up front; what’s the worst that could happen?