Volume 34: Avengers: Disassembled

Avengers: Disassembled

Author: Brian Michael Bendis | Illustrators: David Finch / Jim Cheung / Steve Epting / Gary Frank / Michael Gaydos / David Mack / Alex Maleev / Mike Mayhew / Steve McNiven / Mike Oeming / George Pérez / Eric Powell / Darick Robertson / Lee Weeks

"[W]e, as a group, have failed..."

It's become customary to do something special for a landmark issue, something memorable or celebratory. With Avengers issue #500, Brian Michael Bendis took over as regular author on the series and set about destroying everything – in a good way. In order to remake the team into something new he had to first tear down what was old.

In just four issues he puts them through hell in the hope that they'll emerge from the other side as better heroes, more aware of the consequences of their actions and more appreciative of what they have. Not everyone survives the Bendis assault.

The threat comes without warning, as something known but unknown, an unfamiliar thing in a familiar form, and death follows.

The team's feelings are thrown into turmoil as they try to make sense of something the human mind can't easily make sense of. The most common response is to lay blame, find a target for the anger and pain, but the target isn't in plain sight. The true enemy this time isn't one that can be easily punched into oblivion.

There's still plenty of action, if that's your main concern, but it's balanced out with plenty of text and a fair amount of standing around talking deductively; somehow it all works.

Many different artists worked on the miniseries, so the quality varies, but mostly it's very good. There's a superb page in #501 made up of just four horizontal panels, dialogue-free, that puts into perspective the emotions that the remaining team members have to deal with. Much later, near the book's end, there's an astonishingly good double splash page that evoked an audible "Wow!" from me while reading.

The final chapter (Avengers Finale) is a kind of coda in a form that many people will recognise, a post-tragedy event for which there are no hard and fast rules, but which everyone in attendance understands, nevertheless.

The book collects together Avengers #500-503 + Avengers Finale.

Verdict: