What I’ve Been Reading – New Avengers: The Reunion, Green Arrow and Wednesday Comics

Today I’m taking a look at a trio of superhero comics from Marvel and DC. First up, from Marvel, I picked up New Avengers: The Reunion from the library since Hawkeye & Mockingbird was getting some positive buzz. Then, from DC, I take a look at the recent Green Arrow relaunch and the experimental weekly comic Wednesday Comics. Hit the jump to see what I thought of these these comics.

Written by Jim McCann

Art by David Lopez

Collects New Avengers: The Reunion #1-4 and material from Dark Reign: New Nation

Marvel often gets accused of being, well, a dick towards DC nowadays. Usually, it’s because of something someone like Tom Brevoort or C.B Cebulski says on Twitter or a blog. Personally, I find this highly amusing and I’m more disappointed by the fact that DC metaphorically goes off and pouts in the corner rather than respond back. Yeah, some of the stuff Marvel staff say is hypocritical, astoundingly so sometimes, but, until I read this collection, I’ve never felt that Marvel was being unduly “mean” to DC since they do put out horrendous comics like Justice League: Rise of Arsenal on what seems like a regular basis. In the comic, Clint Barton calls Mockingbird “birdie” and it read like Marvel was taking a really cheap shot at DC. It felt like they were saying that they could produce a better Green Arrow comic than DC could, which, being fair, this is probably better than most of the Green Arrow from the last five years, or longer, from what I’ve heard. Still, it felt like a really low blow since, as far as I know, it’s Marvel changing Barton’s characterization to just take a shot a DC, which does seem needlessly petty.

As for the actual content, it’s just another one of those mediocre, not terribly bad but not particularly good comics that Marvel and DC fill the selves with these days. Honestly, I’m not even sure why the series was put out other than Ronin and Mockingbird had a slightly higher profile post-Secret Invasion so they’d better put out a comic to capitalize on that and it shows. The story is just a by-the-numbers stop-a-terrorist plot and, while I suppose you could say the point of the series is the characters, neither Ronin nor Mockingbird are particularly interesting they just bicker and fight the entire time and their relationship seems as by-the-numbers as the story. Having never read that many comics with Mockingbird before Secret Invasion, this series never gave me a particular reason to care about her or even suggest that she’s an interesting character that was brought back for some other reason than because someone at Marvel felt like it. And, this being a modern Marvel superhero comic, there is a rather unnecessary reference to the West Coast Avengers with Mockingbird’s new World Counterterrorism Agency, because pointless nostalgia makes everything better.

Written by J.T. Krul

Art by Diogenes Neves

Speaking of Green Arrow, I decided to check out the current relaunch for two reasons. The lesser and “nicer to DC” reason why is that Green Arrow is one of the characters that I got interested in because of the Justice League animated series so I usually keep an eye on them to see if I’d be interested in reading their comics. The main reason why I got this though is that I thought it was going to be incredibly stupid and just had to see it for myself, which ended up being so stupid that I’m trying to think of a better way to say “really fucking stupid,” since that is the perfect way to describe this comic, but I can’t I’m just going to say it – this comic is really fucking stupid. I’m really curious to know why DC thought it would be a good idea to take their metaphorical Robin Hood character and turn him into a literal Robin Hood. It’s basically admitting you have no imagination or clue as to what to do with the character. Again, it is possible DC thinks this is a good idea. After all, Krul keeps making painful references to it, almost as if he’s proud of it.

The other major problem is an almost complete lack of subtlety, which is another possible reason for all of the direct Robin Hood references – DC wants to make sure sure none of their readers miss the painfully obvious. Every possible nuance is beaten with the obvious stick just to make sure the readers doesn’t miss any of the not-so-clever and already blatant allusions that clog up the comic. In fact, Krul has a character just come out and say that Green Arrow is Robin Hood on page 14. Granted, subtlety generally isn’t a strong suit of superhero comics, which is perfectly fine as they tend to work pretty good that way. That said, Krul is going for a more street level approach to the character, editor Adam Schlagman names Longbow Hunter as a direct influence on the current run, and you do need a more nuanced approach when are trying to go that route, even more so when you are bringing political themes into the story. So far, aside from a few trying-to-make-a-point one-liners and general corruption theme, Krul hasn’t done much with the political aspect of the character but it looks more decorative than substantive at this point, which I don’t think Krul was going for. Finally, to be fair to Krul, this is a decent scene where it’s hinted at that Green Arrow might have killed someone but that’s immediately followed up with more dumb Robin Hood references and other stupidity.

The issue also has a lot of other, slightly less glaring problems as well. The opening scene is a surprisingly good example of a couple of the worst trends in DC’s comics right and the rest of the scene that’s not in the preview isn’t much better. Neves’s art is pretty bland and his action sequences are so jumbled that they