Mighty Avengers 3: Old School Throwdown

Mighty Avengers 3 (Bendis & Cho).

It's turning out to be a good month for Avengers.

After Bendis delivered his best single issue of Avengers to date with New Avengers 30 last week, he follows up with this week's strong Mighty Avengers 3.

While it might be too simple to say Bendis writes New Avengers to indulge himself and Mighty Avengers to placate old school fans, there's no doubting the clear differences between the two books that go beyond New being anti-SHRA outlaws and Mighty being a more traditionally set-up and executed superhero comic.

Mighty Avengers 3 continues the series' opening arc, centered around the appearance of a new Female Ultron emerging from the disappearance of Iron Man. Not a lot happens on the Femtron front in terms of figuring out who she is, where she's from, or what exactly happened to Tony, but there is plenty of smart action and solid character bits.

On the action front there's a killer bout between Sentry and Femtron that works both on a visceral level but also on a character level. It's good fun to see the two smashing each other across the city, but it also serves to show Sentry getting angrier and angrier as Femtron works him over both physically and mentally.It's fun to see Sentry finally cut loose, but there's never a feeling Femtron is in any danger. In fact, the fight comes across as Femtron probing and studying Sentry. Before they throw down, Femtron asks, "Robert Reynolds. With 'the power of a thousand exploding suns.' What will it take to kill someone like you?"

The hovering SHIELD Helicarrier gets in on the fun, too. There's a cool sequence of the energy getting lost and the Helicarrier plunging towards the ground where Sentry stops in, then with the help of other Avengers rights it and places it safely on the ground. In the process, however, Agent Hill (now in charge with Stark's disappearance) gets knocked cold. There's a bit of back and forth with the SHIELD troops on who exactly is in charge which plays a bit false (it doesn't seem like a tight chain-of-command wouldn't be in place aboard the Helicarrier) but ends with Black Widow taking charge when she reveals she's a "Level 10" SHIELD agent, making her the highest ranking agent aboard.

It's great to see Natasha back in charge; in terms of who's most qualified and most ideal for an Avengers leader, Natasha doesn't rank far behind Captain America. Trained by both KGB and SHIELD, she's got more field experience leading operations than probably anyone in the Marvel Universe, which is only enhanced by having worked both sides of the Cold War political fence.

The juxtaposition of Black Widow's confident leadership skills and Ms. Marvel's self-doubt works effectively. Ms. Marvel's opening day as team leader ("Worst first day as Avengers leader ... EVER," she muses late in the issue) continues to spiral downhill, as she's outshined by both the Widow and the Wasp, another former team leader. Jan falls somewhere between the other two women - like Carol she inwardly struggles with what to do, but like Natasha she's primarily outwardly cool. Word balloons help get this across to the reader.

Much has been made of Bendis' decision to bring back the thought balloon and up to now it's been more flash than sizzle, as Bendis has used the thought balloon basically for funny asides. In issue 3, however, he picks up his game, using the thought balloon to raise the tension the team is feeling standing face-to-face with Femtron. It's a credit to Bendis and Ultron's history that this team of heavyweights is as concerned as they are with a new Ultron - long-standing Avengers Ms. Marvel, Wasp, Wonder Man, and Black Widow move through the issue with grim determination and frayed nerves. The word balloons help get the point across - when everyone appears to be telling Jan what to say or do, Jan keeps her cool but her internal monologue snaps and snips at them. Jan's a pro so she doesn't waste mission time by reminding everyone she's not a moron, but because of the thought balloons we see that she's not letting those comments go by unnoticed. Hopefully when the team gets some downtime those comments by her teammates won't remain unchallenged.

Bendis also works Hank Pym - Jan's ex-husband and Ultron's creator - into the mix. Jan calls Hank for help/information but Hank is busy almost-getting-busy with Tigra in his Camp Hammond quarters. While the scene primarily seems included so that Frank Cho can draw Tigra, Bendis also uses it to reinforce Hank and Jan's separation. It's also a nice nod to Hank and Tigra's time together in the West Coast Avengers, though that connection isn't made explicit.

One note on Femtron that I found particularly interesting here. While we don't learn a whole lot about her and she primarily spends her page time in the issue fighting Sentry, when she shuts the energy down aboard the Helicarrier she "signs" her act by having her face appear on all the Helicarrier's monitors. Except, it's not her face, but a classic Ultron face, probably from the Busiek/Perez Era Avengers given the proliferation of Kirby Energy Dots at play in Ultron's mouth.

The issue ends with what looks like an original version Iron Man armor arriving, telling the team, "If you are receiving this message, Tony Stark is dead," which is sorta lame given that we all know he's not really dead. But hey, any excuse to see the old steel grey suit (or at least a modified version of it) works for me, though if Bendis was interested in building some Avengers street-cred he'd have used the Layton Armor.

A really fun, solid comic - plenty of fighting action and character interaction. The team dynamic is working so well I hope that when Stark comes back his time spent with the Mighty Avengers is less rather than more.