User blog:Nausiated/Heroes Reborn Avengers -- What the hell Walt?

Yeah I'm still doing the Heroes Reborn thing. For those who aren't familiar with the 1997 storyline, essentially Marvel needed to breath new life in to their non-X-Men/Spider-Man titles and decided to reboot them. Since Image Comics was also pretty big at the time they decided to farm out their properties to Jim Lee's Wildstorm Studios (years before it was bought by DC Comics and was still an independent) and Rob Liefeld's Extreme Studios.

The stories also involved all the heroes involved (the FF And Avengers) being reborn and having their origins retold in a more modern context (Sound familiar, oh ye fans of Ultimate Marvel?) The concept of Heroes Reborn was a big success and it made the titles popular again. However there was a problem:

Now the stories vary depending on what source you read from, but ultimately there was a veritable shit-storm between Marvel and Rob Liefeld's camp. According to Jeph Loeb, then Marvel Editor-in-Chief Bob Harras didn't like what they were doing with the title. Marvel's official grounds on it was that the two titles they were charged to do (Captain America and the Avengers) were behind schedule and were not selling very well. Marvel would try to renegotiate the contract with Liefeld -- essentially offering him less more for him putting out more output. Liefeld said no way, see you later, and Jim Lee's Wildstorm took over.

Now, fault Liefeld for whatever you will -- his art, his story telling (which honestly, he doesn't come up with bad plot ideas), or his poor fashion sense -- You have to give him some credit for having the balls to look at Marvel and tell them no deal.

The end result was that Captain America was handed over to James Robinson and Avengers to Walt Simonson. Jeph Loeb was still around to finish Iron Man, but he didn't finish the Cap and Avengers run without Rob out of a sense of respect for Rob and finished the Iron Man run as a promise to Scott Loebdell. That's pretty honorable.

Now my big gripe was mostly with the Avengers run after Simonson took it over. You have to ask yourself if he bothered reading what Rob and Jeph were setting up. Maybe they wouldn't have been too eager to tell him where they were going with the characters, but you would figure he would have tried to go where they were going based on the material that was there. But instead he just crams as many villains as he possibly can into the story: Black Knight, Radioactive Man, Whirlwind (who died previously in an issue of Iron Man), Melter, Klaw, Super-Adaptoid, Living Laser and Grim Reaper? Two Thors? The gamma core was spawning enemies like a first person shooter? What the hell is going on Walt?

Seriously, if you want to see a plot drop like a drunk girl on prom night, do yourself a favor and pick up the collected edition of Heroes Reborn Avengers. It's a glorious mess.

You wonder why the Marvel handbooks tend to gloss over the Heroes Reborn stuff? Take a gander True Believer, it's an effing mess.