It must be nice to afford comics these days. $3-4 a pop for stories that require you to buy other stories. Good thing there aren't that many. Too bad there are too many Avengers. The Dark Avengers.

If you read my previous article about the "downfall of (Marvel) comics", you'll get a brief history of what's happened in the MU because of Brian Michael Bendis. The Avengers disassamble, re-assemble, split in two, then both fail in their own ways. The Mighty Avengers are all but mightily disassembleed, with Iron Man disgraced, Widow, Wasp and Wonder Man out of the picture, Spider-Woman a Skrull, Ares switching teams and Sentry switching sides altogether.

In short, the Dark Avengers are just the new new new Thunderbolts, not to be confused with the old new new Thunderbolts that have been the highlight of The Initiative post-Civil War. The villains are now the heroes, as is the case with all Thunderbolts before them, only more legitamized now that Osborn is in charge of superhero security. Makes us wish that Stark was still in charge, right? God, I miss the good ol' days. Here's the rundown on the new team:

• Iron Patriot - Norman Osborn (Green Goblin) assuming Iron Man's role as leader and providing the mecha factor.
• Spider-Man - Mac Gargan (nee Scorpion, now Venom), in a more human disguise, providing acrobatic combat and overall FREAK factor.
• Wolverine - Daken (Wolverine's illegitimate Japanese son), sporting his father's classic fatigues and providing the bezerker factor.
• Hawkeye - Bullseye, taking any excuse to kill people with his accurate range factor.
• Sentry - Bob Reynolds (of New/Mighty Avengers fame), siding with anyone who promises to treat his schizophrenia, providing the god factor.
• Captain Marvel - Noh Varr (Marvel Boy), the most unstable Kree soldier ever, providing the cosmic factor.
• Ms. Marvel - Karla Sofen (Moonstone), in bed (metaphorically, of course) with the man in charge, essentially only providing the woman factor.

This is a pretty well-stacked team, if you're INSANE. Good thing Osborn is. This is really a good balance of durability, power and range (all factors used in traditional Marvel character bios). But in all honesty, you can't control most of these guys (Sentry and Bullseye, especially).  Now that the New Avengers is composed of Captain America (Bucky), Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers), Mockingbird (sigh), Ronin (Hawkeye), Spider-Man (real), Spider-Woman, Wolverine, it's more of an issue of good vs evil than right vs wrong. From what I can tell, Thunderbolts will still continue, but it will involve Deadpool (whose eponymous title will also still continue), so it's really hard to say who's going to be in what titles this year.

Additional Reading:

http://comics.ign.com/articles/943/943754p1.html?RSSwhen2009-01-09_154900&RSSid=943754