Mighty Avengers #14

So it's come to this: after my last few critical reviews of this book, I am now reduced to wistfully asking, "Hey... what happened to that Nick Fury story?"

Mighty Avengers abruptly returns to the proximity of its roots this week, abandoning the out-of-nowhere, related-to-nothing "Fury's L'il Commandos" story just in the nick of time, just when something was threatening to happen. We were caught up on Fury; the threat was established; he assembled his team to face it; sure, it wasn't Avengers, but at last we were at least getting somewhere. What would happen next? Covert ops? Training montage?

Nothing. Sudden, jarring, haphazard, whiplash-inducing nothing. Oh, but cheer up, though: Sentry! At last, some me-time with Bob. What if Jesus were Eeyore? I'm glad you asked!

It's no secret: if I hated the Sentry any more, I'd love him. Sometimes, I see him crying into his cape and I want to laugh in delight, as if I am sharing a private joke with the universe about how ridiculous he is. It must be intentional... right?

As a Superman analog, he is all of the many things that are awful about Superman, and everything that is unique and different about him is uniquely and differently awful. The day Paul Jenkins typed the words "also known as the Void," he had no idea how true those words were. He is a great big wide-awake nothing, bereft of personality, history, or charm. His wife is a cipher. His dog blinks in and out of existence. He is a miracle. The fact that Brian Bendis has been writing him for years now and I still hate him with all the molecules that compose me is objective, scientific proof that a good Sentry story cannot exist in nature. Our top people have been working on it for some time. It is not in the cards. Our only recourse is to put Bob back on the shelf and work on something more reasonable, like cold fusion. Oh, how can I convince them? If only they would put him in his own series, so I could not buy it.

But I digress.

This publishing philosophy has crossed the threshold into carelessness. What will be in the book I buy? The beginning of a story that will vanish? The middle of a story I hadn't been reading? Spin the wheel! Wheeeeeee!

A narrative through-line apparently just doesn't matter at the moment. They brought the title's overarching arc to a dead stop to fill the book with a completely wrong art style and the complete wrong characters, and after two chapters of that story it suddenly evaporates into the ether. Maybe it will be back again; maybe it will randomly pop up in another book months from now like a photorealistic Brigadoon. Where can we expect Nick next? Hercules? Power Pack? I hope it's a book I'm reading. What will happen to the Sentry next? Nothing in this book! On to Hank Pym! Wheeeeeee!