The More Things Change...

Three months have passed (in Marvel time) since the end of Part Four of "Chaos," the story which concluded the events of the "Avengers Disassembled" storyline that ran in the main Avengers title as well as seven others. "Chaos" ended with several loose ends left unresolved--and that brings us to the wrap-up story in Avengers Finale, an epilogue issue which would gather the team one last time to formally disband them and send them on their way, with hopefully many memories of their rich history that they can take pride in.

Just why the Avengers must disband is only one of those questions left hanging in the air after the team confronted the Scarlet Witch in a battle which capped what was arguably their worst crisis. Now, they gather once more in a reunion of sorts called by Tony Stark, who has grim news to deliver in the ruins of what was once Avengers Mansion:

It looks to be something of a bittersweet reunion.

Hawkeye, The Marksman--Marked For Death!

In Part Two of "Chaos," the main story in the "Avengers Disassembled" series shared with seven other Marvel titles in late 2004, Hawkeye made the observation that the recent deadly attacks on the Avengers amounted to an "extraordinarily bad day" that was only going to get worse.

Now that the Code White emergency call has gone out, and just about every known Avenger has shown up at the nearly-destroyed Avengers Mansion to lend their support, it doesn't take long before Hawkeye's fears prove justified. In the middle of Nick Fury reading all of the Avengers the riot act for contaminating a crime scene, word comes down that the United Nations has severed formal ties with the team:

The U.N. piling onto the Avengers with a virtual stab-in-the-back while they're in the middle of their worst crisis understandably angers some on the team--but anger soon turns to astonishment when a massive Kree invasion attack force arrives and opens fire. A group of attacking ships which, according to the SHIELD helicarrier, isn't even registering on any instruments:

And as the saying goes--all hell breaks loose. Again.

An Extraordinarily Bad Day

Part One of "Chaos," which fired the opening salvos of the "Avengers Disassembled" story, had our assemblers reeling from multiple attacks on their home ground--and from their own members, including the Vision, Jack of Hearts, and now the She-Hulk, who has back-handed the Wasp into a coma and (from the looks of things) crushed Captain America beneath a truck.

She-Hulk now turns her rage against the only two team members left standing to oppose her--Hawkeye and Captain Britain, who are joined by another Avenger arriving on the scene of carnage.

Iron Man, as we saw last time, has come under an attack of his own while at the United Nations--being forced by an unknown power to endure a drunken state even without having downed one drop of liquor, and finding himself subsequently threatening one of the delegates. As a result, he's being held accountable at a dressing-down by the White House:

Iron Man then responds to the Code White situation at Avengers Mansion. And, in a nice touch by writer Brian Bendis which gives an unquestionable nod to Iron Man's seasoned experience as an original Avenger as well as one of Marvel's charter heroes, he floors She-Hulk without a word upon arrival, using a thundering right that ends the fight then and there.

Afterward, Iron Man digs out Cap, finding that his shield has saved his life. Captain Britain, however, has been critically wounded, as has the Wasp, who has been located by the Falcon still in her wasp-sized state. But before Falc can air-lift her to the hospital, the giant-sized--no, the colossally-sized Yellowjacket appears and grabs them both in order to hasten their trip.

What is this--the Ultimates? I suppose we can assume one of two things: either Bendis intends not only to disregard Hank Pym's well-known difficulties with attaining giant-size stature but also to set a new, near-limitless standard for how big this guy can grow, or artist Peter Finch was told to instead draw a mini-Celestial. Either way, how convenient for the plot that this now-massive Avenger arrives too late to, say, swat away a destructive Quinjet before impact or scoop up a bunch of attacking Ultrons, eh? More on that thought in a minute.

At any rate, casualties are assessed, and notes are finally being compared. But we'll find Part Two of this story to be more of an interim issue than anything which advances the story for either us or the remaining Avengers.

The Reassembling Of The Avengers

The above scene, from the four-part Avengers story, "Chaos," serves to boil down the events of the crisis which led to this point--better known as the 2004 "Avengers Disassembled" series, written by Brian Bendis, with art by David Finch (pencils) and Danny Miki (inks). It's a little daunting to, er, "disassemble" this ambitious story and make sense of it, as so many have weighed in on both the story and its writer, and with good cause. "Chaos," a word borrowed from another manifestation of the Scarlet Witch's probability-altering power, certainly describes not only this crisis which the Avengers have been thrust into but also the upheaval which the book itself would generate on the sales rack. Over a period of four months, "Avengers Disassembled" would wind its way through no less than seven other titles--and at the end, the Avengers title itself was to be scrapped, and the concept rebooted. It all seemed so--well, go ahead and fill in the blank. I could list a half-dozen descriptive words to finish that sentence off the top of my head, and none of them would sound far-fetched.

That's not to suggest that "Chaos" is bad or disappointing--on the contrary, it's an extremely entertaining and gripping story which takes the team well out of its comfort zone and shows us what they're made of, while no doubt giving new meaning to the term "crisis situation." Say what you will about Brian Bendis, and many have--I know I have--but whatever marching orders he was given from editors Tom Brevoort and Joe Quesada (and lord knows who else), Bendis' writing, in this story at least, makes for compelling reading, and he turns in everything asked of him, while perhaps tossing in a few of his own grenades as well. If that sounds like a caveat, it probably is. No one wants to shoot the messenger here; but there's no evidence to suggest otherwise that Bendis didn't have a firm hand in shaping this story's plot--or, for that matter, the plotting or direction of New Avengers (which picks up where this story leaves off), Civil War, Secret Invasion, or any number of other books which helped to shape the future direction and tone of the Avengers. To extend the Latin, caveat emptor.

While reading through the "Avengers Disassembled" issues, it's practically impossible not to get a sense of déjà vu from 1991, when the X-Men were essentially rebooted after the spinoff from the book's main title was launched--adopting a decidedly more proactive and militaristic perspective after the Marauders, in another cross-title series of issues, had given us a bloodbath of casualties and left us with a group of hard-edged mutants who began questioning their scruples a lot less:

In the case of the Avengers, it was a similar type of "scorched Earth" writing which made it possible to literally blow this team apart and start the book from scratch, while almost completely severing ties with the plot and character constraints which had long tied writers' hands. It's reasonable to assume a more long-term goal: that what worked for the Avengers would, in turn, presumably filter down to Marvel's other books, which had characters who at one time or another were Avengers themselves. Consequently, if the Avengers themselves are torn apart and rebuilt without the "Marvel that was" having any sort of influence, the rest of the Marvel books could conceivably fall in line.

"Chaos," for better or worse, seems to be the culmination of the initiative to break with Marvel's past in order to build a commercially viable future for new readers, with books based on gritty realism rather than pure adventurism. And with the dead Jack Hart's appearance at Avengers Mansion, the first bomb that will "disassemble" the Avengers as we knew them is detonated.