New Avengers: Illuminati #1

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Alex Maleev
Colors: Dave Stewart
Letters: Chris Eliopoulos


The dark and secret history of Marvel’s most powerful and mysterious team of heroes is revealed. What brought these six men together? What decisions did they make that affected the entire Marvel Universe? And what does it take to tear them apart?

I’ve been critical of some of the editorial decisions that Marvel has made over the past few years, from the lack of a coherent feel across the entire line to their poor planning and over-hyping of so-called “events” like House of M to the way they keep slapping “New” on almost every single title. Illuminati seems to represent a slight change in focus as events that have occurred over the last several months are brought together into a bigger picture that’s both exciting and frightening. Hopefully this isn’t a singular event but rather a refocusing of the line as Marvel takes some hints from what their Distinguished Competition has been doing right with its line of superhero comics for the past few years.

Marvel’s Civil War event is still about a month away but the first shots are fired here in this special. This comic paves the way for what’s to come and it doesn’t look like it’s going to be pretty. Some heavy stuff happens here and if you’re planning on getting in on the ground floor of Marvel’s next big crossover you’re going to want to pick this issue up. The lines are already being drawn and if you think there are just two sides to this fight you’d better think again.

Bendis delivers a very powerful and shocking story with plenty of drama, tension and action. Maleev is hardly my favorite artist in the world but he does do a good job translating Bendis’ script into some powerful visuals. And he draws a pretty good Iron Man. Also included in this one-shot is an early peek at some pages from Civil War, depicting an event that fulfills a haunting prediction made by Iron Man in this issue’s main story.

Special thanks go out to Jeremy Shorr, owner of Titan Comics for allowing us to use his advance preview books for review purposes.

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