New Avengers #9 Review: Standoff Part 9

The New Avengers take on their deadliest foe yet, the United States government as Sunspot and company try to defeat the new villain American Kaiju.

New Avengers #9
Written by Al Ewing
Art By Marcus To
Colored by Dono Sanchez Almara
Published by Marvel Comics

Last time in New Avengers: The renegade New Avengers have broken Rick Jones, aka The Whisperer, out of federal custody and are now on the run. By freeing Rick from his captors in S.H.I.E.L.D., Sunspot and his team are now fugitives and wanted by the United States of America.

In issue #9 of New Avengers, the depleted A.I.M. team of Sunspot, Power Man, the Whisperer, White Tiger, Songbird, Hawkeye (Clint Barton) and A.I.M. scientists go head to head with the United States government. Al Ewing created a perfect filler story for the Avengers Standoff event while artist Marcus To truly captures the pure evil that is the New Avengers deadliest villain to date.

So far, this event has been high octane and faced paced but New Avengers #9 doesn’t feel important to the overall story.

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Over the years, the United States government has tried multiples time to recreate the super soldier serum that created the original Captain America, Steve Rogers. But every time anybody has tried to recreate the serum, the results are less than up to par. Except for this time, general Robert L. Maverick oversaw the Troubleshooter project, which turned American soldier Todd Ziller into the American Kaiju, the Marvel universe version of Godzilla.

With the American Kaija in tow, General Maverick along with S.H.I.E.L.D. and a few other military troops head to A.I.M. Island to take on enemies of the state, A.I.M. General Maverick believes that taking down these “New Avengers,” will be an easy task.

But like always, A.I.M. has something up their sleeves to one up the competition. This time, it’s the Avenger-Five, a Voltron-like machine that has multiple parts but works together as one cohesive unit. Amongst the chaos, Songbird gives Hawkeye and interesting proposition, which will probably come back to haunt her in the near future. While the Avenger-Five and the American Kaiju are duking it out in the ocean, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent John Garrett makes the executive decision to storm the island, retrieve the Whisperer and but him back into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody.

The Bottom Line: Although the New Avengers series is a part of a big Marvel event, this current iteration of the New Avengers seems so far removed from the Marvel landscape that they truly do not matter. Issue #9 was a solid stand alone story but did nothing to further the development of the situation happening at Pleasant Hill.

Al Ewing has crafted true magic with a bunch of C-list characters who have not really mattered in the past. The New Avengers is a solid series, but it just feels like there’s a major detail that is missing that could potentially take this series from average to sensational.

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