I'm not super familiar with the era of Sandman as a hero, but it does feel like a shame that they just reverted him back to generic bad guy eventually.
It was Byrne.
Byrne loved reverting things to the way they were when he started reading. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it sucked. In Sandman's case, it sucked.
In Sandman's case, it was something like "there was a throwaway line early on that Sandman was on the FBI's Most Wanted list, so he has to be irredeemably bad". And so, a cool redemption arc was wasted.
I think it would’ve been great if during AXIS Sandman got reverted back to normal good, since it was an Inversion Ray that turned him back into a bad guy in the first place.
Kinda. He randomly turns evil again and then it's revealed the Wizard kidnapped him and made him evil with the ID Machine to get him to rejoin the Frightful Four.
Hey, to my knowledge people have basically completely forgotten that the Magik that at least prior to Sword of X was in fact a Demon Belasco made that was a soulless mimic of Illyana Rasputina after seeing her alive in House of M. The reason she looked human was taking the Sword for herself, and then killing the elder gods meant that this demon was able to obtain some of Illyana's soul.
Byrne is one of the worst offenders, alongside Loeb, in terms of not respecting the work of his fellow writers, nor the investment which fans have in those works and their stories. Just pure myopic selfish self-indulgence.
I'll give Johns a break.
When he brought back Hal Jordan, he didn't do what Byrne would have, which would have been to eliminate every other Green Lantern in the most humiliatingly dismissive way possible. He gave us an "everyone wins" solution where they all got to be stars.
Eh. He definitely made Kyle baby so Hal could save the day and made Kyle Parallax in Sinestro Corps War. He was fronting Hal during the time John Stewart was at the apex of his popularity.
Not to mention bringing back Barry Allen and screwing him up for over 15 years.
I blame Didio for the "GOTTA BE MY 1970S CHILDHOOD" crap as much as Johns. Remember, Didio wanted both Wally and Dick dead because they dared to have outgrown being Kid Flash and Robin. And he mostly got his way with disappearing and ruining Wally.
But it all culminated with the Nu52 and Oracle being Batgirl again. That was a waste of character development even Byrne never matched.
He wasn't entirely wrong about Dick honestly. But that pivoted well with Dick becoming Batman...which promptly got ruined by the New 52. But overall the nostalgia bender isn't exclusive to DiDio. We're seeing it right now with the nostalgia for the 90's at DC and Marvel, it just depemds on who's writing st the time. And in as much as DiDio was responsible for it, he was at least willing to experiment. Like 5G trying to slide everyone in was probably gonna be a mess, but at least interesting. A lot of other writers are way more conservative.
IIRC Johns' original plan was for both Barry and Wally to exist, it's Didio that was pushing a reset, it's why in Rebirth, which Johns' spearheaded, Wally coming back was so important.
It doesn't change that he went out of his way to make Barry The Most Important Character Ever in the Flash by doing the stupid Barry created the Speed Force stuff. You can certainly say one thing and not live up to it with your actual stories.
If there's one talent John Byrne possessed: it was the ability to fixate on one very narrow thing and use it to bring something to the way it was in his childhood but worse.
I wasn't reading at the time, but I remember initially thinking Neil Gaiman's Sandman was THE Sandman and he'd turned good enough to get his own series.
Now I kinda wish we did get a Neil Gaiman Marko-as-hero series 😕
I loved sandman as a hero. He was never a “mean” villain. He wasn’t evil to begin with. Just trying to be a dad, after realizing he wasn’t such a great person to begin with. He’s really cleaned up his act but writer keep putting him back as a villain. Even reluctantly sometimes but still always back down the villain route. I’d love for him to be “fully reformed” maybe next time they need a new thunderbolts team (that isn’t evil to begin with like during Siege)
True, but even before that he's shown to be a caring family man. One of his best characterized moments, and the one that I'm pretty sure got later established as the day he decided he wanted to switch, was when he broke out of jail to visit his mom on Christmas and Spider-Man and the Human Torch actually let him do so. It was their faith in him that inspired him to switch sides.
Sandman always feels right as a heroic character, currently they sort of compromise by having him doing paid work for Kingpin but to help out the heroes. Would be nice to have him rejoining the Avengers though.
Also it was laughable that Swordman was willing to confront Sandman here, like bro, there’s zero chance that you end up surviving a 1v1 with Sandman.
I think Spidey's had multiple villains (most of them reformed) defend him. I remember someone framed Spidey for a crime and the first person to defend him was the original Beetle.
Norman Osborn secretly framed him for the murder of street gangster Joey Z. Abner Jenkins, the original Beetle —and at the time pretending to be a superhero under the alias of Mach-1 to con the world as part of the original Thunderbolts— was one of the first people to call BS.
Is this run of the Avengers good? I've heard mixed opinions, but this looks fun.
Edit: Thanks for all the replies, I'll definitely read it now!
I'm gonna be honest, it appears that my comment about mixed opinions of the run as a whole was a bit uneducated and I think it mostly stems from the mixed opinions I've seen of [the Kang Dynasty on Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703725.Avengers). I'm fairly new to comics, so when I've heard of the Kang Dynasty it was also the first time I've heard of this particular Avengers run and the opinion of that arc just kinda spilled out and distorted my view of the whole run, if that makes sense.
I'm glad I was proven wrong and now I have a new run on my to-read list lol. I'm also glad that there's a good Avengers run out there (beside Hickman's, that's also on my list), since I'm reading the new McKay run at the moment and it's very mediocre in my opinion.
The Busiek/Perez run stands amongst the best runs of the whole book in my opinion. It's obviously not perfect but it's a great mix of new ideas while pulling from the deep history of Avengers.
The Busiek/Perez run is one of the best in Avengers eras IMO. Busiek did some of the best character development this side of Al Ewing, esp on Wanda, Vision, Simon, Carol and Firestar. There was a real sense of the Avengers as real people and as a tight knit family unit where past eras (to me) portrayed the team as co-workers who don’t *really* know each other outside of work.
Also the “Ultron Unlimited” arc is arguably a Top 10 Avengers story for the team’s publication history.
Though there were a small few elements that haven’t aged as well *cough* Silverclaw…the stories hold up as a really solid balance of fun/serious & big/intimate.
Part of her origin story that she was a "hungry child" sponsored by Jarvis (like the old Sally Struthers commercials "for just pennies a day, you can feed a starving child and get their picture and this commemorative mug"). It was probably well meaning, as far as depictions of indigenous peoples goes - but pretty heavy handed.
It’s not that Silverclaw is bad, just some elements of her story fell a little flat for me when first reading these stories on their release 25 years ago and even more so when looking through a modern lens.
Namely, the Christian missionary upbringing, orphan sponsorship that brought her to the US and the loosely tribal/indigenous costume motif without attribution to an actual South American country (since she’s from a *fictional* one).
The storyline with Triathlon and the Triune Understanding similarly felt heavy handed and like an oversimplification of the race and representation conversation.
Though to Busiek’s credit, you do get a sense in his run that he wanted his characters to actually have cultural identity and he really just understood all their personalities.
I think the mixed opinions you’ve heard are about Sandman being an Avenger which was the status quo before this run.
This is the beginning of the Busiek/Perez run which is regarded as arguably the best Avengers run ever.
It’s definitely really good, goes absolutely hog-wild towards the end. Mind you, I’m not sure Busiek’s instincts are always on point (I would have personally never touched anything regarding Avengers #200, and the whole Affirmative Action thing going on with Triathlon can seem misguided at points), and I’m not sure if he’s putting out his best writing in terms of dialogue.
Still recommended, though.
Cracks me up because Sandman's inclusion seems a bit unnecessary here. Swordsman gets told off by Cap then gives Spider-Man permission to leave and Sandman decides to escalate things for no reason. Honestly hilarious.
Master swordsman, was a criminal for a while, trained Hawkeye when he was young, eventually became an Avenger, died, had his corpse reanimated by a plant, had a baby with Mantis, died again, the baby was the Cosmic Messiah.
That's who the fuck Swordsman is. Who the fuck are you?
Accidentally became the most consequential Marvel character by kicking off the Siancong War which is the war that Marvel recently retconned into being the 'war' in Reed, Ben, Tony Stark and Frank Castle's respective backstories.
Yes it is. It's not Jacques Duquesnes Swordsman, but Philippe Javert, straight from a destroyed reality, in couple with Magdalena, both manipulated by Proctor (a black knight counterpart)...
...Who was jilted by the Sersi of his world, so he decided to destroy all Sersis across the multiverse ending up with Sersi Prime from the 616, who then went to the Ultraverse for a while as a result.
I guarantee that's not going to stick. Frank's war is just going to be whatever recent war American soldiers or contract mercenaries were involved in, from now until forever.
They don't need the war itself, they just need it to be an allegory to whatever RL war they're drawing inspiration from. Siancong will be Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq/whatever war the plot demands and they will keep it just vague enough that you get the point.
See, I disagree - I think they tied Siangcong too closely to Vietnam, and even if they keep sliding it in the timescale, it's going to feel too 'dated' for it to work for Frank's origin. But we'll see, I guess.
Its a fictional war with multiple factions that dragged on for decades in-universe, they can always redress it however they want.
But yeah, I agree that we'll have to wait and see.
This is actually a different Swordsman! You described Swordsman I but this is Swordsman II - Philip Javert. This Swordsman is a younger alternate version of the 616 Swordsman (but for some reason has a different name than ours).
He first appeared in the 90s Avengers during the Gatherers storyline and he and his partner, Magdalene, stayed in 616 for a while and were briefly Avengers members.
Sandman as an Avenger sounds incredible and I hope one day this concept can come back. Having Peter’s affect on one of his famous villains to the point of them turning their life around and becoming a strong and respected member of the world’s most capable superhero team is just peak fiction.
I hated how they turned him back to a bad guy. It's been semi-redeemed in later years with him developing almost split personalities between Marko and Baker, and an arc where there were even more splits, but never quite did him justice.
I'm ok with him not being on a main avengers team, but he could fit the role on the Thunderbolts alongside Songbird and Mach-whatever.
What can Swordsman do if Sandy decided to throw down? Like how would Swordsman even hurt him let alone defend himself? It seems stupid for him to even talk back to Sandman
Yeah, apparently. I don't know if it's just this page or what, but the quality here is nothing even remotely close to Crisis on Infinite Earths. Just look at that full body spiderman and any image of thor. It's like he's just phoning it in.
I'm not super familiar with the era of Sandman as a hero, but it does feel like a shame that they just reverted him back to generic bad guy eventually.
It was Byrne. Byrne loved reverting things to the way they were when he started reading. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it sucked. In Sandman's case, it sucked. In Sandman's case, it was something like "there was a throwaway line early on that Sandman was on the FBI's Most Wanted list, so he has to be irredeemably bad". And so, a cool redemption arc was wasted.
I think it would’ve been great if during AXIS Sandman got reverted back to normal good, since it was an Inversion Ray that turned him back into a bad guy in the first place.
Seriously? Inversion ray?
Kinda. He randomly turns evil again and then it's revealed the Wizard kidnapped him and made him evil with the ID Machine to get him to rejoin the Frightful Four.
... Are you telling me Sandman has been going through his own OMD for decades and no one is talking about it?
Pretty much lol.
Hey, to my knowledge people have basically completely forgotten that the Magik that at least prior to Sword of X was in fact a Demon Belasco made that was a soulless mimic of Illyana Rasputina after seeing her alive in House of M. The reason she looked human was taking the Sword for herself, and then killing the elder gods meant that this demon was able to obtain some of Illyana's soul.
Ah. Well, good thing that's been forgotten. That's fucking stupid.
Yeah, that is in character for the Wizard. He's one of those narcissistic "people only exist to serve me and I get to define who they are" a__holes.
>Inversion Ray I thought they gave him multiple personalities to explain it away
Wasn’t that more his brain being manually divided than being a D.I.D. situation? To say it is something to eventually be fixed?
Byrne is one of the worst offenders, alongside Loeb, in terms of not respecting the work of his fellow writers, nor the investment which fans have in those works and their stories. Just pure myopic selfish self-indulgence.
... Geoff Johns, joe Quesada.... "I want it like when I was a kid!"
I'll give Johns a break. When he brought back Hal Jordan, he didn't do what Byrne would have, which would have been to eliminate every other Green Lantern in the most humiliatingly dismissive way possible. He gave us an "everyone wins" solution where they all got to be stars.
Eh. He definitely made Kyle baby so Hal could save the day and made Kyle Parallax in Sinestro Corps War. He was fronting Hal during the time John Stewart was at the apex of his popularity. Not to mention bringing back Barry Allen and screwing him up for over 15 years.
I blame Didio for the "GOTTA BE MY 1970S CHILDHOOD" crap as much as Johns. Remember, Didio wanted both Wally and Dick dead because they dared to have outgrown being Kid Flash and Robin. And he mostly got his way with disappearing and ruining Wally. But it all culminated with the Nu52 and Oracle being Batgirl again. That was a waste of character development even Byrne never matched.
He wasn't entirely wrong about Dick honestly. But that pivoted well with Dick becoming Batman...which promptly got ruined by the New 52. But overall the nostalgia bender isn't exclusive to DiDio. We're seeing it right now with the nostalgia for the 90's at DC and Marvel, it just depemds on who's writing st the time. And in as much as DiDio was responsible for it, he was at least willing to experiment. Like 5G trying to slide everyone in was probably gonna be a mess, but at least interesting. A lot of other writers are way more conservative.
IIRC Johns' original plan was for both Barry and Wally to exist, it's Didio that was pushing a reset, it's why in Rebirth, which Johns' spearheaded, Wally coming back was so important.
It doesn't change that he went out of his way to make Barry The Most Important Character Ever in the Flash by doing the stupid Barry created the Speed Force stuff. You can certainly say one thing and not live up to it with your actual stories.
His best work was always when he had a blank slate, like when he got to completely remold superman. But even that had its weird parts
If there's one talent John Byrne possessed: it was the ability to fixate on one very narrow thing and use it to bring something to the way it was in his childhood but worse.
Plot developments should never be reverted, even if they are shit. We gotta move forward
I wasn't reading at the time, but I remember initially thinking Neil Gaiman's Sandman was THE Sandman and he'd turned good enough to get his own series. Now I kinda wish we did get a Neil Gaiman Marko-as-hero series 😕
For the record: I *LOVE* the concept of Sandman on the Avengers and I wish some brave writer would do that again.
I loved sandman as a hero. He was never a “mean” villain. He wasn’t evil to begin with. Just trying to be a dad, after realizing he wasn’t such a great person to begin with. He’s really cleaned up his act but writer keep putting him back as a villain. Even reluctantly sometimes but still always back down the villain route. I’d love for him to be “fully reformed” maybe next time they need a new thunderbolts team (that isn’t evil to begin with like during Siege)
Wait, Sandman's daughter was created for the Spider-Man 3 movie. He never had a wife or daughter in the comics before the movie's influence.
True, but even before that he's shown to be a caring family man. One of his best characterized moments, and the one that I'm pretty sure got later established as the day he decided he wanted to switch, was when he broke out of jail to visit his mom on Christmas and Spider-Man and the Human Torch actually let him do so. It was their faith in him that inspired him to switch sides.
By "trying to be a dad" they must have meant "rawdogging it every night".
Sandman always feels right as a heroic character, currently they sort of compromise by having him doing paid work for Kingpin but to help out the heroes. Would be nice to have him rejoining the Avengers though. Also it was laughable that Swordman was willing to confront Sandman here, like bro, there’s zero chance that you end up surviving a 1v1 with Sandman.
#MakeSandmanAGoodGuyAgain
I think Spidey's had multiple villains (most of them reformed) defend him. I remember someone framed Spidey for a crime and the first person to defend him was the original Beetle.
Norman Osborn secretly framed him for the murder of street gangster Joey Z. Abner Jenkins, the original Beetle —and at the time pretending to be a superhero under the alias of Mach-1 to con the world as part of the original Thunderbolts— was one of the first people to call BS.
Is this run of the Avengers good? I've heard mixed opinions, but this looks fun. Edit: Thanks for all the replies, I'll definitely read it now! I'm gonna be honest, it appears that my comment about mixed opinions of the run as a whole was a bit uneducated and I think it mostly stems from the mixed opinions I've seen of [the Kang Dynasty on Goodreads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/703725.Avengers). I'm fairly new to comics, so when I've heard of the Kang Dynasty it was also the first time I've heard of this particular Avengers run and the opinion of that arc just kinda spilled out and distorted my view of the whole run, if that makes sense. I'm glad I was proven wrong and now I have a new run on my to-read list lol. I'm also glad that there's a good Avengers run out there (beside Hickman's, that's also on my list), since I'm reading the new McKay run at the moment and it's very mediocre in my opinion.
The Busiek/Perez run stands amongst the best runs of the whole book in my opinion. It's obviously not perfect but it's a great mix of new ideas while pulling from the deep history of Avengers.
The Busiek/Perez run is one of the best in Avengers eras IMO. Busiek did some of the best character development this side of Al Ewing, esp on Wanda, Vision, Simon, Carol and Firestar. There was a real sense of the Avengers as real people and as a tight knit family unit where past eras (to me) portrayed the team as co-workers who don’t *really* know each other outside of work. Also the “Ultron Unlimited” arc is arguably a Top 10 Avengers story for the team’s publication history. Though there were a small few elements that haven’t aged as well *cough* Silverclaw…the stories hold up as a really solid balance of fun/serious & big/intimate.
Actual doubt over here, what's so bad about Silverclaw?
Part of her origin story that she was a "hungry child" sponsored by Jarvis (like the old Sally Struthers commercials "for just pennies a day, you can feed a starving child and get their picture and this commemorative mug"). It was probably well meaning, as far as depictions of indigenous peoples goes - but pretty heavy handed.
It’s not that Silverclaw is bad, just some elements of her story fell a little flat for me when first reading these stories on their release 25 years ago and even more so when looking through a modern lens. Namely, the Christian missionary upbringing, orphan sponsorship that brought her to the US and the loosely tribal/indigenous costume motif without attribution to an actual South American country (since she’s from a *fictional* one). The storyline with Triathlon and the Triune Understanding similarly felt heavy handed and like an oversimplification of the race and representation conversation. Though to Busiek’s credit, you do get a sense in his run that he wanted his characters to actually have cultural identity and he really just understood all their personalities.
I almost always see nothing but praise for this run, I’m surprised you’ve heard mixed opinions (granted, maybe I’ve just had the opposite problem lol)
I think the mixed opinions you’ve heard are about Sandman being an Avenger which was the status quo before this run. This is the beginning of the Busiek/Perez run which is regarded as arguably the best Avengers run ever.
It’s definitely really good, goes absolutely hog-wild towards the end. Mind you, I’m not sure Busiek’s instincts are always on point (I would have personally never touched anything regarding Avengers #200, and the whole Affirmative Action thing going on with Triathlon can seem misguided at points), and I’m not sure if he’s putting out his best writing in terms of dialogue. Still recommended, though.
Cracks me up because Sandman's inclusion seems a bit unnecessary here. Swordsman gets told off by Cap then gives Spider-Man permission to leave and Sandman decides to escalate things for no reason. Honestly hilarious.
Giant Man, being just enough of a giant man to lord it over others, but not too giant.
Who the fuck is swordsman???
Master swordsman, was a criminal for a while, trained Hawkeye when he was young, eventually became an Avenger, died, had his corpse reanimated by a plant, had a baby with Mantis, died again, the baby was the Cosmic Messiah. That's who the fuck Swordsman is. Who the fuck are you?
Accidentally became the most consequential Marvel character by kicking off the Siancong War which is the war that Marvel recently retconned into being the 'war' in Reed, Ben, Tony Stark and Frank Castle's respective backstories.
Also, isn’t this technically an alternate reality version of swordsman from the gathering story?
Yes it is. It's not Jacques Duquesnes Swordsman, but Philippe Javert, straight from a destroyed reality, in couple with Magdalena, both manipulated by Proctor (a black knight counterpart)...
...Who was jilted by the Sersi of his world, so he decided to destroy all Sersis across the multiverse ending up with Sersi Prime from the 616, who then went to the Ultraverse for a while as a result.
This is before Morgan Le Fay altered reality.
I guarantee that's not going to stick. Frank's war is just going to be whatever recent war American soldiers or contract mercenaries were involved in, from now until forever.
They don't need the war itself, they just need it to be an allegory to whatever RL war they're drawing inspiration from. Siancong will be Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq/whatever war the plot demands and they will keep it just vague enough that you get the point.
See, I disagree - I think they tied Siangcong too closely to Vietnam, and even if they keep sliding it in the timescale, it's going to feel too 'dated' for it to work for Frank's origin. But we'll see, I guess.
Its a fictional war with multiple factions that dragged on for decades in-universe, they can always redress it however they want. But yeah, I agree that we'll have to wait and see.
This is actually a different Swordsman! You described Swordsman I but this is Swordsman II - Philip Javert. This Swordsman is a younger alternate version of the 616 Swordsman (but for some reason has a different name than ours). He first appeared in the 90s Avengers during the Gatherers storyline and he and his partner, Magdalene, stayed in 616 for a while and were briefly Avengers members.
God I love comics.
A good page
I love Flint 💚
I’ve always liked it when they draw Cap’s eyebrows showing.
I honestly never even knew Sandman was a hero at any point. Thats awesome. I wish that stuck! Also, Swordsman is talking wild right now lmao
Sandman as an Avenger sounds incredible and I hope one day this concept can come back. Having Peter’s affect on one of his famous villains to the point of them turning their life around and becoming a strong and respected member of the world’s most capable superhero team is just peak fiction.
This is really cool to see
Seeing Sandman defending Spider-Man in this is honestly pretty cool 🙂👍
Love the art of George Perez
I hated how they turned him back to a bad guy. It's been semi-redeemed in later years with him developing almost split personalities between Marko and Baker, and an arc where there were even more splits, but never quite did him justice. I'm ok with him not being on a main avengers team, but he could fit the role on the Thunderbolts alongside Songbird and Mach-whatever.
Spider-Man: "Hey you guys have Thor and Iron Man here, so not sure you really need my help."
What can Swordsman do if Sandy decided to throw down? Like how would Swordsman even hurt him let alone defend himself? It seems stupid for him to even talk back to Sandman
there’s something so special when a guy who’s usually against someone like batman, superman or spider-man says something like this and backs him up
I'm cuntface, duh.
This art is awful. Why is it happening??? Lol
Dude, did you just call George Perez awful? Different strokes and all, but ouch
Yeah, apparently. I don't know if it's just this page or what, but the quality here is nothing even remotely close to Crisis on Infinite Earths. Just look at that full body spiderman and any image of thor. It's like he's just phoning it in.
Somebody just has to say the emperor has no clothes on