In my perspective though, New Avengers did just what you say the Avengers concept should be about. I went into it because i kept hearing they were up to something big but i was hesitant to sit through Black Panther and Beast (as an Avenger) who I have low feelings on and Reed Richards who i have no feelings on whatsoever. But coming into it I was pulled in by the interactions between them and the feel that the Marvel universe was (irony) converging in this book through these characters.
yeah, I can see that; New Avengers was definitely had more good character moments of the two. And, like you say, it did feel like the characters were really coming from disparate corners of the MU, showing a side of the world we don't often see. I just felt like two many issues would pass where we wouldn't see any of the main cast interact much, or in any kind of entertaining way (or just sitting around passively watching other worlds be destroyed without saying or doing anything entertaining), and for me that made it lose it's appeal.
Bendis for me has done a great job on plotting character developments out (aside from Dark Beast) in Uncanny X-Men. The attention he's given to the newer characters i believe are going to be important a year...or even a few months down the line when the book heats up again. But even if this is all set up I found it to be slow, and at times even dreary to look back on when summing up 2 years of publication with little pay off. While Hickman's style seems to be similar in pacing i think it at least distracts from the slow build alot better. Another thing is that while we know worlds are converging the same way we know the revolution is coming, the converging is never forgotten while the cast of Uncanny doesn't even seem concerned with it most days.
It's just harder to follow it.
yeah, Dark Beast was pretty random.. (strangely, though, I somehow saw it coming, despite the fact that made no sense to the character)..
The thing with the whole revolution premise, to me, is that it's kind of the 3rd most important theme of the book. As sort of the main X-men book, it makes sense to me that the main themes should be:
- what it means to be a mutant (in this case, that they are outlaws), and
- that they are a school (which I think he's balanced to great effect).
the revolution aspect may be a slower going plot point with everything else that's going on, but that doesn't really bother me because what it is doing is still the kind of stuff I like about X-men and then some. The outlaw thing may overshadow the revolution thing, but they're both just a distinct twist on top of the main themes anyway.
With the Avengers, I read it for really only one theme: to see characters from different parts of the MU interact in interesting and entertaining ways. Yeah, the conceit is that they have to band together to save the world or whatever, but that's not what makes them special or interesting.
To use Bendis as another example, his New Avengers was more like what i read Avengers for. I don't care if they spent most of their time fighting ninjas and hardly any time actually saving the world, because the reason I was reading it was to see Spider-man and Luke Cage joke around with Captain America, or whatever. Yeah, cool plots and threats are better than doing nothing, but what I read Avengers for especially is seeing great character interactions.
Hickman may be doing the most epic plots in the history of the Avengers for all I know, but if he's not doing solid character interactions between the star cast, it's not really doing what I read Avengers books for in the first place. I'll concede that his New Avengers was certainly the better of the two in this regard, but for me neither of them has been as compelling or entertaining as Bendis' Uncanny'.
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