Read All the Comics!: New Avengers Annual, Avengers Annual, Elric of Melnibone

New Avengers Annual 1

Avengers Annual 1

Brian Michael Bendis and Gabriele Dell’Otto wrap up the Wonder Man subplot that’s been interluding through the main Avengers title. Simon Williams flips over to the “Avengers are a net negative to the world” side of things, and decides that beating the crap out of them will somehow force them to be accountable to the world. No idea how that makes sense.

Wonder Man, along with his team of C-list heroes who all have beef with the Avengers, win the first fight, lose the second, and that’s it. The last couple pages suggest that he succeeded in planting seeds of doubt about the Avengers into the public consciousness, but that doesn’t seem like it was worth two annuals to accomplish. We’ll see if Bendis decides to revisit this in future issues.

Regret buying? No

Would buy again? No

Would read again? Yes

Rating: Fine

Elric of Melnibone 1-6

Elric holds a great amount of nostalgic positive energy for me. My middle school library had the trades for both this miniseries and the subsequent Sailor on the Seas of Fate. I read them multiple times and have many fond memories of the psychedelic colors, batshit crazy stories, and some of the earliest depictions of sex that I can remember (all very exciting for a sheltered kid). How would it hold up twenty-eight years later? Doing this bullet point style.

Layouts are credited to P. Craig Russell, pencils to Michael T. Gilbert. They shared coloring duties. The resulting art is as exquisite as my memory served. So many panels are worthy of note, and you see plenty of them below.

Yyrkoon (which Google spell check recognizes!!) is Starscream, plain and simple.

Also, I dig those non-functionally long lances.

A big deal for this late bloomer.

Russell and Gilbert frequently use this close up profile shot.

Drugged Cymoril was creepy then, creepy now.

Another in the long line of memorable fictional archers.

Sidebar to see how many I can list off the top of my head:

Robin Hood
Rackhir
Green Arrow (many iterations)
Hawkeye (Clint and Kate)
Arwyn (From the Crossgen comic Sojourn)
Legolas
Susan (From Chronicles of Narnia)
Merida (From Brave)
Jessica Biel (From Blade: Trinity) (Yeah, I can’t remember her character’s name.)
Badasses one and all.

Stormbringer. One of the classic fictional swords. I adore the crossguard design that Russell and Gilbert came up with. It’s iconic and instantly recognizable. Is it the first sword with vampiric qualities?

Elric reminds me greatly of the Conan comics I recently read - fantastical names of people and locations tossed about with seeming abandon (“I’m a warrior priest of Phum,” “It lies in the unmapped eat, beyond the Weeping Waste -- one of the oldest of the Young Kingdoms,” “I would find them in the Pulsing Caverns, which is reached through the Tunnel Under the Marsh”), absolutely no hesitation on the part of the protagonist when it comes to plunging headfirst into certain peril, crazy monsters, and glorious treasure.
Everything reads like a middle school Dungeons & Dragons campaign, but I don’t mean that pejoratively. There’s frenetic energy and imagination to Michael Moorcock’s stories, as adapted by Roy Thomas. Coupled with the spectacular art, and this is just as vibrant a work of fantasy as my seventh grade mind recalls.