The Avengers Reunite in a Review of Heroes Reborn #7 and Heroes Return #1

This Event becomes Event(s) in Heroes Reborn #7; the “finale” issue before the eponymous Heroes Return. Mephisto Save Us All. Written by Jason Aaron. Drawn by Aaron Kuder & Ed McGuinness. Inked by Mark Morales. Colored by Dean White & Matthew Wilson. Lettered by Cory Petit. 

Heroes Reborn #7 is a truly weird way to end your event. 

I am painfully aware that Heroes Reborn #7 isn’t the real “ending”. We still have one more issue and maybe some “Fallout” that could trickle into Avengers eventually. 

But that does nothing to lessen Heroes Reborn #7’s weirdness. And I may have actually loved it? Or at the very least, appreciate its oddity. I don’t know, let’s work through it together, shall we?

Extending the event’s bit of referencing Squadron Supreme-themed reworkings of Marvel “blockbusters” to the whole issue, Jason Aaron delivers a shockingly talky, callous seventh installment. The Squadron is now on the trail of the Avengers and through their searching, painfully overdone and highly cinematic memories are pushed to the forefront of the S.S’ “Big Three”.

While we have seen a few references before now to their “Civil War” (given here a full opening set-piece, handsomely rendered by guest artist Kuder who really shines here under the plaintive colors of Dean White), Aaron just fully goes for it with references and flashbacks. Staging the whole issue with vignettes intercutting their real-time search for the Avengers. 

Events like Secret Invasion, SIEGE/Dark Reign, and even One Day More get Squaddie rebrands, filling in some neat character dynamics and background for their damage.

Some of these fall flat, for sure. The jarring shoutout to the “Alpha Flight War” in particular is a glaring example. This story, as you’ll no doubt have read about by now, is strictly centered in the tie-ins so its sudden splice into the current action makes it obviously pretty wooden. Even more damningly, it doesn’t really add anything to what Aaron is saying about the Squad here.

Which is still plenty! These other canny flashbacks to the “events” working in concert with his now openly monstrous voice for EVERY member of the Squad really make explicit his obvious disdain for “state-operated” superheroes. Which also further sets up how satisfying it will ultimately be to see the Avengers assemblin’ all over their asses in the incoming issues.

But even armed with the handsome artwork of Kuder, White, McGuinness, Morales, and Wilson, there is no denying how expository Heroes Reborn #7 is. It’s no secret that Aaron in his later years has just gotten more and more verbose and this 7th issue is another example of the trend. Though some of it is peppered with real acerbic teeth and casual cruelty from “our” heroes (Blur here runs to punch Frank Castle a bunch, just to confirm he’s still in jail, for example), it’s still a LOT to get through.

Which just further adds to Heroes Reborn #7’s weirdness. Books like this often succeed in going small. Hell, Empyre just last year ended basically with a conversation! But with the front-loaded exposition about a bunch of comics that don’t exist, scaffolded to a group of characters only dopes like me who have spent six issues following, I worry about Heroes Reborn #7’s sustainability as a single issue of comics. Even if it does reveal something called the “Hellahedron”, a sort of Hell-themed Cosmic Cube, which is just…so scrumptiously bonkers.

I still genuinely have no idea where I fall on Heroes Reborn. Ideally, you would want to have gotten to a conclusion by the time you’ve read seven issues (plus ten tie-ins). But maybe the journey was the destination or the real heroes reborn were the friends we made along the way, or some such other bullshit when it comes to this one.

Was it good? Probably not. But it was sure fun to think and talk about after I read it. Maybe that has to be enough for Heroes Reborn #7 and this whole damn weird event.

Oh, no, Not me! /

Phil never lost control /

We’re face to face /

With the Man Who Rebooted The World! / In Heroes Return #1 /

Written by Jason Aaron. Drawn by Ed McGuinness. Inked by Mark Morales. Colored by Matthew Wilson. Lettered by Cory Petit.

Marvel’s Summer event finally remembers to be fun, just in time for its true finale, in Heroes Return #1.

It’s all led to this! The Avengers are back, standing firm against The Squadron Supreme of America and their Hell-backed Commander-in-Chief, Phil Coulson. They even get “home-field” advantage, choosing to make their stand on the still-hidden soil of Wakanda as Coulson readies his Squadron and“The Hellahedron”; the Mephisto-themed Cosmic Cube variant that has served as the bedrock of this “corrected” world.

Just in terms of splashy, nonsensical, but fun superhero comics, Heroes Return #1 is a resounding success. Unfettered by the dead weight that is plot and story structure, Jason Aaron and company just let the fuck loose here. Less a narrative really, and more just a series of action-based vignettes, Aaron and the art team, his main Avengers compatriots McGuinness, Morales, and Wilson, just start smashing toys together as the Avengers work to set the world right again.

And while it’s quite dumb, it’s at least the engaging kind of dumb. Each vignette, paired off across each Avenger and Squadron member, comes across neatly broad but par for the course in this kind of Summer “spectacular”. Which is then appropriately blown far out of proportion by the art team and letterer across each poster-ready page of this finale. 

Though they lack the teeth and ideological piss-taking that made the early issues pop, I found myself oddly satisfied by the collection of set pieces. All of which work across multiple fronts to get the Hellahedron, Phoenix Force, and Starbrand mixing it up and providing our heroes a return to the correct world. 

Dealt with in such brazenly breezy fashion it will have readers remembering that the New Avengers experienced the whole of House of M between issues #10 and #11 and then barely ever talked about it again. Almost like those 8 issues didn’t mean much to them. Kinda like how these 8 issues don’t matter much to the new Aaron penned team 

This, ultimately, might be what history makes of Heroes Reborn/Heroes Return. A breezy, occasionally fun event that had some neat ideas, but didn’t make any impact at all. And one that might never be talked about again. Neither by us nor its cast of heavy hitters, who are already positioned for the next arc of Avengers with little to show from their experience in the Squadron’s world. 

Yeah, sure, we have a few S.S.A. characters left over and Coulson might have “died”, but what else of real value do we have to take from Heroes Reborn/Return? That Jason Aaron wants to be working with DC characters? That he REALLY likes Mephisto? That the comics still have no idea what to do with its internalized MCU elements? That I wasted my whole Summer doing this? 

Questions for another time, I’m sure, but at the very least, I had fun while I was reading Heroes Return #1, but wished that fun lasted a little longer after I put it aside.

2-in-One Thoughts

• Justin says thanks so much for y’all’s indulgence here. What started out as a bit quickly ballooned into something…much more than just a joke and he truly appreciated the opportunity to do something THIS dumb (and have people be largely okay with it).
• Now that this is over, what stupid event should he cover next? Dark Ages IS coming up, as is Sinister War! Both look like the kind of dubious that could sustain more blessed content. Fire some suggestions at him at @j_partridgeIII or upstairs at @ComicsXF. He will LITERALLY write about anything. It’s kind of sad, really.

Zachary Jenkins

Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.