Avengers: Millennium #1 & 2 (Marvel)

writer: Mike Costa

artist: Carmine Di Giandomenico

I've been a big fan of Mike Costa since discovering him in the pages of IDW's Cobra comics, where he's recently returned in the pages of G.I. Joe: Snake Eyes, Agent of Cobra.  The only downside in Costa's brilliant career is that he can't seem to connect with other material the way he has G.I. Joe.

A certain amount of that opinion has to do with my admittedly limited attempts to actually read that other material.  Yet my personal track record holds the opinion to be, at least for me, reasonably accurate.  When DC launched the New 52, Costa wrote Blackhawks, a military series that for all intents and purposes was a mainstream version of the work that had made him a name in the business.  And yet, he chose, or perhaps was mandated, to approach Blackhawks differently than he has Cobra.  (Which is to say, maybe this is one of those matters about creative freedom.)  In the pages of Jonathan Hickman's God Is Dead, which Costa has been writing for most of its run, there's not much of the Cobra vibe, either.

All the same, when I saw Avengers: Millennium listed, I was excited all over again.  This is a self-contained limited series.  Surely more room for the authentic Mike Costa to breathe?  To a certain extent, it seems.  And again, maybe it's just me, pigeon-holing the guy.

The page I included here is the second one from the first issue, and for two pages I saw exactly the Mike Costa I like so much, a writer fully engaged in a character, their particular nature fully on display.  And then, for the remainder of the two issues thus far released, he just kind of does Avengers Adventure Time.  Which isn't so bad, but it's not what I want to see from Mike Costa, specifically.

Most of these issues is also dedicated to the wacky banter of Hawkeye and Spider-Man.  This is nice to see, in a way, because it certainly broadens the scope of what Costa could be known for, but it also instantly limits him in a way.  Spider-Man has a way of swallowing writers whole, the ones who let their guard down.  Deadpool happened because Rob Liefeld, basically, let his guard down.  Deadpool is Spider-Man without any of the angst.  It's just wacky banter all the time, and stories attempting to reflect that.  Some writers can make sense of that.  Others can't.  Spider-Man is riding a wave of popularity at the moment because Dan Slott was able to focus more than writers tend to, without getting all mopey and woe-is-me (Spidey is basically manic-depressive, kind of like Daredevil), but a lot of what Slott did to make Spidey popular was the gimmick route that led to Spider-Verse.  Slott ended up taking the Geoff Johns approach, what Johns did on Green Lantern for nine years, event after event, except Spidey has more limited possibilities for such things than Green Lantern, so you get things like "Spider-Island" and what I always like to call Doctor Spider-Man, which was another character taking on the role, surely a comics staple, but in this instance more like when Ed Brubaker brought back Bucky, a genius character move.

...I feel like I have massively digressed.  Anyway, this is to say, I hope I see more of the Mike Costa I know and love in Avengers: Millennium, but even if I don't at least this time I'm committed to the experience one way or another.