Mighty Avengers News!

MARK BAGLEY TO DRAW MIGHTY AVENGERS
Newsarama note: Yeah, you got us - that's not Mighty Avengers #7. That's the previously unseen cover to July's #5. So why are we showing it with a Mark Bagley story? Hey - it's Frank Cho drawing Ant-Man. Come on.

While it was previously reported that Angel Medina would take over the pencils on Mighty Avengers starting with issue #7, allowing co-writer and penciler Frank Cho to take a break and get ahead on his next arc, that’s not quite the case anymore.

According to Marvel and Mighty Avengers co-writer Brian Bendis, long-time Ultimate Spider-Man artist Mark Bagley will be joining the book as the artist for the arc.

“I’m sorry for any embarrassment to Angel, but the announcement that made it out there was just premature,” Bendis told Newsarama. “He has another project that has to get done, and there were scheduling problems as well, so it just wasn’t going to work out.

“At the same time, this whole, ‘What will Bagley do after Ultimate Spider-Man?’ conversation came up, and I had said publicly that I had no intention of letting go of him, and if Mark convinces me that it’s not me that he’s sick of, but rather Spider-Man, then we’d be good to go. But then again, the whole leaving Ultimate Spider-Man thing could be because he was sick of me, which I can completely understand. I get to work with five different people each month; he gets to work with just me. I get to date around…he’s stuck in a relationship.”

Bendis explained that when he thought of Bagley working on Mighty Avengers, he would finally find out if the artist was sick of him or not.

“As it turns out, Mark was not sick of me. He just wanted to draw something else, and I told him, ‘I’ve got something else for you.’ He’s the perfect guy for it, so I’m happy to report that the team is not breaking up. It will also give Frank the ample time to produce his pages for the stories that are written for him, likewise, this story is being written for Mark.”

So how’s Bendis writing this arc for Bagley?

“In Mark’s case, I flat-out know what he can do, maybe even better than he does.

“Here’s the thing, when I write Spider-Man, there’s a certain part of my brain I’m using, and there’s another part when I’m writing Avengers with different kinds of images. Now I know that he can work in that part of my brain, so I apply that towards him. Anytime I write an arc, I literally try to imagine the world according to that person, like Leinil or Frank. For Mark, I imagine a story as if Mark drew it, and then write that story. The cool part is when he does something better than I even imagined, which happens a lot with Mark.

“I told him what the story was, and he said, “Oh, that’s everything that I wanted to draw.” I know what his non-Spider-Man likes are, and I was able to come to him and say, ‘here’s the team, here’s the villain, here’s the set pieces.’ It was a perfect match.”

So just who is the villain or villains? Well, as Bendis said, there’s a lot of symbiote action in the arc (reportedly entitled “Venom Bomb”), but that doesn’t necessarily mean the story is about the Avengers versus Venom teamo y mano.

“The big villain is Dr. Doom, and I’m very happy to announce that I got approval to bring the Dr. Doom story to a place it has not gone before,” Bendis said. “I don’t want to say what that is exactly, but we’re taking the hero versus villain fight in the Dr. Doom arena farther than it has gone before. The Avengers are going to kick some ass.”

And finally, given Bagley’s workhorse ethic and speed (he completed a full issue in the time it took you to read that) will Mighty Avengers see more of Bagley after this arc? Bendis isn’t saying, other than that Cho will be back on the title.

“It’s Frank’s book, but Frank can’t produce a monthly book for a long period of time. It takes him maybe seven weeks per issue, so as long as he has a head start, he’s good for a while. But with #7, he’ll need a break to get going on his next arc. It’s just like we were doing on New Avengers for the last couple of years. Every arc was written specifically for the artist, and that way, we make every arc the special event that it should be.”