1119 ( )

Love the Dr. Strange stuff and how it mixes with the Hood story line. ( )

The search for the new Sorcerer Supreme gives us a nice showdown between the Hood/his demon and the Avengers, Dr. Strange, Brother Voodoo and Daimon Hellstrom. Daimon is a kickass character, but Brother Voodoo's over-the-top stereotypicalness makes me cringe every time.

There's also some good conversations between the Avengers about superheroes and ethics regarding killing, and to what degree some of that has gotten them into the current mess. Parker comes across to me as the more naive one, but it's still good.

We also get another iteration of Spiderman revealing his identity, apparently because some Spiderman story re-hid it (presumably via some retcon or something). It was somewhat confusing, and rather undermined part of Civil War. ( )

I haven't really cared for any "mystical" characters since the Scarlet Witch had been effectively taken out of the game, so this was somewhat of a bore to me. I also haven't liked the character of Doctor Strange since he went on his little rant about how Wanda hadn't earned her right to use magic because he hadn't taught her, so, yeah.

Basically, Doctor Strange goes up against the Hood and travels to New Orleans to discover who the new Sorcerer Supreme is since he lost the right to use that title when he used magic irresponsibly. And the new guy is Brother Voodoo, who is now going by Doctor Voodoo. There's a fight with the demon that is possessing the Hood. Hood loses. The end.

Although there's a blurb on the back about how the Avengers can't trust Spider-Man because of his refusal to remove his mask, that issue is resolved within a couple of pages in the first issue collected here, so it's not big enough to warrant a mention on the synopsis on the back, in my opinion. I guess they needed filler.

I do like, however, how Clint's plan to shame Norman Osborn through the media backfired on him. He'd wanted the media to investigate Osborn and uncover his seedy side, both past and present, but Norman talked his way out of it and used Clint's past against him. So now Clint is going to have to take more drastic measures. That's really the only interesting thing going on in the New Avengers series at the moment.

The art is pretty good. ( )