New Avengers #1
New Avengers vol. 2 #1 (June 2010) served as Marvel's ground-level counterpart to the high-profile Heroic Age relaunch, establishing Luke Cage — not a founding Avenger but a street-fighter who had spent years running an underground resistance — as the unambiguous leader of an officially sanctioned team for the first time. By rooting the team in the renovated Avengers Mansion and centering it on Cage's chosen family rather than on legacy figures like Thor or Iron Man, Bendis pushed the franchise into social and demographic territory it had rarely occupied before: a Black man running Earth's Mightiest Heroes from a brownstone. The issue also launched the 'Avengers Assemble: An Oral History of Earth's Mightiest Heroes' illustrated back-up prose feature, a serialized in-universe document that ran concurrently across both Bendis Avengers titles and was later collected as a standalone volume. The series that began here ran 34 issues and concluded Bendis's decade-long stewardship of the Avengers line, making this #1 the opening of a deliberate coda to one of the longest unbroken creative runs in the franchise's history.
Find on ebay
Read it digitally
Sell my copy
Have this issue — or a whole collection? Get a fair offer from us, skip the marketplace fees and the hassle.
We Buy Collections ▸History
In March 2010, Marvel announced the relaunch of New Avengers as part of the company's post-Siege 'Heroic Age' publishing initiative, which marked a broad editorial pivot away from the moral darkness of Civil War, Secret Invasion, and Dark Reign. Writer Brian Michael Bendis, who had steered the New Avengers title continuously since 2004, retained the book and brought penciler Stuart Immonen back to the series — Immonen had already worked with Bendis on earlier arcs and on Secret Invasion — along with colorist Laura Martin, who had collaborated with them on both Siege and Secret Invasion. According to a CBR interview with Bendis conducted around the launch, the inclusion of the Thing was an organic creative decision: Immonen drew the character into an early gathering scene and Bendis immediately saw the tonal value of having a Fantastic Four charter member embedded in what was conceived as a scrappier, more street-level squad, leading Bendis to call writer Jonathan Hickman and negotiate shared use of Ben Grimm.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Written by Brian Michael Bendis with pencils by Stuart Immonen, inks by Wade Von Grawbadger, and colors by Laura Martin; released June 16, 2010.
- Launched as part of Marvel's 'Heroic Age' initiative, the company-wide editorial rebranding that followed the conclusion of the 'Siege' crossover event in 2010.
- Establishes the vol. 2 New Avengers roster under Luke Cage's leadership: Iron Fist, Jessica Jones, Mockingbird, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Man, The Thing, Wolverine, and — assigned by Steve Rogers rather than chosen by Cage — Victoria Hand, Norman Osborn's former deputy director of H.A.M.M.E.R.
- Tony Stark symbolically sells the newly renovated Avengers Mansion to Luke Cage for one dollar (supplied by Iron Fist), making it the team's permanent headquarters for the run.
- The issue's plot kicks off the first arc's mystical threat: the Eye of Agamotto inexplicably appears in Luke Cage's hand; corrupted versions of Doctor Strange and Daimon Hellstrom then show up demanding it, setting up the interdimensional demonic antagonist of issues #1–6.
- Each issue in the series carried an installment of 'Avengers Assemble: An Oral History of Earth's Mightiest Heroes,' an illustrated prose back-up feature written by Bendis; the full run of chapters from both Avengers (2010) and New Avengers (2010) was later collected in a standalone volume (2012).
- Issue #1 was released with multiple variant covers, including a standard Stuart Immonen cover, a Marko Djurdjevic variant, an Immonen gatefold/fold-out variant, a Hero Initiative variant, a 'Heroic Age' blank variant, and a second-printing variant.
- The complete vol. 2 run (#1–34 plus issue #16.1) was eventually collected in a single omnibus volume that also incorporated the full 'Oral History' prose supplement.
Key issues in New Avengers
Other variants of New Avengers #1 (6)
Reviews
Reader reviews
No reader reviews yet.