After beating up two other plug-uglies off panel, Tigra picks up some punk villain called Razor Fist by the neck and slams him against the wall. She promptly decks the SOB, then shakes hands with a disabled girl, who was a former registered hero named Komodo, to seal their collusion against Norman Osborn. The Constrictor, of all people, acts heroic. In addition, some stuff involving Norman Osborn's gang happens.

You should be able to tell by the first paragraph that I don't give a rat's behind about Dark Reign or Norman Osborn. When I first heard Osborn was back after decades of being dead, I pretty much denied his existence. There should be a limit to how long a villain can stay dead and make a miraculous recovery. Thirty years is pushing it. In any case, I kept hearing a rumor that Marvel may have found a way to dig themselves out of the hole they excavated. Now, there is no way that I believe the Powers That Be at Marvel actually had a plan. Forget that. However, this blogger mentioned by podcasters at Yamagato Industries started seeing threads, and his vision made me pause. What if Brand New Day actually wasn't a deal between Spidey and Mephisto but Mephisto and Norman Osborn?

Suddenly, every stupid thing the Powers at Marvel have done start to make sense. Norman Osborn coming back from the dead, his giving Gwen Stacy the Green Goblin, the inane Civil War, the Skrull thing, Spidey stupidly throwing away his marriage to MJ and Osborn's ascension to power, which finally puts the villain in a position to ultimately humiliate and kill Spider-Man, all fall into place in a grandiose masterpiece that could only be designed by a malicious cosmic entity like Mephisto.

If Mephisto and Norman truly are behind the whole nightmarish awfulness that the Powers at Marvel inflicted on its readers then Marvel could have heroes other than the Agents of Atlas again. Even a douche like Iron Man could resurface as a champion if he made the connection that Mephisto rewrote the timestream. If Iron Man recognized that Mephisto tainted him and turned him into a thrall, if he warred against that enslavement, Iron Man would be palatable once more. This would also pave the way for the new "Heroic Age" mentioned by Eternity to Hank Pym in an image floating around the internet.

It's for this blogger's reasoning that Marvel appeared on my radar again. I'm not ready to go gung-ho behind this theory. Bendis would have to heal Barbara Gordon's spine to make me forgive his repulsive, sexist treatment of Babs' Marvel counterpart Tigra, and Dan Slott is dead to me now, but some books I simply can't ignore. One of them is Avengers Initiative. This is the place where Tigra prowls.

Christos Gage writes Tigra the way she should be written. Tough, smart, strong and unafraid to deal with the scum of the earth. Oh, and don't even think about using the argument that Tigra had to be deconstructed before she was reconstructed. That's flapdoodle. Tigra's motivation could have arisen from simple enlightenment, realizing that she was Iron Man's dupe, that what they were doing was ethically and morally wrong. All Avengers Initiative proves to me is that if a writer who actually likes Tigra handles her, she purrs. Writers that do not like Tigra, have her beaten in a way that's meant to be sexually provocative and give her Skrull spawn.

Apart from Tigra's scene, the Constrictor's moment in Avengers Initiative is memorable. The Constrictor acts conscientiously. He stops a plane from making a fatal landing. As I insinuated, I'm no Marvel Zombie. So, I don't maintain a Marvel file cabinet in my head, but if memory serves, the Constrictor was a mercenary, not exactly evil. His fluke of heroism actually does fit with his history. As does his guilt, when he realizes that he feels good about doing good.

Diamondback also appears in the book. I do know something about her. She partnered with Captain America - the bona fide Cap,, not Bucky. Diamondback reformed, and her indecisiveness, wanting to help but being unable to help, neatly reinforces her historical characterization while contrasting her from the self-serving villains of the piece. Diamondback talks Constrictor into bed after he saves her. It's a believably short conversation. Some might consider the Constrictor partaking in sexual favors an example of his duplicity, but I don't think of sex as being evil. The sex was freely offered, and I would say that the Constrictor deserves the sex.

As to the other villains, I don't care. They're rotten and evil. They are shallow creatures. Gage writes them well. I get that Taskmaster is the good soldier boy. Osborn is the Big Bad, but hair's widths distinguish their characterization because in the end villains are motivated by either greed or the acquisition of power. Doctor Doom is an exception that proves the rule. His nobility and class give Doom the excuse to occasionally act heroic, and these incongruous facets to Doom's personality make him unique among evildoers.

I did find one thing very amusing on the villain's side. Gage makes the Hood's m.o. hilarious. The Hood apparently threatens a target's mother and family. I remember that this was the pretense for Tigra taking his abuse; no, it does not satisfactorily explain or excuse the beating. Gage's insight makes the Hood an extreme sphincter, one the lowest rent villains in the history of comic books. I long to see Tigra gut him, and I'm certain that at least one scumbag from Osborn's group would not mind seeing such a disembowelment. The Hood is such a non-entity that he actually made me root for Justice. I used to hate Justice, but when you compare that generic, whiny waste to the Hood, he looks better. Justice almost appears to have depth.

Something else looks good in Avengers Initiative: the art. I am used to seeing this clean, open and inviting artwork in Marvel comic books. That's because I limited my buying to the Marvel Adventures line. However, if I were to characterize the current artistic paradigm at Marvel, I would say that it's mostly dark and smudgy. Molina's pencils give the reader visual construction that's unhampered by shadowplay exploited to disguise bad anatomy and hide an artist's limitations. Don't misread. Some artists can use shadows as Bob Roth used paints. Mike Mignola springs to mind. Others are just trying to mask their mistakes. I know because I used to use the shadow method of forgiveness.

Molina and Olazaba detail muscle, facial expressions, action and story flow with a seeming effortlessness. Their Tigra is fantastic. The villains of the piece look like they are falling apart, and that's what Gage's story suggests: Osborn's downfall. The Constrictor's moment gains notability through the creases that Molina and Olazaba bestow to his cowl to represent his internal conflict. Colorist Edgar Delgado educes an overall brightness to the book that compliments the artwork and the hopefulness in Gage's story.

I bought Avengers Initiative for Tigra, but Gage made me also like the Constrictor for a moment. His dialogue for the villains sounds accurate, and the plotting is easy to follow. The art in Avengers Initiativeis some of the best I've seen from the company since they went dark, gloomy. It reminds me of the superior work found in the Marvel Adventures line.

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