New Avengers (2010) #1, p. 24 (& 2nd Printing Cover)

Stuart Immonen makes this funny face when he draws sometimes... No, no - I mean he draws one on his characters sometimes. It is a scrunched kind of “intense character focus” face - and it is very effective - but due to the fact that the first time it really made an impact on me was in Nextwave (with Aaron Stack's hilariously disapprovingly snooty judgment of 'fleshbags') I have a hard time connecting it to a more dramatic situation or setting (such as Iron Fist's concentration and focus on display here). But connect it I shall!

I may have loved the volume 2 Bendis/Immonen/von Grawbadger ‘New Avengers’ run even more than their volume 1 work - which is saying something. Story-wise, it was the perfectly constructed vehicle for that particular roster, and art-wise it allowed Mssrs. Immonen and von Grawbadger to really push the boundaries of their impeccable style and storytelling technique (and, y’know, our mystical plane’s dimensional integrity as well :) ).

The Eye of Agamotto was the McGuffin in the storyline, and every drawn representation was exquisite; it looks three-dimensional and you just sort of fall into it - especially in the black and white original art I’ve seen on CAF. I really liked that approach to this mystical object - as though by rendering it in super-definition, it was given more “multi-dimensionality” than the other two-dimensional characters on the page... As though if you were to look directly at it, it would haze out or shift like you were witnessing a sort of magical/dimensional “phase change", continually shifting from solid to aether and back every moment; your eyes couldn't really focus on it as The Eye is simultaneously tethered to more than one plane of reality...

See? Crazy talk. That’s what great art can do to you. For you. To you and for you. And I’m pleased beyond words to have a beautiful team shot with the Eye, from one of my favorite runs, by one of my favorite creative teams in comics. Thank you, Jason at Essential Sequential, for absolutely everything (even the crazy talk).