SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for Avengers #687 by Mark Waid, Al Ewing, Jim Zub, Paco Medina, Juan Vlasco, Jesus Aburtov, Federico Blee and Cory Petit, on sale now.


The great game at the heart of Avengers: No Surrender is coming to a close. The Grandmaster is dead and The Challenger is triumphant. But while The Avengers don’t know the severity of the threat that awaits them, the team gets something approaching downtime to question the faux founding member Voyager, catch their breath and reflect on their mistakes.

No one is reflecting as hard or as earnestly as the resurrected Bruce Banner, who once again was used as a pawn against his friends in the Avengers and is coming to terms with the fact that he can never truly die.

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Paradise Lost

The Hulk’s rampage through the Avengers Auxiliary HQ was unlike anything the Marvel Universe has seen before. We’ve seen the Hulk as a hero, a savage, a gladiator -- even a mob enforcer. But he’s never been as cruel as he was as he tore through the Avengers. That’s something Bruce Banner is struggling to come to terms with; he thought he finally had it all figured out and that he’d finally found a way to die for good, but all he did was bring more suffering. He caused Hawkeye the guilt of thinking he’d killed his friend, and even in death, his body was manipulated and used as a weapon by the likes of The Hand and Hydra.

Now he knows this is his lot in life, forever, and it’s understandably proving to be a lot to take in. We’ve seen versions of the Hulk in the distant future before, and he never has a happy ending. In “Future Imperfect,” he became the mad tyrant known as The Maestro; in Hulk: The End, he was the last being alive on a world of flesh-hungry radioactive insects; in “Old Man Logan” he was the hillbilly patriarch of a family of inbred Hulks. There’s nothing in Bruce Banner’s future but misery, death, resurrection,,, and more misery.

To Be An Avenger

However, the Avengers’ faithful butler Jarvis sees it a different way. Jarvis has been through it all with the Avengers. He’s seen villains like Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch turn over a new leaf to become some of the greatest heroes the world has ever seen. He’s seen gods like Hercules beaten within an inch of their life attempting to protect what it means to be an Avenger. He’s seen young heroes, like the new Wasp, be prepared to give up everything to save one person's life.

If anyone understands what it means to be an Avenger, it’s Edwin Jarvis, and Jarvis reminds Bruce Banner that he is an Avenger.

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On the surface, the name “Avenger” doesn’t really mean anything; after all, who are they Avenging? Jarvis points out that to be an Avenger is to strive to be better; it’s something at the core of the founding line-up. Iron Man wanted to escape his arms dealing past, Thor wanted to prove to his father that he was worthy, Ant-Man wanted to look like a hero in front of his wife, and The Wasp wanted to be seen as more than an airhead socialite.

It runs throughout the team’s history, in characters like Hawkeye, Black Widow and Quicksilver; in newer members like Luke Cage, Wolverine and Rogue. Even with Voyager, who is learning what it means to be an Avenger right now, it involves some form of contrition and a will to make the world a better place, so long as you don’t give up. That’s what makes an Avenger and that’s why Jarvis knows that Bruce Banner is a better person than his worst impulses.

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