‘Hello, hero. Are you for hire?’

After several cosmic Marvel event series, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning have taken an unexpected turn toward street-level vigilante adventure with Heroes for Hire. Building on the vast legacy of Heroes for Hire begun with Luke Cage and Danny Rand as Power Man and Iron Fist, the new take on the concept is a mixture of Marvel Knights and Warren Ellis’ Global Frequency, using somewhat obscure third-tier characters with a gritty reputation as part of an interconnected operation directed by a coordinator from an undisclosed location.

Misty Knight plays the sultry operator and the first issue sees the Falcon, Black Widow, Moon Knight and Elektra working together to remove the threat of Atlantean drug trafficking from the streets without ever really knowing of the others’ involvement (aside from a brief moment in the opener). Fed key information by a mysterious source, Misty directs her agents on the fly, giving them just enough information to get their part of the operation accomplished but still maintaining a kind of ghostly anonymity.

It’s a kind of modern way to use several characters at once in a street hero book with unusual plot twists. Due to their previous work for both DC (on Legion) and Marvel (on everything from Nova to Guardians of the Galaxy), Abnett and Lanning are usually associated with science fiction, making this book an eyebrow raise from the start. Due to the slimming down of Marvel’s publishing catalog, there is a slot that is looking to be filled, left by the cancellation of numerous books. It has also left many characters somewhat homeless, such as Moon Knight, Black Widow, Ghost Rider, Iron Fist and the Punisher. Again, a similar experiment was helmed back in the day with Marvel Knights, a team book of street-level vigilantes who had lost their monthly books and made an uneasy ‘team’ of sorts.

Artist Brad Walker (Manhunter, Guardians of the Galaxy, Secret Six) plays his A game in this premiere issue, drafting several characters who are in some cases somewhat over-designed of late (Moon Knight). In addition to a large cast, Walker has to pilot the crew of unlikely loners through several locations, action sequences, etc and still maintain a solid pace and mood. It’s not an easy task, yet he pulls it off so well that I suspect this book to be a sell out before tomorrow afternoon.

The only real negative that I can raise is the back-up feature chronicling the incredibly rocky history that Heros for Hire has endured. If anything, it made me doubt getting invested in a new monthly book that has taken so many bad turns and bizarre plot developments (Cats mutated into people back into cats when they encounter unrequited love… plant people… etc). Right off the bat, Abnett and Lanning are mixing the traditional crime noir material with the usual trappings of the Marvel Universe and it works… but how far away can the cat people story be?

The initial Heroes for Hire was a kind of buddy movie meets comics, uniting the unlikely team-up of Luke Cage and Iron Fist. In the lesser-known iterations that followed, nearly every and any hero was drafted into service in an ever-growing group of unlikely third and in some case fourth-tier heroes. The last Heroes for Hire series was almost all ladies and made the comics press for its near-pornographic cover featuring tentacle attacks on the bound women of action.  My point is that if you want to regard Heroes for Hire as a franchise in much the same vein as the X-Men or Avengers, it has a questionable history at best.

Using their current celebrity status, Abnett and Lanning chose an odd concept to champion, but in an interview with CBR.com the writing team sees no real difference here from what they accomplished with the oddball misfits of the Guardians of the Galaxy:

They’re some of Marvel’s coolest and most classic heroes – it’s a treat to be able to play with these toys! The other fun part is the eclectic nature of this book. This is a “team” that alters its composition as the mission demands, and often “hires” heroes who don’t realize what they’re part of. It’s very different and it will allow us to explore one of our favorite pastimes (which got such a good response on “Guardians of the Galaxy”) which is digging up and using great but minor characters you might have forgotten about, in unusual combinations.

In the first installment it all works very well. As a fan of Moon Knight and Falcon alone, this issue delivered the goods, making these fan favorite characters shine. Black Widow, a heroine who has seen more attention lately thanks to her big screen debut, comes off equally well and Elektra is her usual self. The heroes have retained their unique personalities and the plot is fast and intriguing enough to bring readers back for more.

The concept states that the team is filling a need in the aftermath of Shadowland, an event comic that I am very eager to forget having ever happened… and it only just ended. The streets are rife with crime and the Kingpin is building a new empire to replace his old one while Marvel Editorial takes Daredevil back to square one, a move that in the long run may be a bold decision but for right now makes me miss the days of Bendis and Brubaker.

The unexpected cliffhanger sets the stage for some surprising developments in the second issue as Misty’s shadowy informer is exposed, only to welcome more questions. What is the real purpose of the Heroes for Hire? Readers will have to stick with it to find out… I just hope it doesn’t involve alien plant creatures looking to get revenge on Iron Fist.