READVANCE REVIEW
NEW AVENGERS #35
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Leinil Yu
Company: Marvel
I might be just about done with this title.
It feels really good to say that, for some reason.
I only started picking up New Avengers on a regular when the current lineup debuted post-Civil War. I cannot say for sure exactly why I even bothered; I think Wolverine and Spider-Man have no business being in the Avengers, do not care one way or another for Cage, hate the idea of Clint Barton being a ninja, and hate Spider-Woman.
I think I just got it to see New battle Mighty Avengers and did not drop it once things got Skrully.
The fact is, this title, apart from the “holy shit†factor of the Skrull revelation, has been treading water for months, and that only becomes more pronounced this issue. Call me crazy, but in an Avengers comic, I’d like to see the Avengers. Tigra does not count, and I think Spider-Woman appeared out of costume, but with Yu penciling, who can tell?
This issue focuses entirely on a group of “superâ€-villains gathered by the Hood to form their own equivalent of the Initiative. Of course, since Bendis is writing this, that means that very few of the villains are of any note at all, are c-level at best and he is the only one who cares about them (see Spider-Woman, Luke Cage). I could almost forgive the Avengers not even appearing in this issue if the cover hinted at that, like say the cover from a few issues previous that had a bunch of villains on it. It may have been more interesting to read the Hood give his clichéd mission statement of villain consolidation (like that has never been done before) if one was not preoccupied with thinking the entire time “when is Wolverine going to get taken over by a Venom,†as the cover suggested.
A real letdown, this was.
