snap judgments

Someone asked me about this issue today, wondering if it was any good. Well, I can say one thing: This issue quite possibly breaks time and space in ways I didn’t think a comic could do to me.

And that’s me, personally, IRL to coin a term. I’m sure once this is all traded out it will make complete and utter sense but as a monthly? Oh my lord. Reality folds in itself to put this context. Let me recap which is surprisingly easy since this issue just so happens to be a recap issue.

For a storyline that hasn’t been published yet. That’s right: the first five or so pages are dedicated to recapping the symbiote invasion of New York, soon to appear in Mighty Avengers once that book gets back on schedule. In the meantime, you can read New Avengers #36, get the idea of what’s going to happen in a few months and then decide if you want to know any more. Mind you, the story is easy enough to figure out if you read solicitations and it’s not like anyone is really going to be spoiled on the basic outline of the plot, but still. Bendis kind of just killed his own book.

So, Luke Cage recaps the whole ‘everyone turns into Venom or Carnage’ boiling it down to salient points: some Avengers (Mighty and New) turn into symbiotes because a chemical bomb was dropped on New York City. Those who weren’t affected (some Mighty guys and Luke Cage) try and fix the problem while fending off teammates and scores of innocent bystanders. Tony fixes it all in the end and the two teams who are supposed to be at each other’s throats unite to clean up and take care of the damage and people left behind. They go their separate ways so Luke Cage can give his recap to Jessica Jones (who napped through the whole thing if I’m reading it correctly), adding in that Wolverine is going to go talk with Jessica Jones after her most recent bout of turncoatism.

Cut to the Mighty Avengers who are getting ready to attack Latveria. You see, apparently they know that Doctor Doom dropped the chemical bomb that caused all their recent woes and are prepping up to take the fight to him. In a very weird arrangement of panels, Spider-Woman listens on and then appears to strip in the middle of the meeting (actually, her locale changes and turns into background shadows, but at face value, girl likes to get naked). It’s shower time and Logan makes his grand entrance. The chat is simple, just looking to see what Spider-Woman told them (nothing more than Elektra’s Skrull situation, or so she says) and he tells her that the Hood is on the loose and just knocked over a place in Jersey and wrecked Deathlok. This is when Black Widow shows up in her underwear to borrow deodorant and Logan jumps through a window to be rescued by Spider-Man and swung out of there. Reading that sentence makes me laugh.

Cut back to the New Avengers who’ve tracked down the Hood and Pals to the last pages of last month’s issue and that’s when my brain broke. That’s right: within one issue we are blasted into the future to a storyline that hasn’t even hit the shelves yet and then slingshot into the past with contents from last month’s issue! This book exists and doesn’t exist at the same time! HOW CAN THIS BE?!? In all fairness, this isn’t exactly Bendis’s fault since publishing schedules are incredibly skewed with Mighty Avengers as late as it is, but WOW.  It’s like I should be able to put my hand in a wormhole in the middle of this book!

Coming back to where I started, when I was asked about the New Avengers I had to tell the poor guy that he might not want to jump onto the book right now but wait awhile until continuity settles in. I also suggested Captain America.

Anyhow, yes. New Avengers, rooftop, looking in magically on the scene where the Hood and Pals are enjoying their big pile of money. For some reason, the New Avengers aren’t sure they can take the assembled villains; Hawkeye considers them way out-powered and Iron Fist suggests leaving. Luke Cage notes that it took a bunch of them to take out the Wrecker. And Doctor Strange … suggests backup. After that rather sad little exchange of doubt in the World’s Mightiest Heroes (or at least Most Secret Heroes), we cut back to the Hood and Pals who are watching the last page or so from last issue, the taped broadcast from the symbiote disaster which… had to have happened later that day and this is obviously a report after everything is back to normal. No breaking news here, the Hood still sees a grand opportunity and that’s when Luke Cage busts in like the Kool-Aid Man. The Hood sneers, thinking that Cage was stupid enough to come alone and on the last page, we have a weird hodgepodge of impressive heroes from Thor to Angel in his Champions uniform to Black Widow striking dramatic poses behind Luke, who obviously didn’t come alone after all.

No, because this is probably just Doctor Strange creating an illusion and enforcing the idea that Bendis really doesn’t know what he’s doing with the Sorcerer Supreme outside of Deus Ex Machinas (’No one here’s a Skrull because MAGIC said so!’) and, at least by this issue, using him to see far through a building and create an illusion.  While he’s off ingesting ZOM in World Ward Hulk, it honestly feels like he’s just babysitting these fools.  Sure, I know the last Illuminati issue says he’s been rather weak these days, but I’d still like to see something more than a holographic projector and a pair of binoculars from the guy.  Then again, this could be me.

So, all you need to know for the New Avengers is that they are going to fight The Hood and Pals next issue.  Everything else is like looking into the time vortex.