Review: New Avengers #22

What if you were to take all the double-crossing, lying and state secrets from a stream of 007 movies, cut out the context and threw them in into a plot about government authority?

What would you have?

Mud.

Or as it is better known this week, four bucks worth of nothing from New Avengers #22!

We have enough talking heads, villain posturing and switcheroos to last Victor Von Doom a lifetime here. And scribe Brian Michael Bendis’ usual tension-breaking humor falls flat amid an issue obviously, as they say, written for the trades.

But what else is new in Bendis-land?

Thank God (second time this week, I think) for artists Mike Deodato and Will Conrad who keep everything visually interesting and rolling with storytelling finesse when a story is really not being told at all — just kinda being punched at.

As a reader, first and foremost on my mind was Luke, his wife and his baby, a matter that should be the linchpin around which an emotional story turns. Instead we have classic Bendis (not a good thing, I am afraid) and although I see some light on the horizon, this book just did not do it for me.

Again, I expected Bendis to be on full jets as he sets to depart Avengersville. This story had no gas at all. Just mud. Four bucks worth.