Another bad team book from Bendis
After the abysmal "seems it will never end" Dark Reign 2 storyline that engulfed both Avengers titles, we're going straight in with Avengers vs X-Men because all the Avengers are about now is the events...
This issue is basically just explaining Vision's return and having not-so-subtle hints at the fact Avengers vs. X-Men is literally an issue away. The writing is the standard lazy fare for Bendis with every character unable to speak more than 4 syllable sentences. What's even more insulting is the first 5 pages are just repeated stuff we've seen from Avengers Disassembled. It's not like "seeing it from a different perspective", it's just seeing the exact same scene we saw played out there again. So of this 21 page comic - 5 pages are effectively reruns. Of the new pages the only really stand-out scene is Vision confronting She-Hulk (who has been hideously ignored since Disassembled) and in one of the better scenes in the history of Bendis' Avengers, the two reignite their friendship.
Sadly, the rest of the issue just goes downhill from there. There's a nonsense fight scene between Vision and Magneto where Magneto speaks nothing like himself at all and instead speaks like a punk kid. After a unexciting fight between the two (yes, expect the trademark Brian "I'm too lazy to write a proper page" Bendis splash pages all over the place), we cut to Hawkeye and Spider-Woman continuing in their annoying and completely unbelievable "relationship". At this point, I'm going to just include a direct transcript from the issue:
Cap: Is he here yet?
Spider-Woman: Who?
Cap: The Vision.
Hawkeye: Haven't seen him.
Cap: Hmm.
Hawkeye: What happened?
Cap: He picked a fight with Magneto.
Spider-Woman: What? Why?
Hawkeye: Wanda.
Spider-Woman: Who?
Hawkeye: Scarlet Witch.
Spider-Woman: Oh.
Cap: What is this?
Hawkeye: What.
Cap: You two. Is this a thing now?
Hawkeye: Yep.
Spider-Woman: Good answer.
Cap: That's nice.
Across that never-ending dialogue of monosyllabicness and nothing else I realised that is what passes for characterisation in Avengers nowadays. Not a story arc, not an event, but a one-word sentence: "yep". That is Hawkeye's big character defining moment of this year - agreeing he's "a thing" with Jessica.
So, on that note, as per norm this is another bad team book from Bendis featuring just the one character (the Vision) as a central figure and then short cameos from a few others to remind us "hey, kids, this is Avengers not a Vision book!" . Instead of actually writing a proper team book with rich and layered characters with motivations, the big moment for one character for this entire arc could very will just be the word "yep".
Oh, and as always, the trio of ignored Avengers (Storm, Noh-Varr, their Hulk) are absent.
