Better Lineup Than the Revengers
The Dark Avengers rise again in this issue while the New Avengers take a break from appearing in their own book. Norman Osborn's recruitment of his new team is done well enough that it makes up for the lack of the usual stars in this one issue, though.
This reads like the typical first issue of a new team book in which you have team members being introduced and recruited. This is the kind of issue Brian Michael Bendis has done well in the past, and that holds true here as well. Osborn, in believable fashion, is unwilling to move on from the heights he reached during Dark Reign and tries to recreate some of what he had amassed then. This all is allowed to happen due to some powerful figures basically enabling his crazy because of the belief that it will ultimately benefit them.
As a reader of Secret Warriors, I was a little concerned about HYDRA's involvement in this story. There was the risk that all the developments with HYDRA from that series would be ignored, and I am glad to be able to say that isn't the case. It is actually a decent progression of those developments. HYDRA didn't exactly come out of Secret Warriors in the best shape. The organization barely survived what Nick Fury had done to them, and that actually serves as the reason the Gorgon and Madame Hydra throw in with Osborn.
One of the things I appreciate about Bendis is that he doesn't usually write in a bubble. It seems like he is often on the look-out for what other writers are doing, and this leads to him bringing some of their characters into the spotlight. The new Dark Avengers features two characters from Kelly Sue DeConnick's Osborn series, one from Jim McCann's Hawkeye: Blindspot and another member is Skaar. It's nice to see Bendis reaching into a lot of different stories to pull together his new Dark Avengers.
While it's easy to buy into the idea of Obsorn being crazy enough to dress up a bunch of people as Avengers, the same can't be said for the idea of some of the members of this new team being willing to play dress-up in this way. It just seems like a few of these characters should take themselves too seriously for this kind of thing, and seeing them in their new costumes does hurt the big reveal of Osborn's new team.
When all is said and done, this issue of New Avengers does a good job of building up the threat of Osborn's return and a new Dark Avengers team. Circumstances are different enough here that it doesn't feel like Bendis is simply revisiting the Dark Reign well, and the lineup of the Dark Avengers is different enough that they feel like a new threat. It is a little disappointing not to have the New Avengers actually appear in this issue, but that really doesn't stop this from being a good read.
