Nick Fury's Avenger Babies

Hmmmm....too quiet around here...no more Countdown, Final Crisis hasn't started...whatever shall I rant about?

Ahhh, thank you, Bendis.

Let's start with Mighty Avengers #13. For the 3rd consecutive week, Bendis has given us a regular Avengers title in which THE AVENGERS DO NOT APPEAR!!

The pattern is that Mighty Avengers will cover Nick Fury's secret doings doing his time gone walkabout, while New Avengers will look at the Skrull side of things.

I asked this question last week, but let's try again: why is this stuff in the Avengers, and not the Skrullapalooza maxi?? Maybe it's just me, but if you're going to have stories that reveal the backgrounds and characterizations of your main players of your major event, shouldn't that actually APPEAR in that big event? Or if somehow you can't shoe-horn that into your packed series (yeah, right...see below), or maybe as a separate mini-series? Why banish the Avengers from their own books??

Frankly, they should just change the title of Mighty Avengers to Nick Fury's Avengers Babies. Then it would make sense.

I should point out, in Bendis' defense, that in one page here he actually gives Ares' more dialogue and character than in all 12 previous issues of MA combined!! Wow.

By the way, does Fury's plan make a lick of sense? Look, he suspects everyone, so he's collecting "unknown" offspring of super-powered beings. The theory being, that if the Skrulls didn't know they were super-powered, they wouldn't have replaced them.

Huh? A) The theory didn't work so well with Jarvis, did it? B) Wouldn't the Skrulls want to get close to some of the heroes? So even if it wasn't known that Ares' son Alex was Phobos, isn't it possible that a Skrull still replaced him just to get to Ares?? C) Fury's assumption that nobody else knows about his "caterpillars" is dangerously arrogant, ain't it? If Fury can figure out that these kids have powers, why the hell couldn't the Skrulls??

On to Skrullapalooza #2. Sigh.

Here's one of the reasons I'm complaining about all this background taking place in the Avengers. Because NOTHING happens in this issue. Nothing at all.

Look at the plot lines set up in Skrullapalooza #1: fake Pym discombobulating Reed Richards. Not followed up in #2. Agent Brand and the rest of the SWORD agents are about to die in space. Not mentioned in #2. The SHIELD Helicarrier is about to crash into Manhattan. Not mentioned in #2. ALL the Stark tech on Earth is down. Not mentioned in #2, except for Iron Man's armor. There were prison breaks at the Raft and the Cube. Not mentioned in #2. Captain Marvel attacks the Thunderbolts. Not mentioned in #2. Johnny and Franklin and Valeria are being sucked into an exploding Negative Zone. No follow-up.

Yup, from the vast and sprawling epic set up in #1, the ONLY plot line covered is the Avengers fighting the "returned heroes" in the Savage Land. Issue #1 was just a tease, #2 the cold shower.

This might not be so bad, except....

A) It turns into 18 pages (with 3 double page splashes!) of "I'm not a Skrull! Are you a Skrull??"
Talk about padding...
B) Since Leinil Yu cannot draw a competent fight scene, 85% of the time you have no idea of who is doing what to whom.
C) For the second issue in a row, a marauding dinosaur interrupts events. I know we're in the Savage Land, but c'mon, Bendis...we're 2 issues in and you've already run out of original ideas on how to stage things?
D) Once again, Bendis wants us to believe his characters are morons (or, conversely, he can't even follow the premise he's set up). In this issue, we reinforce that when a Skrull dies, they revert to Skrull. Hawkeye and Wolverine and Cage have now seen this several times. Now, given that Hawkeye SAW Mockingbird die, saw the body not turn into a green alien, he knows that she wasn't a Skrull back then. So how can he possibly believe that this one could be real? Not to mention, they know Skrulls can now do powers, including telepathy, so the fact that "Bobbi" knew one of Clint's secrets ain't much proof. And even if you grant that Bendis killed off Hawkeye AND resurrected him just to have him be a complete idiot at a crucial moment, Logan and Luke (the new Heroes for Hire?) should know better. It's very frustrating when the author treats both his characters and audience as morons...

Let's see if Bendis can keep the streak going, and have a dinosaur disrupt another "are you a Skrull" argument in issue #3.

And I still say that, given a Skrull Warship has landed in midtown Manhattan, it's not a "Secret" Invasion anymore...