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A review by dkmode
The New Avengers, Volume 8: Secret Invasion, Book 1 by Brian Michael Bendis
Note: I'm copy-and-pasting my reviews for this and the Mighty Avengers Avengers tie-in, because even though their contents are different, they're functionally the same. Since I read these issues interchangeably on Marvel Unlimited, I can't remember which ones were which.
These volumes are emblematic of the problem with event comics. In an optimal world, you'd have the main contents going back and forth between the Avengers books, but Marvel needs to sell more books, so you get the event as a standalone miniseries, and Mighty and New are put on hold while the event plays out over the year.
The consequence is that everything in these tie-in issues fills in gaps that no one asked for. Sometimes they broach important questions - like, how long has Hank Pym been a Skrull for? - but the answers take way too long. This is Bendis after all, so everything is "decompressed", and takes a full issue when a more efficient writer would communicate the necessary parts in a couple panels.
It's not that the content is "bad" per se; it's the same middle-of-the-road quality level of Bendis' typical Avengers books, which means its easy to read and has some monologues that would be nice if the characters didn't all use the same "realistic" dialogue style. But it's certainly pointless.
These volumes are emblematic of the problem with event comics. In an optimal world, you'd have the main contents going back and forth between the Avengers books, but Marvel needs to sell more books, so you get the event as a standalone miniseries, and Mighty and New are put on hold while the event plays out over the year.
The consequence is that everything in these tie-in issues fills in gaps that no one asked for. Sometimes they broach important questions - like, how long has Hank Pym been a Skrull for? - but the answers take way too long. This is Bendis after all, so everything is "decompressed", and takes a full issue when a more efficient writer would communicate the necessary parts in a couple panels.
It's not that the content is "bad" per se; it's the same middle-of-the-road quality level of Bendis' typical Avengers books, which means its easy to read and has some monologues that would be nice if the characters didn't all use the same "realistic" dialogue style. But it's certainly pointless.