As much as I love Bendis’ Avengers, this title has been a complete mess recently. Unfortunately, that’s largely because of the scheduling problems being caused by Mighty Avengers delays, which leave the New Avengers playing out their cameo appearance in a story which hasn’t happened yet. There are some good Secret Invasion-related scenes and the fallout of Spider-Woman “switching sides” is nicely dealt with, as is the growing suspicion between Cage and Jones, but between the end half of the symbiote-hasn’t-happened-yet fight, and the apparantly beginning the end of the Hood storyline, the title’s all over the place.

Lenil Yu’s art is luckily on hand to keep us entertained where the plot doesn’t, and Dave McCaig’s colouring is especially excellent, with brilliant, bright colours for the superhero fighting sections and a sufficiently moodier pallette in the less actiony-bits. It’s rare that a colourist’s work makes me sit up and take notice, but for this issue it really did.

Overall, though, it just feels like this issue of New Avengers in particular is exemplifying the title’s main problems, where lateness in other titles affects this one, and there are simultaneously too many balls in the air to actually deal with them properly. Given its close ties with House of M, Civil War and Secret Invasion, New Avengers still feels like it lacks a specific identity. It hasn’t really told a story that wasn’t related to a crossover since The Sentry arc, way, WAY, WAY back in issues #7-10. It’s got some good characters, but christ, give them some time to breathe.