New Comics: "New Avengers" and "Avengers" Annuals Edition (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

New Avengers Annual #1:  OK, this issue isn't terrible, but I have some troubles with it.  I like, in theory, what Bendis is trying to do here, having a former Avenger make the argument that the Avengers do more harm than good.  It's a valid argument, or, if not valid, at least one the Avengers need to consider (and generally don't).  But, I have two main issues with the way Bendis goes about it:

First, I'm not sure I buy Simon's reasons for why the Avengers do more harm than good.  I remember, in "Avengers" #2, Simon telling Captain America that he felt the Avengers were to blame for a lot of the destruction the Earth had experienced in the last few years, but he never really gave examples beyond "Siege."  Although you could draw a line to "Siege" from the "Civil War," we never saw Simon do that.  He just randomly attacked the Avengers a few issues later, only to disappear.  However, we do get his explanation here.  He details the five "worst things that ever happened to the world" and then pins them on the Avengers:  Ultron, Scarlet Witch, Civil War, the Incredible Hulk, and the Dark Avengers.  First, I'm not sure I'd list them as the five "worst" things, but, honestly, trying to rank the last 30 years or so of Marvel cross-over events in some spectrum of "worst" to "less worse" makes my head spin, so I'm willing to concede him the point that these five events are the "worst."  But, only one event is really the Avengers' fault:  Civil War.  He's totally an absolutely correct about that one.  In fact, if he had just hung his hat on "Civil War" and drew the line straight to "Siege," I would've been with him more than I was.  (I still would question whether those events negate ALL the good the Avengers had done, but it would be a debatable point.)  Instead, he includes four other events that seem pretty tenuously connected to the Avengers.  Two events -- Ultron and the Dark Avengers -- are specific Avengers' faults -- namely, Hank Pym and Iron Man -- but they're not the Avengers' fault, at least as Simon explains them.  The other two "events" -- the Scarlet Witch and the Incredible Hulk -- aren't the Avengers' fault at all.  Simon seems to be blaming the fact that the Avengers didn't kill either of them on the Avengers, which seems extreme, to say the least.  You can feel that Simon is really stretching here, and, as such, it makes his anger almost totally impossible to place.  As such, it undermines his argument, making you feel like you missed a mini-series or something detailing how he got to where he is.

Second, the team that Simon assembles is merely presented as accepting his offer, with no explanations of why they decided to do so.  First, Century, D-Man, and Goliath are all former Avengers.  Shouldn't we get some sort of explanation why they agree with Simon?  I mean, I assume in Goliath's case it's because he was killed (a valid reason), but we don't get to see him make that case.  Is D-Man mad at Cap for ignoring him, as he seemed to be in "New Avengers" #7?  Second, isn't Anti-Venom kind of...crazy?  Did Simon just pick him to counter Spider-Man?  How did Simon even know he existed?  Why would Anti-Venom agree to take on the Avengers?  It seems outside his wheelhouse.  Third, the other four characters -- Atlas, Captain Ultra, Devil-Slayer, and Ethan Edwards -- are totally new to me.  (I'm surprised I'd never heard of Ethan Edwards, given that he appears to be Superman.  You'd think I would've heard of someone this powerful before.)  I mean, I do have a gap of a few years in my comic collecting, but, still, you'd think Bendis would have done a better job of explain who these guys are and why they joined Simon's team, given that I'm pretty sure none of them were Avengers.  Again, this failure to clarify the motives of the other members of Simon's team makes it hard to buy what Bendis is selling here.  By making them feel like set pieces, it just furthers the notion that Simon's whole lament over the Avengers is just a plot device hatched by Bendis for some purpose we've yet to see, rather than an argument that grew organically from previous stories.

For these two reasons, I spent most of the issue thinking, "WTF?"  I'm hoping Bendis takes the time to flesh out the concept next issue, though it seems a tall order, given that he's only got one issue to do it. 

Avengers Annual #1:  OK, Bendis goes a long way to improving my opinion of this arc in this issue.  It still has some flaws, unfortunately, but it at least ends soundly.  A minus, a plus, and a question:

First, I wish Bendis would stop writing arcs where you spend 90 percent of it completely confused.  I don't see why he couldn't have given us the individual Revengers members' motivations in the start of the first issue in this arc.  By leaving them for the very end of this issue, Bendis repeated the mistake he made in the Mockingbird arc in "New Avengers," where we had to wait until the last few pages to discover what happened over the course of the previous five issues.  By the time we got there, I was so frustrated with the lack of details that I had almost canceled the book.  I wound up loving the ending, but it didn't negate the fact that most of the arc was not a pleasant reading experience.  I feel like Bendis writes almost exclusively for the eventual TPB editions, forgetting that his preference for saving all the reveals to the end makes for a terrible monthly comic.  We need something to keep us returning every month, but often we don't get it.  For example, here, we have to wait until the end of the final issue to discover why the Revengers joined the team and, even then, the reveals were pretty lame, to be honest.  Two of them (Atlas and Captain Ultra) are mad the Avengers didn't want them, another two of them (Ethan Edwards and Goliath) are avenging (heh) dead family members (I guess it wasn't the original Goliath), and another two (D-Man and Devil-Slayer) seem totally insane.  The only two with interesting reasons are Century, who feels he owes Simon, and Anti-Venom, who actually agrees with him.  In retrospect, I think Bendis might've been trying to make a point about Simon's argument by having it be these guys as the only ones Simon could muster.  Maybe Simon could've made a convincing argument to Falcon or She-Hulk had he been sane, but, instead, he just grabs the closest eight guys he can find.  Had we seen these motivations earlier, maybe we would've question them -- and Simon -- earlier, and the revelation at the end that he was mentally unstable wouldn't have seem as random.

Second, I've been annoyed lately with Bendis' depiction of the media in "Avengers" and "New Avengers."  I don't believe that the media have fallen so far as to forget that Norman Osborn was a bad guy.  However, I felt like Bendis does an amazing job in this issue really portraying how I think the media would've reacted to this sort of event.  First, the media would, in fact, go crazy over Captain America not talking to them, because they hate nothing more than being ignored.  As such, you could see how quickly they would turn on the Avengers just because Steve Rogers wasn't making the rounds of the cable-news programs to justify his actions.  Second, this anger leads the media to raise valid questions about why the Avengers get to sidestep standard judicial processes simply because one of their former members attacked them.  Does being a member of the Avengers mean you waive your right to trial by jury if you ever cross them?  Probably not.  This point supports Simon's allegation that the Avengers are beyond control.  Third, as they raise these questions, the media are also clearly thinking about other ones, given that they're also promised the possibility that the Avengers are hiding some dark secrets.  In this way, Simon has succeeded in inserting doubt into the minds of the public, something that we see him celebrate in the last page.

Finally, I'm not sure how I feel about the ending.  Bendis pretty successfully implies that Simon is mentally unbalanced, which somewhat explains his behavior (though undermines the intelligent argument that Bendis could've had Simon making had he given this arc a bit more thought).  It remains to be seen what caused Simon's insanity, though Bendis seems to pin it on his resurrection, either because it didn't fully restore him or he's been driven insane by the metaphysical questions raised by it.  But, I'm not sure where Bendis is going with Simon next.  I'm not sure if it's a trick of the art, but Simon seems to almost morph into someone else before he disappears.  Are we maybe not dealing with our Simon at all?  Even if we are, how could he escape a prison that I assume Tony Start constructed flawlessly?  Does he have new powers? 

Final Thoughts:  As I said earlier, I feel like Bendis really sidesteps a serious discussion about the Avengers and their role in the disasters that they claim to prevent by making this arc more about Simon being mentally unstable.  Bendis was really onto something, given that I don't think it's a stretch to say that the Avengers share a great deal of the blame for the destruction that came from the "Civil War" and "Siege" storylines.  Morever, the Avengers accusing Simon of being mentally unstable for suggesting they share the blame could've been interesting, because Bendis could've shown how it reflects just how far the Avengers will go to protect their own self-image.  Instead, Bendis goes for the easier route, implying that Simon is, actually, mentally unstable.  It's a shame, because it seems to needlessly reduce Simon to the status of crazy villain rather than allow him to be a tragic Cassandra.  In some ways, the arc seems to be a classic Bendis tale, raising some interesting philosophical questions, but then claiming that it didn't mean to raise them at all.