New Avengers #34 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I can't think of a more fitting issue to end Bendis' run on "New Avengers."  It had little sense of continuity, confused structural chaos for depth, and vomited lines of cheesy dialogue.  It's like the whole run in one issue.

It's the sloppy continuity that bothered me the most, because Bendis manages to remember that he killed off Brother Voodoo, but forgets that he also destroyed the Eye of Agomotto in the same issue.  Dr. Strange makes that point extremely clear in "New Avengers" #6, the issue where Voodoo dies, when he says, "And now we have no Sorcerer Supreme and the Eye is gone."  We don't really have any ambiguity there.  The panels before that statement show the Eye disappearing.  But, using and abusing continuity never bothered Bendis before this issue, so I shouldn't be surprised when the Eye suddenly appears in the hands of the Ancient One here with no explanation.  Que sera sera.

I will say that the resolution of the fight intrigued me, since I bought the idea that Drumm killed the other sorcerers because they would be willing to engage in the Dark Arts, whereas Strange wouldn't be so willing.  But, it was still unclear to me why Victoria Hand had to die.  In fact, if Drumm was trying to hide from Strange until the last possible minute, shouldn't he have avoided using Hand at all?

If the continuity enraged me and the resolution confused me, it was the chaos that made me wonder why I was even bothering.  In the beginning, Drumm appears to be able to control all the Avengers at the same time.  However, halfway through the issue, he inexplicably seems only to control them in sequence, allowing some of the Avengers to try to help Dr. Strange.  But, Bendis often fails to make it clear who's fighting who on behalf of whom.  At some point, it feel like you're simply just flipping pages of a sketchbook and not reading an issue with a plot.

This confusion is made all the more profound by the use of the "jam artists," since Marvel for some reason decided to have six artists other than Deodato portray parts of Drumm's fight with Dr. Strange.  It was already difficult to tell who Drumm was possessing at what time before this sequence of pages, but it became almost impossible when suddenly everyone starts to look different.  Moroever, the quality of the art varied enormously, with one artist portraying the Thing as if he had gone on some sort of drastic diet and another artist portraying Cap and Dr. Strange as if the page had been drawn by the artist's six-year-old child.  If anything, this sequence made me appreciate Mike Deodato all the more.

Finally, it wouldn't be a Bendis book without awful dialogue, and we get plenty of it here, with the final conversation between Luke Cage and Jessica Jones taking the cake.  It's Bendis' version of a playful marital spat and it's just ridiculous.  Also, it's not just ridiculous because of the fact that it's bad dialogue, but it's ridiculous in its actual context as well.  Why would Luke re-start Heroes of Hire if the whole point of him leaving the Avengers is that he doesn't want to put himself in danger?  Is he only going to investigate lost cats now?

[Sigh.]

Good-bye, Bendis.  I unfortunately have to read you in other series, but at least you won't be ruining the Avengers for me anymore, as you have for the last eight years.  Don't let the mansion door hit you on the way out.  At least you didn't destroy it...again.