1 a: the illusion of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time
b: a feeling that one has seen or heard something before

2: something overly or unpleasantly familiar

I was gripped by an overwhelming feeling of déjà vu, in all of its meanings, throughout my read of Mighty Avengers #7.

Now there may be those of you out there who might think I’m being childish in saying that there is much of this issue that we’ve seen before, especially when the lateness of this title is a dead horse that has been beaten beyond recognition, but really, there is more to it than that.

Not only is Mighty Avengers #7 full of exactly what we all expected it would be full of because the events have been referenced in other titles – but it’s also full of the same old bag of tricks that writer Brian Michael Bendis has used repeatedly with varying levels of success and failure, here more the latter than the former. Also, nothing of substance is added to what we’ve seen before. It’s all expectation with little or no frills, and in no way exceeding those expectations. If I didn’t know better, I would say that somebody just gave up.

Bendis has had his hands tied on the Avengers titles for quite some time, either by events like Civil War or by the lateness of one or another title. It really doesn’t surprise me if he did actually give up. At least he ignored World War Hulk, who knows what damage that would have done to the fragile Avengers continuity if he hadn’t.

But let’s pitch all that aside for the moment and get to the issue at hand. Frank Cho gives a farewell to the book by doing this issue’s cover. It’s not one of his best, and I’m a Cho fan. As revealed in earlier issues of New Avengers, New York City has been attacked by a Venom virus (and I’ll get to that later as well) and the cover depicts such. Shown are Cho trademarks of Ms. Marvel and the Wasp in provocative poses, a dismantled Iron Man and favorite Sentry front and center. Especially gruesome on this A-rated cover is the blood on the main Venom’s claws, whose I wonder? And of course, much like the Venom-cover of New Avengers #35, it could have easily referenced what was inside the book, but sadly did not.

On the what-has-gone-before page we find that now the two Avengers titles have become so tightly woven together than a synopsis is required from both series to catch up for MA #7. This is not a complaint. I like this and should be done more often, or at least until Mighty catches up with New.

The story proper begins right after last issue’s trademark Bendis cliffhanger with Spider-Woman presenting the bedridden Tony Stark with the corpse of Skrullektra. This is a very tense moment, even though we already know the outcome. We know Tony Stark is not a Skrull, and we also that Spider-Woman will be accepted on the Mighty Avengers and the pro-reg side of the Civil War. These are facts, only how it goes down is up in the air.

There is a serious trust issue. Spider-Woman’s ploy is that bringing the body to Stark will prove if he’s a Skrull or not. If he is, he’ll try to kill her. There is a sound logic there. Tony also asks Jessica to join his Avengers – in that if she does it will cause any Skrull spies on his team to act. Again, true logic, Tony uses same to expose the Skrull (at least one) in the Illuminati after these events. My question – why does he not just reveal what Jessica has told him to the Mighty Avengers straight out? That would reveal any Skrulls right away I would think, much as it did (or will do) in New Avengers: Illuminati #5, right?

I’m really not sure I get what Tony is thinking or doing. I could rationalize, and just say he’s still under the influence of the anesthesia from last issue, and not thinking clearly. He does record the entire conversation, against Spider-Woman’s request, and apparently unknown to her. Whether out of non-clear-headedness or mistrust is not stated.

And about that, it seems that Bendis pulled another boner out of his bag of tricks. He tends to forget that these characters have super powers sometimes. I wonder that Spider-Woman doesn’t know she was recorded. She does have super-hearing, does she not? Is the Extremis program in Tony’s armor telepathic? Or is there an audible aspect to its communication and recording? Also might she have also used her pheromones to make Tony more susceptible to her explanation of events? And if so, would he have known she’d done it?

The armor narrative is an old Bendis trick that works, and makes good use of giving background for new readers and those catching up. I can’t fault the guy when he gets it right, BMB is very good with unique narrative devices. It was also good to see Nick Fury brought back into the loop, if only in a brief mention. Sharp readers will know that this whole Skrull invasion most likely goes as far back as at least the breakout that formed the New Avengers and probably Secret War as well. My bet is that Fury has known all along, it’s why he went into hiding. Also, was the autopsy Tony mentions ever done?

Scene change, at least a week later at the under-re-construction Avengers Tower, to what appears to be the first official meeting of the Mighty Avengers. No-prizes to the folks who can accurately tell us how many times Avengers Tower has been destroyed since it was built so far. Oh, and two more points to Bendis with his “office space available” joke – priceless. Every once in a while he does shoot and score.

There on page eight is the dialogue that made me groan the most – the booby joke. It is most upsetting in hindsight, because once the thought occurred to me I couldn’t get it out of my head. Was the entire six-issue Ultron story arc by Bendis and Cho nothing but a set up for this one booby joke? I hate it, but I think that’s the real reason Ultron took the form of a woman, that and the fact that Frank draws (and likes to draw) beautiful and voluptuous women.

Most disturbing is the fact that the Wasp is the one keeps at it – hello? That was her body! I would think she might be a bit more creeped out than to joke about it. And what is up with Ares? Last issue I had the vibe he was ‘interested’ in Janet, and now he wants to decapitate her? Sounds a little Skrully to me. We’ll get to more Wasp later.

Beyond the booby jokes, things at this meeting just get more bizarre. Wonder Man, who the Wasp weirdly thinks is drunk, loses his way trying to give a toast. Is he drunk? And if he is, why don’t Carol and Tony try to get him some help? There is just too much unexplained here for me to make sense of it.

Again, my suspicions from last issue are coming back to haunt me. I don’t want to have to buy Ms. Marvel (the other title where Wonder Man regularly appears) to know what’s going on here, because it really seems to have something going on between the two that only seems partially explained. Man, I wish editor’s notes would make a comeback like thought balloons did. And speaking of the lack of explanations, did I miss something with the Captain America cameo? Or is he just the symbol of how bad Civil War was now?

Then Tony introduces Spider-Woman as their new member and Black Widow, among others, just about loses her mind. I don’t get it, sorry, folks, I just don’t get it. They throw a fit when Spider-Woman shows up but no one blinks twice over the fact they are chilling with Ares?? Hello? For those of you coming in late, Ares is one of the Avengers’ greatest foes, and has tried to kill them on more than one occasion. Or did Mephisto erase that part of continuity too?

What happens next is even more twisted. The Wasp has a ‘fashion intervention’ for Wonder Man? Did some of Janet’s continuity get wiped out too? In Mighty Avengers, Bendis writes her like the ditz she was in the sixties. Pretty much the only thing he acknowledges that happened after that is the domestic abuse. She has grown, evolved, and he just writes her as an idiot. Or a Skrull.

The shots at her fashion sense are even more insulting. Carol’s comment that these are the designs she showed to Luke Cage, true or not, is just bitchy. Janet’s costumes are not that bad, all someone needs to do is look at the George Perez and John Byrne years to verify that. I have to wonder if the costumes on these models were designed to look bad on purpose. And Wondy should be thankful, he has worn some serious losers. The safari jacket is top of the line when you take the Christmas tree outfit into consideration.

The end of the meeting, before the team goes off the fight the Venom invasion of New York City, is two pages that should have been twelve pages. It’s two items that should have been first on the agenda, before drinks, recruitments and fashion interventions – and neither of them is mentioned aloud. Tony Stark looks around the room thinking, “One of you,” wondering who is the Skrull among them. Serious Luke Cage paranoia moment here, but what makes Tony so narrow-minded to think it’s only one?

The only important thing is Sentry, the 500-pound gorilla in the center of the room that no one is talking about. Or should I say, sitting alone with his distraught wife, while the meeting happens around him, only stepping forward once to utter like a zombie another old Bendis joke, “I don’t throw everything into the sun.” Why did no one ask about Lindy, or what was wrong with Sentry? Did no one hear him say she had been killed by Ultron during the battle?

If Captain America were here, this would be a serious meeting, and the mission would have been discussed in full. The Avengers used to do debriefings all the time. Has Iron Man (or the Wasp or Ms. Marvel or Black Widow or Wonder Man or how about Jarvis, or Bendis) forgotten this? It seems to me that Lindy’s resurrection and Sentry’s out of control rampage would be the top of the priority list for discussion. Seems to me that Stark doesn’t even care about anyone on this team. No wonder Spider-Man wants to… oh wait, that didn’t happen. I think.

This issue we also welcome new permanent, oops, temporary artist Mark Bagley to the drawing board at Mighty Avengers. I hate to be the wet rag here, but I wasn’t impressed with his work here. Sometimes he is good and sometimes he’s only fair. MA #7 falls into the latter category for me. The only time he really shines is during the meeting room scenes and a lot of that credit must go to colorist Justin Ponsor because his brights are what makes this superhero book look like a superhero book if only for a dozen pages or so.

I also have to give Bagley props for the horrifying scenes after the Venom bomb drops. Baby Venom and Mama Carnage is some serious scary stuff, and the two-page spread that followed gave me flashbacks to the better mayhem scenes in the Gremlins movies, only with a more sinister touch. Nicely executed.

The idea of a ‘Venom bomb’ is a bit taxing to me. Can there actually be such a thing. I have to wonder honestly at this point, in the post-One More Day world, if Venom even exists any longer. Heck, I don’t even know if or how Spider-Man is even an Avenger any more. The déjà vu effect tells us that Doctor Doom is behind the bomb even though the Mighty Avengers don’t know it yet. Again we are met with the same lack of suspense in this second story arc as we were in the first. We know that the Venom threat will be dealt with just as surely as we knew from the start that they would prevail against the Ultron Interface.

Back to Venom… how can this be a ‘bomb’? As far as I know (barring any twenty-year continuity wipes courtesy of Mephisto) Venom is a single alien symbiote that masqueraded as a new costume for Spider-Man during the first Secret Wars. It eventually left Spidey and made a new home with Peter Parker’s rival, Eddie Brock, becoming one of the web-slinger’s greatest enemies. Along the way Venom has had more than a few other hosts, notably and currently fellow Spider-foe, the Scorpion. Venom also bred a clone/offspring called Carnage, also a parasitic symbiote. This creature was torn apart by Sentry during the prison break that formed the New Avengers some three years ago.

My question is how does this make for a bomb? Granted, the Venom symbiote was just one of an alien race of such creatures, and Doctor Doom, having also been exiled on the Battleworld during Secret Wars might have had some inkling of where it came from. Of course, here it should be noted that the rest of Venom’s race exiled him for his (its?) psychotic nature, so it’s likely there are far more reasonable and civilized than he is. Not likely cargo for such a bomb to cause havoc in New York City.

As the bomb causes people to become both Venoms and Carnages, perhaps retrieved the pieces of Carnage from space? If so, then where does the Venom part come from? It must be something else as neither the creatures here nor in New Avengers seemed to exhibit much intelligence beyond drooling and hitting. I eagerly await answers from Bendis on this question, but like most of this issue, I don’t expect it.

Skrull watch for this issue: Easier to say who isn’t a Skrull this time around – definitely Iron Man and Spider-Woman are in the clear, but as far as I’m concerned, everyone else is a suspect in this book. “One of you” indeed!

When all is said and done, and seen and re-seen, I give this bad case of déjà vu in Mighty Avengers #7 a solid two stars out of a possible five. This doesn’t bode well in my book. In previous reviews, the art of Frank Cho brought my perceptions of the title a few marks higher despite lateness and bad or lazy writing. Folks, now, you’re going to have to try harder. The golden boy has left the title.

	Glenn Walker
	Glenn has been a fan of Marvel Comics' Avengers since the early 1970s, when their current adventures were chronicled by Steve Englehart and their early exploits by Stan Lee in classic reprints featured in Marvel Triple Action. He has persevered through many incarnations of the team and he still loves the Avengers to this day.