Bendis Avengers Rewind: New Avengers #28

New Avengers #28

"Revolution Two: Electric Bugaboo"

We open with the Nu-Nu Avengers on a rooftop in Japan, as Doctor Strange continues to be useless as far as being unable to teleport the team back to the United States. Luke yells at the team to be on the lookout for ninjas and Strange tries to talk to Echo, who's suddenly talking like an actual deaf person really talks. And to remind people that yes, Tom Brevoort is doing his job and fucking EDITTING Bendis, Iron Fist reminds Doctor Strange that Echo's deaf. Realizing that the Hand exposed her to mind altering drugs to make her weak-willed enough to be brainwashed, the team decides to take her to a hospital. However, Spider-Woman would rather the team go visit Silver Samurai's place instead to hide. They catch Silver Samurai, now missing a hand thanks to Wolverine, watching "Mean Girls" as Bendis makes the Avengers yap about the no-talent Lindsey Lohan complete with Spider-Man mentioning "Freaky Friday", which Lindsey did before she became a drunk never-was who crashed and burnt almost as soon as Hollywood proclaimed her "The It Girl" of the '00s.

No clue as to why Spider-Woman would have Doctor Strange teleport the team to Silver Samurai's place, except to watch Wolverine and his nemesis threaten each other over the whole "You chopped off my hand!"/"You stabbed me in the chest in a manner to cut my fucking heart into two pieces!" bantering. Soon Wolverine remembers Echo, tripping balls as Samurai puts two and two together about Echo being Ronin, and once again asks Wolverine why he brought the "scourge of the underworld" into his home, or even being in his house in general. Sadly we don't get Spider-Man saying "It was Spider-Woman's idea!" as Samurai goes straight into a tirade about how the Nu-Nu Avengers aren't even the "real" Avengers, as we get a cryptic reference to the villain knowing all about the schism within the team and Iron Man forming his own Avengers team. As Echo starts to heave, Silver Samurai sets up the rest of the issue flashbackwise as he asks how the devil the team even got into the country, since Doctor Strange is an impotent loser who doesn't even remember using chaos magic let alone remembering that chaos magic exist!

Which cues the flashback as we see Luke Cage accidentally stop a robbery at a super-market in Harlem the previous day as he gets seen by a cop. As the cop tries to arrest him (and shoots Luke in the face, forgetting that Luke is bulletproof), the hero formerly known as Power Man explains that "Hey! There is a robber over there on the floor! Arrest him and don't worry about me!".

By the time he leaves the store, the SHIELD Cape-Killer squad is waiting for him to arrest Luke Cage for violating the Super-Hero Registration Act. Even though Luke uses his real name and never really even HID his secret identity while working as a super-hero. Luke grabs one of the Cape-Killers out of his Cape Killing mini-jet craft and uses it to fly away to the new Nu-Nu Avenger Headquarters, which is Doctor Strange's house, which is boarded up and has a sign telling people a new Starbucks is going to be built there. Luke gets into the place, delivering his milk to his wife, Mary Sue Jones, as Doctor Strange exposites that he's using witchcraft to make the insides of the house seem empty as part of his cover for the Nu-Nu Avengers HQ as part of his cover story that he's sold his place to Starbucks, which Bendis slams by calling them a faceless corporation determined to turn New York into a giant strip mall the likes of which have never been seen. Bendis then spends a panel having Wong, Strange's man-servant, silently giving his boss the stink eye and then being told not to be snooty, to remind viewers to laugh at the joke Bendis just made. Ha-Ha....

We then see the Avengers eating noodles as Spider-Man reminds us again that Wong is a snooty ass plebian servant as Mary Sue announces, that once the SHRA is abolished and everything goes back to normal, she's going to hire a snooty asian guy to be her manservant. Which in turn leads to Wolverine cracking wise about how she already has one in the form of Luke Cage, which pisses Luke off since Bend... I mean Luke, doesn't like the fact that people are calling him pussy-whipped. Let alone a cool guy like Wolverine, who's very actions determine what is cool and what isn't cool.
Iron Fist breaks up the fighting as Spider-Woman teleportes into the room having come directly from a massive ten pile continuity trainwreck that not even Bendis's own cocksucking fanboys can defend: having just recently appeared in the over-priced and utterly unimportant "Civil War: The Initiative" one-shot that Bendis wrote, the Drew reveals that Ms. Marvel just told her that Captain America is alive and well and survived the assassination attempt. The Drew is all happy-happy, but everyone else thinks it's a trap. Especially since Cap is being held at "The Raft". So they all go to investigate, largely to shut the Drew up with Doctor Strange going first in his astral form to see Maria Hill ordering guards to stay alert and someone looking like Cap strapped down to a table. After Strange returns, we get Luke Cage going "We are the Avengers!" and go in full-force to rescue Captain America... or should I say Captain America's dead body.

Now a door opens and here comes the Iron Dick! Iron Dick tells the gang that they are under arrest and what the fuck? What are the Mighty Avengers doing here? They aren't even formed yet, what with the fact that Mighty Avengers ##1-11 taking place within a matter of days with no leyway whatsoever within the first six issues to have them appear this early in the pages of New Avengers?

Before my head explodes from yet another MAJOR MAJOR MAJOR continuity fuck-up from Bendis (seriously, can't even fucking keep his own two Avengers books continuity straight!), we cut back to Japan and Echo convulsing as Strange tries to help her purge her body of the bad LSD she was forcibly exposed to with "homeopathic enchantment spells". 'Cause offering his home to the Avengers, illusion spells, short distance teleportation, and homeopathic healing enchantment spells are all the fucking Sorcerer Supreme is good for. We now know why the Drew brought the team to Silver Samurai's place as she doesn't expect the Hand to think they'd seek sanctuary at Silver Samurai's place. Samurai mentions that the Hand has taken over all of Japan's criminal underworld and threatening decapitation to anyone who opposes Elektra's take-over. But before he can say anymore about the Hand's growing international expansion, Samurai slices Wolverine's throat with a sword and then gets knocked down to the ground by Luke Cage and Ronin #2. Suddenly Spider-Man's "Spidey Senses" start tingling and we get a full page shot of Elektra and her ninja horde minions leaping into the air as they attack Samurai's house.

Final Thoughts: Lame lame lame. Doctor Strange is useless, Spider-Woman's a dullard (though knowing she's a Skrull spy at least gives her some motive for the brainless decision to have Strange teleport the team to Silver Samurai's place), and Iron Man is still a giant dick. Oh and we have Bendis not being able to keep his shit making internally coherent as far as having the Mighty Avengers show up in New Avengers, even though in their own book, it's utterly impossible to fit into the timeline their appearing in this issue! And still no word on who's Ronin #2!