It was interesting to get a look at what happened during Avengers Disassembled, a cross-over I tried to avoid hard. I'm not really up on Avengers, Iron Man, the S.H.I.E.L.D., etc but basically The Scarlett Witch went nuts and she took out Vision, Hawkeye, Ant-Man and the Mansion.. the Avengers disbanded in the aftermath.. of course this cataclysmic event only served as a reboot for Avengers when it approached issue 500

The premise of New Avengers is that a group of heroes is still needed to protect the world and Bendis recreates the Avengers in its original spirit with an ecclectic membership

Like Identity Crisis, we hook up with a dubious third rate villain (here Elektro) hired to breakout an inmate from "The Raft", fictional extra maximum security section of Rikers Island)

Bendis has to be commended for making use of the Marvel Universe though who the heck is Sentry? We get to see a lot of (forgotten) villains on the prison island, the story stretches from New York to the Savage Land with a lot of heroes we don't usually see together (especially Wolverine). They do have a strong Bendis connection, he writes/wrote Ultimate Spider-Man, Daredevil, Alias and Spider-Woman. I love Bendis on Daredevil but he seems to falter when he doesn't get to use violence (Daredevil) or sex (Alias)

Story aside, the art by Finch is very uneven. He can draw a mean cap or Tony Stark but sometimes I think time constraint makes his pencils hurried and the result is quite terrible. The chicks are okay, he kinda went wild with Spider-Woman (in costume), the breasts were hugeness

The collection was put together either fast or poorly, there are printing problems with misaligned panels, bubbles. This only increases confusion, especially when the panel to panel work is sketchy (fights on "The Raft" for example). Even the cover which is kinda badass for this weak trade kinda crops off Wolverine (on the right), a shame

At the end we get reprints of the variant covers. They showcase a new Marvel of sort: McNiven (Spider-Man), Coipel (Wolvie), Hairsine (Sentry) and Cheung (Iron Man and Black Panther.. so wtf cuz Black Panther ain't even in this story), Granov (Cage, Spider-Woman), Hitch (Iron Man, Cap). Maybe Quesada who did the layout sketch is to blame, I dunno. The digital coloring by Richard Isanove could also be the culprit. The collection is completed with the Wizard cover #136 by Jim Cheung

In conclusion, this was disappointing. I won't be back for subsequent trades (Vol 2 and Vol 3 have been solicited)