I'm pro-Bendis. One could say I'm a Bendis apologist. I loved House of M, I even liked the way that New and Mighty Avengers tied into the ongoing Secret Invasion story. Bendis brought me back into comics with Alias and Ultimate Spider-Man.

Point is I'm not a Bendis basher, and yet I really felt a little let down by this issue, the final issue of Secret Invasion. It starts employing a technique of shifting time forward that I first noticed Bendis using to skip past the raft fight in the first arc of New Avengers. The "boy wasn't that exciting", method of storytelling. It worked in New Avengers, but it feels like we're rushing past the action here. We know Bendis has always been more about ideas and characters than action, but when you've been using ideas and characters to build up to a climatic action scene... well it would nice to see that conclusion play out in real time. It would be like your team getting to the Stanley Cup finals and then not watching game seven except on a Sportsnet recap.

As with House of M and Civil War the last chapter feels too much like setting the stage for the next chapter of Marvel continuity. I'm a continuity dweeb, so normally I like that, but here it just feels... well like a let down. I guess when it's not reasonable to expect a comic set in current continuity to ever truly end without some setup of what's coming next, which is why those graphic novels that are always held up as the best of the best tend either to be one offs, or out of continuity stories. But back to SI8. Things do actually happen, or are revealed to happen (damn altered timeline), the chief of which is the death of Janet. Why the Skrulls did not figure that someone would just kill her to keep her from exploding, or that she'd have taken her own life, is explained by the fact that they apparently still don't really understand humans. An explanation I'm not sure I'd buy, but okay.

Then Iron Man returns with an old suit of armour, rejoins the battle which is won by Norman Osborne. Or rather that's what everyone gets to believe and Osborne is instantly made head of everything including apparently the Avengers. Everyone hates Tony, both the anti-Reg and the pro-Reg are now against him. The Baxter Building is back. And Osborne is having weird meetings in the basement of Avengers Tower. Does Osborne own Avengers Tower now? Does the government? I'm sure we'll have that all explained, and as I said having a complete story is just not going to happen though it would be nice to be able to understand all of the events of a story just by reading one title.

This just felt rushed, unexplained and more like a middle chapter setting up for the next arc. I guess it's true, Bendis can go wrong. I don't hate the book, I liked it more that Batman RIP. The art is great, and the characters are generally done well.

I guess the problem is that Bendis isn't really about plot, he's about characters and in a book that's nearly all plot I just feel what makes him special is lost. It's a must read for any Marvel Zombie, but it could have been so much better.