Wolverine-Venom? The world's clearly gone mad. Or is ending. Oh no, wait, it's only a tie-in moment, from a larger, separate story. So why the comic-cover with a hybrid of the two best selling characters in Marvel. Hmm. Sales perhaps? Cynical, me?
All snide remarks aside, it's a little symptomatic of this graphic novel volume.
It had great potential - the New Avengers being beset mostly by paranoia about who and who is not a Skrull duplicate, and then by a team of enemies headed by a dangerous demon-mage. Stephen Strange is on the Avengers side though, that balances the scales? Perhaps.
The great potential is marred by having to include other elements from different Marvel Universe occurrences. The ending, too, becomes a little like a 'Where's Wally' of bad/good guys in large team fights. I mean, does nobody think about Grenades? DC is normally worse for the 'how many characters can we cram in' factor, as if the geeks need more and more sugar to keep their highs; but you don't normally expect it to be done poorly by Marvel.
Bendis is a strange writer, he can do funny dialogue, deliver decent stories, but he never quite seems to lift his material above what you'd expect, just switches things around a bit. He does do a few fresh things in this volume though. A spirit-essence seance amongst the New Avengers, testing for Skrulls, but that reveals some nice insights by Bendis.
The art is similarly good, and odd. It has moments of sophistication, and quite a few simple, beautiful panels, whether people or action, but Yu seems to clutter small panels and crowd scenes when simplicity is most needed, and does himself a dis-service. He is one step from the simple pairing-down that will make him a truly excellent artist.
Would I read this again? There is too much treading water for this to be a unique or repeatedly interesting graphic novel. I hope that I am judging it incorrectly, and that it is one small piece of a much, cleverer whole, and have to admit, it's good enough to make me wait and see, and read some more.