I saw Secret Warriors, Volume 1 on the library shelf the other day and saw that it was written by Brian Micheal Bendis (and you are legally required to put his middle name in there). I’ve always enjoyed Bendis’ writing and have a soft spot for Nick Fury, so I decided to give it a try. Now, I’ve not kept up much with the Marvel Universe in the last few years. I lost interest midway between Civil War and Secret Wars, so I knew that there would be a bit of confusion on my part for what’s going on. But what I found was a confusing mess that made no sense and I couldn’t even start to figure out what was going on.

Bendis is a great writer. I loved his independent work (especially Torso) and truly love his Powers stories. I also followed his Spiderman reboot for the first 100 issues. So, you can tell that I am a Bendis fan. But what I read in this story makes me glad that I’ve not followed his Marvel Universe stories. It was a muddle that made little sense (SHIELD was reporting to HYDRA the entire time and Nick Fury was too stupid to realize it?) and was also extremely confusing. We have lost SHIELD and now have HAMMER to fight HYDRA who is raising people from the dead. We have Nick Fury who is putting together a secret team that is too stupid to stay out of the way during a recon mission, but luckily both HAMMER and HYDRA are too stupid to realize that Fury is pulling something. And that’s just the parts I understood.

Like I said, I expected some confusion on my part, since I hadn’t kept up with Marvel Universe. But if I see a Volume 1 book of a new series, I expect it to be something that people who might not have kept up can at least jump on with. Truly, issue one of a new series should be a jumping on point for people who have no idea (or at least a minimal idea) of what’s going on. But this book was so confusing that I had a hard time figuring out if HAMMER was supposed to be good guys that Fury didn’t like or bad guys that Fury wanted to take down. And ex-SHIELD agents formed a free agency spy company or some such nonsense.

I tried reading as much as I could, but in the end, it just wasn’t worth it. Maybe when Bendis does another independent or non Marvel Universe book, I’ll check him out again. But, for now, I’m avoiding the Marvel Universe and Bendis. P.S. This doesn’t mean that DC is doing any better and Morrison’s idea of Bruce Wayne running a worldwide Batman franchise is stupid enough on the face of it, that I don’t feel the need to point out the political, legal and ethical problems that any average ten year old could have figured out before doing such a stupid thing. But for now, I don’t recommend this book.