Like Eric, Avengers has not been for me and I don't read any of the books except for the unrelated Mighty Avengers and Uncanny Avengers. Would probably read Secret Avengers, but I can't stand the art. That goes for stuff like Elektra as well. The artist's work is beautiful, but just doesn't fit the book to me.
General musings:
-IIRC The Avengers and Secret Avengers books have been all about parallel worlds and how the multiple earths are crossing over into other universes, crashing into one another, and destroying everything. The Secret Avengers (Illuminati) have been working to stop this.
-X-Men: All the books are all over the place, which is good in the sense that you can read one and not bother with another, without missing any story. The best of the bunch is All-New X-Men, which while slow moving and very...Bendis, has turned out awesome. They recently had a crossover event with the Guardians Of The Galaxy, where Jean Grey was taken by the Shiar and put on trial for being the Phoenix -again- even though she hasn't done any of that yet. Young Cyclops then left the team to stay in space with the Star Jammers, which I believe is the focus of the new Cyclops solo book. In the other X books...not too much is really happening. It's like they've lost direction. Oh, and Nightcrawler came back from the dead.
-X-Force: The Cable and Psylocke-led X-Force books both ended and have been consolidated into one X-Force book with a new team (that still has Cable and Psylocke). It's...weird.
-Guardians Of The Galaxy: Also feels like nothing is really happening with these guys, but they appear to be building up to something with Thanos for the umpteenth time. Angela, who came into the Marvel Universe as a result of the rips in space-time from the Age Of Ultron event, is just a minor character and pretty irrelevant. No idea why they made a big deal out of that character coming in. The book started with Iron Man on the team, but he left and decided that there should always be an Avenger with them, so now it's Agent Venom (Flash Thompson) with them. Captain Marvel is popping up too. Her new book has a space focus. Nova has been a surprisingly enjoyable read and is generally pretty self-contained.
-Spider-Man: Already talked about it earlier. Peter Parker is back and the big new plot twist is a retcon that show the radioactive spider biting a female student after Peter. Spider-Man 2099 is still stuck in the present time and will be getting a new solo book soon. Scarlet Spider no longer has a book but is in the new New Warriors series.
-Thunderbolts: Red Hulk and his assembled team doin' thangs in secret. Has him, Deadpool, Elektra, The Punisher, Ghost Rider, and Red Leader (a resurrected and pussified Samuel Sterns, who recently has begun to turn on them). Quality varies from story to story.
-Ultimate Comics: The Cataclysm event (616 universe Galactus merging with the Ultimate universe Galactus swarm and attempting to 'eat' the Earth) is over, with the fallout being that the Ultimates and Shield are no more. Captain America is supposedly dead (died off panel, lol
) and Thor is trapped in some void of nothingness with Galactus. There are three new books: New Ultimates, which could also be called "Spider-Man and his amazing friends 2.0" as it continues storyline from the previous Ultimate Spidey book, and brings together a team of younger super heroes (Spider-Man, Kitty Pryde, Cloak & Dagger, Bombshell, and Black Widow, who is a renamed Spider-Woman [who uses the name Jessica Drew, but is a female clone of Peter Parker]). Miles Morales: Ultimate Spider-Man is a new Spidey solo book that just started this week. The storyline focuses on two 'evil' Spider-Man like dudes causing trouble and ends with Miles coming home to his father's apartment and finding
spoiler (click to show/hide)
Peter Parker there, waiting for him. Will likely be one of the two evil Spider-Men guys and/or is another evil clone.
There's also Ultimate FF, bringing together Iron Man, Sue Storm, The Falcon and I forget who the fourth member is, lol.
She-Hulk is damn near perfect for a She-Hulk book. It's big and brash and colorful and a lot of fun.
Hate the art. Dude draws some of the ugliest-looking faces I have ever seen.
Ghost Rider is strange. It's using slang and stuff that's way out of date, but it's visually very well done. It's def influenced by Fast and the Furious, but it's only had two issues so I can't really speak to it's quality just yet
Yup, looks slick and other than that it's too early to tell how it's going to end up. This appears to be a different spirit, since the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider is in the Thunderbolts comics.
Hulk is just disappointing. I don't think that Waid has a good idea of what to do with him.
Are you talking about the new 'retardo' Hulk? It's pretty bad, yeah.
Mighty Avengers is very good but not great. I think it suffers a bit being under the Avengers editorial line forcing it into cross overs rather than standing on its own
Will be better once they get Greg Land the fuck off that book. Would also prefer they stick to everything being "street level." Blue Marvel doesn't fit in with the rest of the characters in this regard.
Ms Marvel is good, but I've read complaints of its stereotypical treatment of Muslims (but considering the previous treatment of Muslims in mainstream comics, this may be better)
Like Ghost Rider, it's too early to tell how this is going to turn out.
