Avengers: the Initiative #19 - Marvel

I really like this book. I think Dan Slott and Christos Gage are doing a good job with these stories. And this book has consistently had pretty decent art. This issue Harvey Tolibao and Bong Dazo do the pencils. It's actually very impressive throughout the whole issue. I especially liked the pages where we got introduced to the different teams around the country. So, with that in mind, I just want to say that whatever follows . . . is said out of love for this book. Ok? Anyways, the first few pages were cool. I was getting in to it. And then . . . it just seemed like we were all over the place trying to cram half a dozen different books into this one title. It was a complete mish-mash of stuff. I know they were trying to show us all of the various Initiative teams around the country, but . . . they could've just paraphrased the action and kept to the main story. Each page, showing the various teams, really didn't contribute anything substantial to the overall story-line. We just get a picture of all of the various characters, and then a bunch of word-balloons when they're all yelling at each other because they're trying to figure out who the Skrull is. And the worst one? The Great Lakes Initiative. I think people from Detroit . . or Wisconsin . . or wherever . . would start to be pissed that everytime there's a group of heroes that gather in their part of the country . . they're a bunch of complete idiots. Well . . except for X-Factor. They seem to be the exception. And all of it comes down to the Kill-Krew and that one member of the Initiative that's a Skrull, but he wants to protect the Earth. I forget his name. Anyways, he's fighting with the rest of them, killing Skrulls . . . he even follows YellowJacket to try to kill him because he's the only one that knows that he's also a Skrull. He uses his Freedom Ring to adjust his powers so he can keep up. When he does . . . he take him down like Bambi on the first day of deer season. After he takes down YellowJacket he turns around to the praise of his teammates, and then . . . 3D man shoots him in the head. "What? Skrull." And then, similar to M-Day, he lays on the ground dying and I think between his will-power and his freedom ring, he starts to make a wish. " . . not fair . . . it was all so perfect . . I . . I wish . . I wish . . I wish it could've ended differently . . ." And I think it will. It's the end of the book, but in the last 3 panels you see something happening. They're calling it V-S Day. I like the way it ended. And, I liked the way it started. But everything in the middle . . . you could've lobotomized the middle of this book and it wouldn't have made a bit of difference. But, I'm not blaming any of the creative talent on this book. I think they were stuck with whatever Brian Bendis had drafted when he put together the plans for this mega-event. And they were probably stuck with certain stuff they had to put into this book so that everything would fit in with the overall plan that Brian had devised. So, if I just read the first 2 pages, and then the last 10 . . . I enjoy the book a whole lot better. Unfortunately, there's only a couple issues left of this book. I've enjoyed this book. I liked the concept. And I thought there were a lot of creative ideas presented here. However, when everything got swamped down with this Secret Invasion crap . . . things started spiraling out of control. I think the reason this book is ending is because now . . after all the Secret Invasion stuff . . this book isn't the same as when it started. It can't be. And to me, that's a shame. There was a lot of potential here.