The New Avengers Illuminati by Bendis, Reed and Cheung

It all begins with Reed Richards. He finds one of the Eternity Gauntlets and three of the infinity gems. He comes up with the idea to try and gather them all together and deal with them once and for all. To help him in his quest, he gathers together Iron Man, Black Bolt, Namor, Doctor Strange and Professor X so that they can use the gems for good.

But when they do manage to get them, Uatu, the Watcher, appears and chides them for even trying to gather and use them, that he thought better of them. So Reed decides to give one gem each to the assembled superhumans and have them hide the gems so that they cannot be found and used by supervillains.

But the grouping of these intensely powerful people continues as they meet together to deal with threats to Earth from many Realms. They deal with the Beyonder, who Xavier exposes as an immensely powerful mutant Inhuman who was exposed to the Teriigen Mists- not a cosmic force, and try to convince him to leave the Universe. But are they successful?

They also visit Noh-Varr, a Kree who came to Earth to attack it and is now incarcerated where he cannot do any damage. Through a combination of blows and persuasion, they give him a different template he could choose to follow, Captain Marvel. But they can't beat him into changing his mind and becoming a force for good: they have to let him decide on his own.

And they are also responsible for the Secret Invasion of the Skrulls. They went to the homeworld of the Skrulls with the intention of scaring them off from ever invading Earth. But instead, the Skrulls captured them and probed their secrets, learning how to better replicate humans so that they wouldn't be able to tell who was a Skrull and who was a normal human. The Illuminati did manage to survive and escape, but in the end, it was they who were responsible for the invasion of the Skrulls. And when they find out about the Invasion, the question is what, if anything, could they do about it? And who among them might already be replaced by the Skrulls?

This book might seem like it's heroic, but the idea of several powerful people deciding that they are going to run the world in their own way, even people as good, powerful and focussed on the good of Earth and its system as Mr. Fantastic, Black Bolt, Professor X, Iron Man, Dr. Strange and The Sub-Mariner troubled me. The part of the book with the Infinity Gems and Eternity Gauntlet- no, the whole graphic novel, was distasteful and lowered my estimation of all the characters involved.

What and Who gives these characters the right to make decisions that can affect the whole world that way? And who is strong enough to Chastise them when they fail or go off half-cocked and set their world up for invasion and destruction by the Skrulls? We saw inklings of this arrogance in World War Hulk, where three of these characters decided to get rid of the problem of the Hulk by throwing him across the Universe. And look at how well that ended! Did these characters honestly think this was going to be any better?

This book made me disgusted, and all of these characters need a massive spanking over what they sought to do. The arrogance of thinking they know what was right makes me wonder how you can call any of them "Heroes" at all. They are barely one step ahead of the menaces they fight. Might makes right? Brains make right? Anyone who enjoys the exploits of these characters should be angry at Marvel for taking them and butt-raping their character concepts. Avoid this book like the plague or hope it gets ret-conned away because otherwise the characters you once liked and enjoyed will now sicken you.