Too Bad We're Not Friends...
I've never been a team-up series kinda guy, but I've heard some great stuff about this series, and I saw this volume on sale, so I figured I'd give it a shot. What I found was more of the same old, and honestly, I probably should have seen that coming.
This book is separated into 3 story arcs, each with Spider-Man teaming up with a different Avenger. We've got Red Hulk for the first 3 issues, while Hawkeye and Cap tie off an issue each.
The first story arc, the more fulfilling of the three (that is to say, minimally), is a classic "save-the-city" kind of plot, with a fairly familiar villain. Yet, what brings this piece down is the team-up aspect, or lack there of. Red Hulk does almost nothing in this. At all. Like, I kinda have to wonder if he was in the audience reading too. He's also not a very interesting character to team up with. Hell, Good ol' JJJ has more page time (and is a lot more enjoyable to read, might I add). And a lot of the plot is boiled down to some comedic moments, leaving me feel fairly underwhelmed.
The other two issues, though involving the same villain, is two separate scenarios with their own character development. The first, Hawkeye, is kind of jarring, although I blame that on the fact that I've been reading the new Hawkeye series (great work, go read that instead). This one is kind of an ass, and made blatantly so quickly so we can move on to more interesting parts of him... except we don't really get around to it. Yeah, we feel sympathetic for the guy, but I still don't like him much at the end of the day (not you, Marvel Now Hawkeye, I still love you.) As for Cap, his character arc feels reeeeeeeeeeeeally strange, and is something of a stretch for the goofy. And it really doesn't help that the villains are lame. Like, super lame.
So, what it comes down to is, I honestly don't get any fulfillment from this. Like, at all. Probably, it's the style or genre of writing, and I probably shouldn't have picked this one up (I need to stop listening to people's advice, especially when it's the internet). There are much better things to be read.