Concerning Thought Ballons

I'm a little late with this one, but I suppose it's better late than never, am I right?

A little bit of hooplah has been raised about Bendis and Mighty Avengers and the fact that the uber-prolific writer has been using the long-thought-dead convention of the thought ballon.

Yesterday I happened across a copy of Mighty Avengers #2 at my local Borders. Not interested enough to buy, I figured I'd give it a read in the store (as I do with New Avengers, Supergirl, Ultimate X-Men, Justice League Unlimited, Green Lantern, and Teen Titans on a semi-regular basis).

And what I realized after setting the issue down was that while there was a dense amount of thought ballons (at least one per page for the most part) they were, on the whole, completely pointless.

Gee whiz! See how Bendis used thought balloons to humorously remind everyone that Tony Stark is a womanizing bachelor?

Golly! Isn't it great that, thanks to a little bit of thought-ballooning (and a trick that I remember from Buffy the Vampire Slayer), the reader is now even more aware of the fact that Ares is impulsive, brash, and says whatever is on his mind?

I don't mind a little joke now and again, but it felt like that the thought balloons were all bad humor and useless information and it became blatantly apparent that Bendis was using them simply because he could. If this is the "glorious" return of the mighty thought ballon, I'll stick to text-box narration, thanks.

And let's not even get into the fact that it was just a shitty comic book. It just reinforces my opinion that putting one writer on two Avengers books was a bad idea from the get-go, which is a shame because New Avengers hasn't been that bad lately (although it hasn't been great, either).

Beh. I'm done ranting for now, but what are your thoughts, about the Avengers books in general right now?

-M