Avengers/Invaders the endless war

I don’t know about you folks, but I’ve been reading this whole Avengers/Invaders year-long crossover that has been going on since it seems forever, but I am having a hard time following (or, well, carrying) about it. I mean no disrespect to either Alex Ross of Jim Krueger, both of whose work I really like, I’m just not connecting to the story, the characters, or, well, pretty much the reasoning behind what is going on in this series.

Truth to tell, it all seems like a warm-up for the Dynamite Superpowers series, which may be unfair, but well, that series seems to be covering the same ground in a lot of ways, especially when this series seems to wrapping up, then keeps sliding off in another direction. Now I’ve read a couple of these Avengers/Invaders mash-ups in the past and they have been dismissed in the course of a single (over-sized) issue or annual. I honestly don’t understand why this story had to be stretched out (and yes, it does seem as if Krueger is padding the story to force it to 12 issues when it probably could have been (should have been) taken care of in half the space.

I’m sure that there are some fans out there enjoying this, I’m just not one of them. Plus, as a friend of mine has pointed out a couple of times, the payoff for this series is (in all probability) a way to bring Steve Rogers back into the present and put him back into the Captain America red white and blues. Obviously there has been no confirmation or denial of this from Marvel, but, well, it totally makes sense.