Okay, Bendis is still pretty heavy into the silliness–he needs to do a comic about being a middle-aged comic book writer who decides he wants to be a woman, it would fit him–but it’s hard to complain when the ending has protagonist Scarlet shooting some cops in cold blood with a sniper rifle. That commitment…

Bendis does write himself some likable hipster chicks. Scarlet is basically just Alias applied to something else, which is fine. This issue is a lot better since the reader already has had to accept Bendis’s silly plot line (one has to wonder how much Criminal influenced him), so coming back to it… it’s just based…

For a second, maybe the first half of the issue, I was going to say Scarlet is the best writing Bendis has done since Alias. Then the second half happened and I realized it’s just Bendis on a podium, but not one he’s going to take any responsibility for. I mean, the story turns out…