I've read the first Marvel NOW books! Uncanny Avengers #1 and Red She-Hulk #58 (replacing Hulk, which starred Red Hulk who is moving on to Thunderbolts, not to be confused with Incredible Hulk, starring Green Hulk, which just got canceled to make way for Indestructible Hulk #1) came out recently, and I'd been waffling on whether or not I was going to buy them all (like I did with DC's New52). I actually picked up Uncanny day-of, and passed up Red She-Hulk, but went back and bought it after New52's "Zero Month" proved to be one of the biggest creative missteps I've ever seen from a major publisher (more on that soon, I promise). If I wanted to compare Marvel NOW to New52, I'd need to read more than just one book.
Both books were just fine - neither set my imagination ablaze, but I also didn't want to shred them upon reading. Uncanny Avengers #1 was more of an epilogue to AVX than I expected, less of a clean start, but the way Rick Remender meshes the Avengers world with the X-Men world makes sense and does provide a unique mash-up of both teams. It's not quite the Avengers; not quite the X-Men. Much has been written about the final splash page cliffhanger, but I had no real opinion on it one way or the other. My immediate thought was that it was kind of comic book dumb in a way that didn't feel at home with the rest of the book. I'm hooked with the concept, but not that final page.
WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? Yes. I haven't added it to my pull-list, but I liked it enough to come back for a second issue. I'm game. Let's see where this goes.
#58 was pretty much nothing but punching. There's a government agency making new super soldiers, and Betty Ross aka Red She-Hulk aka Hellion (a name I didn't even know she had since no one ever seems to use it) is super-pissed about it. She beats up all the new meta-humans and warns the directors of the program to stop running experiments like this. The government calls up Captain America to find out exactly why Hellion is so mad about it, because they've spent time and money and have work to do, dammit.
What I wanted was to be sold on why Hellion should exist in a Marvel U that already has so many Hulks - what makes her any different - and instead I got a fairly standard Hulk vs. military action issue.
WILL I BE BACK FOR MORE? No. But don't let that stop you from trying it out for yourself. I didn't think the book sucked outright; I just prefer more characterization amongst my smashing. If anything, it reminded me of Loeb's early issues of Hulk, where the focus was definitely on the punching.