Avengers #16 – Review

by Brian Michael Bendis (writer), John Romita Jr. (pencils), Klaus Janson (inks), Paul Mounts (colors), and Cory Petit (letters)

The Story: Having gotten a lead, Steve Rogers leads a strike force to claim vengeance against Sin.

What’s Good:  Aside from the first couple of pages, this isn’t really an Avengers comic at all.  Rather, it’s almost entirely a Steve Rogers comic, seeing Steve, Sharon Carter, Maria Hill, and Victoria Hand battling Nazis in an old castle.  Quite honestly, I’m perfect fine with that and I’m thrilled Bendis did this.  This is absolutely a comic that needed to be written, as we haven’t really seen much of a focus on Steve Rogers’ reaction to Bucky’s death.  Finally, we see the extent of his grief and inner turmoil, both from his own perspective and those of his friends.  With Brubaker’s new Cap series being divorced from Fear Itself, there really needed to be a Cap tie-in within which we could experience this emotional fall-out, and that’s pretty much what this is.

Bendis also does well in his pacing and framing of this issue, as “emotional fall-out” could’ve easily just been Steve wailing and whining for 22 pages.  In framing the issue within the context of a revenge mission against Sin, Bendis is able to give us enough thrills and the sort of fluid, high-paced action Romita excels at.  The result is a balanced issue, with almost dialogue-free action scenes interspersed by the monologue sequences that have been the staple of these Avengers tie-ins.

The end result is an issue that feels emotionally genuine, while also managing to move along at a brisk pace and remain fairly exciting throughout.
Also, readers familiar with Jonathan Hickman’s recently concluded Secret Warriors will be really, really happy by a cameo towards the end of the issue, which is a really pleasant surprise that promises things to come for a fun character with a lot of potential.

Secret Avengers #7 – Review

by Ed Brubaker (writer), Mike Deodato (art), and Rain Beredo (colors)

The Story: Steve Rogers and friends fight to protect Shang Chi while the Prince of Orphans and Valkyrie journey to Fu Manchu’s tomb.

What’s Good: With Secret Avengers #7, Ed Brubaker proves that Secret Avengers’ massive upshot in quality as of #5 is here to stay.  As I said with last month’s issue, this is what we were expecting from an Ed Brubaker covert ops Avengers book, not bland trips to Mars.  This sudden turn is nothing short of brilliant, particularly in that it brings together everything that Brubaker does so well.

First off, you’ve got your pulp, specifically the kung fu breed that’ll really wet the appetites of fans of Brubaker’s Iron Fist run.  From the bad guy (Fu Manchu) to the sheer amount of awesome kung fu fighting, parts of this issue feel like kooky fun from a bygone era, updated in 2010, and that’s exactly the sort of thing that we’ve been getting for years from quality Brubaker comics, particularly Iron Fist and Incognito.  All told, the martial arts base of this arc continues to be absolutely wonderful.

But it’s not just that; Brubaker also lives up to the conspiratorial, shadowy, covert ops part of the equation, something that was also somewhat lacking in the first arc.  This feels like a Steve Rogers spy book at times, with great mysterious enemies that can only just barely be fathomed.   The Shadow Council is as foreboding as ever, and seeing Thorndrake secretly worshipping some Cthulian statue was delicious.  Better still is the emphasis on Rogers’ keeping the teams activities a secret, something that hasn’t really been broached since the first issue.

I’ve complained last month about the continued lack of team dynamic.  Brubaker, on the one hand, is slowly making it clear that this isn’t a conventional Avengers team; really, it’s closer to “Steve Rogers and friends.”  Regardless, we still get subtle character moments this month of the sort we’ve been lacking for some time.  Ant-Man’s youthful eagerness and consequent sloppiness and Rogers’ tactful encouragement of him were high points, while the Prince of Orphans’ team-up with Valkyrie led to a really neat dynamic that was also all kinds of badass.

All told, this was just the sort of issue that, thematically, brought everything together.  Much like the team-up of Fu Manchu and the Shadow Countil, this issue was a wonderful balancing and mixing of retro pulpiness and shadowy conspiracies that led to the comic I’ve always hoped Secret Avengers would be.