Secret Avengers #14 – Review

by Nick Spencer, Ales Kot (Writers), Butch Guice, Joe Rubinstein (Artists), Matthew Wilson (Colorist)

The Story: Mockingbird ”learns” a bit more about herself as the rest of the team are brought to their destination after being captured.

The Review: It’s always rather sad to see something that you can personally admit that it’s smartly made, yet cannot really enjoy to its fullest. You may see the quality behind the work, yet some elements present are in the way of your personal enjoyment. It may be the characters, it may be the style, perhaps even the general tone of the whole thing, yet something doesn’t connect to allow you to make the most of the book.

It is unfortunately what this issue of Secret Avengers amounts to for me, on a personal level. I can certainly see what’s good about the issue, yet there is something that simply doesn’t make this issue as good as some of the previous ones for me.

Something that I can see that is rather ingenious is the way in which Ales Kot and Nick Spencer manage to mix a certain exploration of Andrew Forson through the brainwashing scenes with Mockingbird. Pushing forth the philosophy of the character through the learning process of the manipulated agent, the nihilistic views of Forson becomes rather intriguing, as some of the previous events and some of A.I.M.’s plans becomes that much more threatening in prospect.

Secret Avengers #13 – Review

by Nick Spencer, Ales Kot (Writers), Butch Guice, Joe Rubinstein, Tom Palmer (Artists), Matthew Wilson (Colorist)

The Story: As things gets a bit more chaotic at A.I.M., Maria Hill and M.O.D.O.K. have a little chat.

The Review: Not to sound too paranoid, but I think Marvel actually knew I was getting a bit bored with this series. The themes were presented well and some of the ideas were really nice, yet there never seemed to be a character I could follow in a way that made me anticipate the next issue. I like Maria Hill, sure, but characters like Marcus Johnson and Phil Coulson weren’t exactly the most interesting people to follow to begin with.

Then came in M.O.D.O.K., the character too crazy to actually exist, yet too awesome to not to be invented. While the character had been revitalized completely by Jeff Parker in his Red Hulk story in a manner that made him an actual threat, but also an interesting utilitarian figure as well. To say I really loved the character would be an understatement, but is his inclusion enough? Does the addition of this character to the general storyline actually adds anything to the book in terms of quality?

This issue, in ways, both works and doesn’t for a good number of reasons, making the issue a bit uneven in its quality. There are several great ideas at work here, but some of them aren’t focused on enough to make the issue better than it should be.

One of the bigger problems is the constant switch between scenes, which does not leave enough room to build up situations. In this issue, the spotlight jumps from M.O.D.O.K. and Maria Hill, to Taskmaster, Mockingbird, Mentallo and Marcus Johnson, with most of them not getting nearly enough panel time to have an actual impact on the readers. Their scenes do get the point across rather effectively, but a lot of these short spurts aren’t quite enough to provide greater emphasis on their roles or anything else.