Written by Rick Remender
Illustrated by Patrick ZircherCaptain America and Hawkeye undertake a mission to the Red Light Nation, a country run by criminals, for criminals!
I have been an avid supporter of Secret Avengers since it launched (er — more or less), and have been rather adamantly looking forward to Rick Remender’s handle on the shifting team dynamic. If anyone has been on a hot streak lately in terms of output, it’s good ol’ Rick, and if he can nail down one team of clandestine superheroes fighting impossible threats behind the scenes, he can assuredly do a second!
Find out if this is true or not behind the cut, and watch me denote my inner thoughts in italics!
In the Marvel Universe right now, there are four ongoing titles with the word “Avengers” somewhere in the title: Avengers, New Avengers, Secret Avengers, Avengers Academy. There are two mini-series/events approaching its end, one approaching its beginning, and a brand new ongoing on the way just in time for a feature film which also features the title of The Avengers. Of course, if you look inside the books, you’ll also find that there is a fifth team which also uses the team name “Avengers”, but they’re dark and evil so they don’t get their own title (anymore).
So if we were to, say, compare these various books to courses of a meal, the minis and events would be seasonal entrees, Avengers Academy would be the appetizer, Avengers, New Avengers and assumedly Avengers Assemble would be the main courses, the additional “dark” team hidden in New Avengers would be seasoning, and Secret Avengers would be desert. And you know what part everyone likes best from their meals? The desert. (Quick side note: if your favorite part isn’t desert, you just haven’t had the right ice cream yet.)
It is without a doubt that Secret Avengers is the strongest of the various Avengers books, if for but one reason: there is nothing really tying it down. New Avengers has years upon years of backstory to follow up on, Avengers is a flagship title and has to be handled as such, and Avengers Academy needs to take the time to develop its young characters into characters people would want to read about in other books as well. On the other hand, you have Secret, which features a rather unique cast of somewhat B-List Avengers and rotating guests performing operations in the background of all the “big events” going on, allowing more interesting divergent paths and no need to impress anybody. Secret is basically the geeky kid at high school who didn’t have as many friends as the “cool kids”, but grows up to be a bad ass millionaire.
Now we have Rick Remender joining the ship to steer it along its new path, with Patrick Zircher along for the ride before Gabriel Hardman joins up next issue. It’s a pretty dynamite first issue, and it rather effortlessly donates to the promises made by Marvel’s Point One issue by offering a very welcoming jumping on point for readers of all walks of life. Starring Steve Rogers and Clint Barton on a solo mission, the book offers it all: solid characterization, clever dialogue, the return of a familiar face (who has been absent from the book far too long, if you ask me), the reinvention of an old concept and enough seeds for Remender and Hardman to grow a forest. Remender and Zircher follow-up Ellis’ run with the same breakneck pace and no holds barred spy antics, yet still manage to differentiate it from the past and push it into tomorrow.
However, the one drawback to the title is that it borders on falling into a similar framework as some of Remender’s books. While many writers can be found to pull several themes or ideas throughout multiple titles, the one main constant between Rick’s work is the unfortunate father figure being used as a tool to motivate the characters. It’s in the entirety of Fear Agent and a big part of Venom, it was a central idea in The Punisher and Punisher’s relationship with his sidekick Henry Russo (who happened to be Jigsaw’s son), and it was also played up in the second arc of Uncanny X-Force. When Hawkeye begins to mention his troubled relationship with his family (an admittedly well documented item, recently illustrated in the return of Barney Barton in Hawkeye: Blindspot), it can’t help but be a rather noticeable card that Remender likes to pull to try and inject emotion into the story.
Continued belowAn additionally odd and noticeable factor (and maybe this is on a “nobody else but me will see this” level) is Zircher with previous collaborator Andy Troy on colors. Troy and Zircher worked together previously on Mystery Men, and the collaboration worked rather well; the book was gritty, full of shadows appropriate of a pulp/noir title and incredibly smooth. Secret Avengers doesn’t match up with that previous collaboration — not in a necessarily bad way, but in one that is certainly noticeable to the trained eye based on the use of colors and shading (and especially when compared with Zircher and Rachelle Rosenberg’s recent work on Hulk).
Eric Stephenson recently wrote an interesting piece on the state of super hero comics vs. independent comics, comparing modern trends to a child pulling toys out of a box and attempting to figure out interesting ways to play with the same old things. While on some level this is true, Remender is truly one of the gleams of light you can implicitly trust when it comes to using our favorite old toys for fun new adventures, and Secret Avengers (now on its fourth creative team) is off to another strong start. If Remender’s re-imagination of the Age of Apocalypse could say anything of what he has in plan for the Masters of Evil and the Shadow Council, one could venture a guess that his run of Secret Avengers with Gabriel Hardman is still going to be the equivalent of ice cream. Sweet, delicious ice cream.
Final Verdict: 8.0 – Although, for one last side note, that banner on the top of the issue is seriously an eyesore.
