Secret Avengers #18 Mixes Superheroes, Inception and Kung Fu!

Cue the Scooby Doo sneaking music!

On a whim I decided to pick up issue number 18 of Secret Avengers (written by Warren Ellis, with art by David Aja and Raul Allen) and my friend prompted me to pick up the variant cover, which is an amazing image! (Thanks Brian!That is good customer service!) The explosive action continues into the pages past the cover.

So the basic concept of Secret Avengers as I gather, is that there is a group of Avengers that take on deadly missions that no one can know about, foiling plots too terrible to imagine (kind of like Uncanny X-Force?). The mission in number 18 involves Steve Rogers (formerly Captain America) Sharon Carter, and Shang-Chi, the Master of Kung Fu, invading an enemy base in the Multiverse, to prevent them from bringing a chemical from the Multiverse to Earth that will transform it into a sun.

Our Heroes

The entire mission takes place inside of an enemy base in another dimension, that has it's own physics. For one thing, the station floating in the Multiverse has a hull too thin for gun use, and has the dimensions of an M.C.  Escher drawing. Think Inception, but with ninja bad guys and superheroes.  Steve Rogers and Sharon Carter bring Shang-Chi in to 'Incapacitate all comers', and incapacitate he does. The action here is paced amazingly, is clear, and uses every possible angle you could to show just how unstoppable these three are when it comes to a bear knuckle brawl. Action depicted this cleanly, clearly and pulse-poundingly is more rare than it should be in superhero books, Aja uses the crazy physics of the setting for all it is worth.

I love the use of color and space here.

Ellis writes a done-in-one story here, he introduces about a dozen awesome concepts, and writes likable, capable characters and fun dialogue.One of my favorite bits was Beast's explanation of the Multiverse, more specifically 'Bad Continuum' which are broken offshoots of the Multiverse:

" They are notable for flaws in the laws of physics. A bad continuum might have gravity, for instance, but water will boil there at ten degrees, or frozen water will turn into music instead of ice."

If that ain't an awesome piece of science fiction style goodness, I don't know what is. The enemy the three come up against is Arnim Zola 4.2.3., who is a man who can broadcast his mind into robot bodies, but apparently 4.2.3. is a broken copy trapped inside a robot body...who plans to kill Steve Rogers and become Arnim Zola OS X! 

If you don't like villains like this comics are not for you.

All in all, this single issue of Secret Avengers has everything I look for in a superhero comic. Cool action, interesting/far out settings and concepts, kooky bad guys, fun banter and awesome artwork. I am going to be checking out issues in the future, thanks a lot Marvel....yeesh (my poor wallet). Oh and I thought that the page below was aweeesome.

-Eamon

To Drop or Not to Drop...

I pick up a lot of comics every month. Currently, just from Marvel and DC, I am reading Animal Man, Action Comics, Batman, Batman and Robin, Batwing, O.M.A.C, Punisher Max, Punisher, Moon Knight, Uncanny X-Force, Venom, Batwoman, Swamp Thing, Captain America and Bucky, Daredevil...and probably a few more. I am also reading the Avengers every month, written by Brian Michael Bendis, with art usually by John Romita Junior. I really enjoyed the book initially, although lately the Fear itself ties ins were losing me, as I don't usually read crossovers. At times the lack of central characters bothered me. I was beginning to feel like the book was too unfocused, and that too many characters were sharing the spotlight in every issue, almost like 20-some pages of cameos every month. I was prepared to drop the book this month.


Then, I saw the cover, which I think is just a great image. I think it captures,visually, what Bendis has been doing with the scripts on The Avengers. Bendis is fleshing out the personalities of the Avengers, with small conversational sections and text interview style pieces, with the team members talking about each other, what was currently happening in the book, and what it meant to each character to be an Avenger. I think these sections are really interesting, and do give the readers a bit more of a connection with some of the characters. Seeing Cap's hands rummaging through a pile of potential Avenger's pictures with his cup of coffee immediately (for me anyway) brings him down to earth and also still conveys him as the leader of The Avengers. I also love the selection of characters on the table (how awesome would it be to have Ghost Rider on the Avengers?!).


The artwork, by Daniel Acuna, sealed the deal for me. This is one awesome/beautiful looking super hero book. I loved every page of this comic, but the page above stood out to me. For the past few issues a romance has been budding between Hawkeye and Spider-Woman, and ex wife of Hawkeye Mockingbird has noticed...


Those three panels of Hawkeye giving Spider-Woman that rouge's smile, then getting caught, is just outstanding. It made me laugh out loud. The issue also sets up a pretty interesting future plot point, utilizing many of the major events that have taken place the last few years in the Marvel universe. This issue has made me decide to keep up with Avengers...I hope it stays this good.

-Eamon

The Deaths of Mys-Tech Wars

Back in my comics-buying youth, one could buy comics in more places than just your local comic shop. Department stores, drug stores and dollar stores used to have discounted packs of assorted comics, organized in no way I could discern, in packs of three, four, and sometimes even 5 or ten! On one such occasion I found issue number three of a limited series called Mys-Tech Wars ( written by Dan Abnett with art by Bryan Hitch, with Caroline Steeden on Letters and Helen Nally and Helen Stone on colors), a Marvel Comics 'UK' series in one of these assorted packs, and what I saw inside immediately appalled me, and appealed to me ALL AT ONCE! (Huzzah!)

The opening double page spread (Bryan Hitch is pretty damn great at drawing a double page orgy of death) features a grouping of X-Men, Avengers and other Marvel characters battling it out with an army of Psycho-Warriors, who were unleashed by the evil Mys-Tech board to destroy earth or something. The Psycho-Warriors look like a cross between the borg and the gimp from Pulp fiction, and have the power to kill a whole boatload of Marvel super-heroes. OH, also in this two page spread: Cyclops getting a giant hole blasted through his chest and dying. No one is safe in Mys-Tech wars. This was back in 1993, the X-men cartoon was still going strong on TV, and the younger me was just getting into super hero comics full steam. To see one of my favorite characters die right there on the page was...kinda effed up.


The other thing about Mys-Tech wars are the reactions to the character's deaths. They are fairly realistic, or at the least how I imagine a reaction to a loved one's death would be. Upon seeing Cyclops gunned down in front of her, Jean becomes irrational and becomes hysterical, begging Jubilee to help her drag Cyclops' laser-hole ridden corpse to safety, further risking her own life and that of a fellow X-Man. This is the first instance of my repulsion/attraction to this series. I do not think that Jean would react in that fashion to Cyclops being killed, she has plenty of training in battle, and was the wielder of the Phoenix force for goodness sake, one of the mightiest powers in the entire universe, capable of destroying suns and flying clear across the galaxy. Here, she is reduced to nothing, a blubbering inconsolable wreck, who ends up killing herself when the world, and her mentor and friend Professor X need her the most...it just does not ring true to the character for me, which basically encapsulates my general feeling on Mys-Tech Wars as a whole. At the same time however, it is kind of cool to see a book where no character is safe..but there aren't enough hero moments, the good guys can never seem to catch a break.


The whole thing begins with Nick Fury, who invades the secret lair of the Mys-Tech board, some group of evil old people including an enemy of Nick's during his Howling Commando days. Here's what happens to Nick :




Mys-Tech then unleashes a hoard of Monster Lizard things which swarm the earth, killing many notable heroes. Spider Man and super-team Excalibur die on the same page, followed by a whole bunch more...


As it turns out, the baddies are altering reality, and the heroes that are dying were never meant to die in this fashion, and one of the main characters in the series, I think an original Marvel 'UK' character, Dark Angel, leads the fight to set things right. I think it seems like an excuse to shock and kill off a bunch of popular super hero characters...but there isn't anything really wrong with it...although sometimes things get a little too dark for my tastes in this type of super hero book, for example:


Pretty brutal, right?

The series also features a bunch of Marvel UK characters, like Dark Angel and Death's Head II. Outside of Death's Head II, I have never seen any of these characters used anywhere else, and in additon, none of them die in this series, only the established Marvel characters bite the dust.

At the end of the day, a select few living heroes alter reality and erase the damage done, and sabotage Mys-Tech's operation. Captain America and Logan stop Nick Fury from infiltrating the enemy base to get a beer instead, which is my favorite moment of the whole comic.


All in all Mys-Tech Wars was an interesting journey, that filled me with conflicting nerd feelings about the nature of superhero comics as a young fan. I had to seek out the back issues at local Philly comic shop Fat Jacks, and all of the intense battle sequences by Bryan Hitch are impressive to behold. An intense oddity if nothing else.

-Eamon