Secret Avengers #13, #14, #15 reviews

[starfoxxx]

Well, after I got all excited about Spencer's stint writing Secret Avengers after #12.1, this book just keeps getting worse. Why don't I just drop it? I think I'll give Ellis a try, then make a decision.

Anyway, #13 just plain sucked. The Beast and a congressman talk and talk and nothing really happens.

#14 is actually a pretty good Valkyrie story. It would have been a nice MArvel Fanfare story. Val's origin doesn't get much attention, so a bit of her background was interesting. But there's really not much material here, and nothing to do with an Avengers team.

At least the art is pretty good in #13 and #14.
#15 sucks, AND for some reason (rushed?), the art is pretty bad, too. Black Widow's face just looks plain "goofy" in many panels. This story addresses the "killing off" of comic book characters, and the convenient "rebirths". But it just doesn't entertain, IMO.

Each story seems to try to tell a lesson/moral. I dunno, these "high-brow" stories just fall flat for me. Spencer just writes in the talky, Bendis-like stlyle that is soooo decompressed. (An "old-school" writer could have told these stories in a page or two). Maybe he had his hands tied with the "Fear Itself" backdrop, but these issues just were not good.

And the "posing" covers are so lame. But when not much is happening inside the covers, what's the difference?

Secret Avengers is about to become the latest casualty of my ever-dwinddling pull-list.

[tomspasic]

"secret" has failed to grab me since it's inception.
Firstly, the sheer stupidity of a supposedly secret, covert team that runs around in brightly coloured costumes shouting "Avengers Assembel!!!" makes my brain hurt, it's so stupid.
Then there's the fact that most issues are basically single character tales instead of a team book.
Whilst I found #15 a moderately good read as it covered some ground not already done to death (ie how do "ordinary" people in the MU view all the resurrections of super-people), it had nothing to do with Avengers, Secret or any other variety.
Plus: "I'm a covert agent, I'll swing through the window of a media outlet and threaten the staff at gunpoint, that should ensure secrecy prevails..."
It did drag on, even though I liked it in the main.
I could not honestly recommend this book to an Avengers fan except for the fact that it's Not Bendis. And frankly, I find Avengers Academy a much more entertaining read that features a team of Avengers and is also Not Bendis.
And the first 8 issues of AA just got collected into a handy TPB....

[humanbelly]

No, the book just has no discernible identity whatsoever. It really doesn't. I recognize that lots of folks have been liking it from the outset, but it has failed for me from the get-go. I do believe the new writer (Spencer?) is in a bit of a pickle, as it looks like he's trying get us invested in the individual members a bit more by giving them individual stories-- but these stories don't really flesh out their characters any further (with the exception of Val, maybe), and they come off as little more than filler.

PLUS he has to contend with this incomprehensible FEAR ITSELF event invading his book, regardless of where we were in the "non-event" storyline. I believe I'm still receiving 4 or 5 titles via subscription, and I have NO IDEA what the heck is going on that's wrecking the Marvel Universe at this point. All I know is that the stories I'm still trying to follow have been utterly abandoned.

It's an unenviable position for any writer-- almost a catoon-level version of being told to clean up someone else's artistic mess. . . while the mess is still on-going. And the only recent example of how they'll be treated is seeing Dan Slott's Mighty Avengers yanked out from under him and cancelled. Hardly promotes any much-needed artistic risk-taking.

HB