The Secret Avengers Revealed!
The Heroic Age has rolled into the Marvel Universe at top speeds, and the array of new stories continues this week with Secret Avengers #1.
Steve Rogers — the former Captain America, as the book reminds us in case we’ve been in a cave for the past 70 years — has replaced Norman Osborn as the new head of security in the U.S., and he’s taken it upon himself to form a new superhero team, a secret team of Avengers. Unfortunately, I don’t think anyone mentioned to Beast that it was supposed to be a secret team, because the Avengers “A” logo is brightly emblazoned on the front of his X-Men-esque uniform — but I digress.
With so many new titles coming out and reboots of series to tie into the Heroic Age, we’ve been seeing a lot of setup stories lately, but thankfully, Ed Brubaker doesn’t bore us with too much setup and moves right into the action. In fact, by the time the story starts, the team is already assembled — and the only flashbacks to forming the team that we get are of Rogers approaching Moonknight and Ant-Man, respectively, since they’re probably the two individuals you’d be least likely to expect on an Avengers team — secret or otherwise. Then again, Steve Rogers does seem to have a soft spot for helping wayward bad-guys-but-not-bad-people redeem themselves (such as Hawkeye, Quicksilver, and the Scarlet Witch, for example).
As previously mentioned the story doesn’t bore. It has a good pace and keeps the reader turning the pages with ease. What starts out as an extraction mission in Mumbai turns into a rescue mission on Mars (of all places!) and while the last page is your typical “To Be Continued!” cliffhanger, it’s definitely a surprise that leaves the reader wondering what, exactly, is going on.
Secret Avengers #1 has a little bit of everything: action, adventure, spies, and even a little bit of romance between Rogers and Sharon Carter. It’s fairly impossible for Ed Brubaker to write a horrible story, and if the rest of Secret Avengers lives up to the first issue, this could quite possibly be his finest story yet.
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