Secret Avengers by Rick Remender vol. 1
Just so you know, the podcast has been pushed back a week due to some issues, but we should have it ready to go next week. We’ll also see about doing a catch-up one the week after to get things back on schedule. Until then…
I hadn’t planned on buying this but after re-reading “The Dark Angel Saga” for consideration in my “Best of 2012” list, I found myself jonesing for some more Rick Remender-written Marvel goodness. However, if you remember the “Deathlok Nation” storyline from earlier in “Uncanny X-Force,” this may be of interest to you as the writer imports the antagonist from that arc for this one. The end result: good superhero fun, but hardly an essential read.
Things kick off with a changing of the guard as Captain America evaluates Hawkeye’s potential as a leader for the Secret Avengers with a mission to protect an American diplomat in the seedy nation of Bagalia. The archer pretty much fouls up his audition, but he gets the job anyway after Cap winds up fouling things up even further. It’s a fun done-in-one issue that delivers some good banter between the two characters, some clever moments — watch for Cap’s face-off with Vengeance — and slick art from Patch Zircher. What it doesn’t really do is sell Hawkeye in a leadership role since he always comes off as second banana to the Super-Soldier, even when he’s pulling his ass out of the fire.
He’s also way too hotheaded for the role, and that becomes even more apparent once we get into the main story here. It kicks off with a suicide bombing going awry as a result of not a new superhero, or a mutant, but a woman trying to protect her son. As it turns out, she’s a humanoid robot known as a “Descendant” and now that she’s revealed herself the Secret Avengers take it upon themselves to intervene. Problem is that the other Descendants show up at the same time and promptly wipe the floor with the team. Now they have to track her down and find out where these robots came from and who’s really in control of them.
The end result isn’t up to Remender’s “Uncanny X-Force” work as it doesn’t feel that the aim was much higher than to provide a decent superhero story. Granted, the story of the Descendants will clearly be continuing on from this volume so there’s a chance things will pick up. What’s here isn’t bad, though. The villains are well-defined and sufficiently hateable, the good guys have plenty of personality (with Beast giving the best banter of all)… well, except for Hawkeye. He may have good instincts, but Beast is right to call him on the “hardass drill instructor” leadership style he uses here because it does grate on everyone, including the reader.
Some, however, might have problems getting past the art from Gabriel Hardman. His style here is clearly an acquired taste that tells the story well enough, but feels ill-suited for the kind of straight-up superheroics on display here. You could argue that the “Secret” Avengers title should have a distinct style to fit its “black ops” nature, yet it started off with Mike Deodato as the main artist and he’s pretty over-the-top as far as these things go. With Hardman, his style seems like it’d be more suited to a street-level hero like Daredevil or the Punisher.
Overall, everything is sufficiently well executed to make me want to come back for more. I know it’s not a ringing endorsement, but that’s all this volume managed to get out of me.