Mighty Avengers #17
Brian Michael Bendis, story
Khoi Pham, pencils
Danny Miki, inks
Dean White, colors
New Avengers #44
Brian Michael Bendis, story
Billy Tan, pencils
Billy Tan, inks
Marvel
review by Gavin Jasper of 4thletter!

Maybe this is just me, but there’s this one bad joke I or a friend sometimes tell where you hear someone with a unique and crazy voice and remark how you’d love to see that guy do a book on tape. You’d even listen to the Yellow Pages on CD, or something equally ridiculous, just because you love listening to that guy’s voice. Brad Garrett reading Moby Dick. Something like that.

That’s how I find Brian Michael Bendis’ recent Avengers work. The guy can write a story about the average day of an Amish farmer and he’d make it seem readable. There’s something just soothing about his writing. That explains the mixed feelings I have for today’s batch from Bendis, Mighty Avengers #17 and New Avengers #44. Well, the former at least.

On the surface, neither of these comics have much to do with the respective teams. Even when you remove the reality of the characters involved, New Avengers features none of the current New Avengers (Strange left the team) and Mighty Avengers doesn’t feature a single Mighty Avenger.

No, this is part of Secret Invasion. Secret Invasion is the big climax, at least for the moment, for Bendis’ various Avengers runs. More than Disassembled and House of M, every issue has been leading up to this event. So if New, Mighty and Illuminati have been leading up to Invasion, does that mean that Bendis gets a pass for using these two issues and the several before them for Invasion padding? That’s up for debate.

The last few months have existed to expand on the Skrull state of mind and their plans. How do they work and how did they happen? They also show the tragedy of the lead-up. With so many Skrull duplicates in the roles of heroes, we know that something bad is going to go down each time we open an issue. Every issue is another time to read and wait for the other shoe to drop. We knew that we’d see Hank Pym get beaten half to death. We knew that Elektra would ultimately lose. This week’s two issues bring another piece of dread that we hadn’t expected.

Mighty is the lesser of the two issues because ultimately, it doesn’t say too much. It may foreshadow a bit and maybe it’ll be more interesting to look back on after the event is complete, but it’s mostly padding. Entertaining and, at times, disturbing padding. The story, featuring the Skrull doppelganger of Hank Pym goes in a direction few anticipated. Despite the interesting turn of events, we know that things will make a negative turn before the issue is done. It’s only a matter of time.

Of all the issues of Bendis’ Skrull Saga, Mighty ranks as one of the least important. You won’t find answers to any riddles, but it does show the complicated effects of their plan. It shows that Skrulls, much like humans, are diverse in morality. You can’t judge a race by the actions of a few. Or… in this case, maybe you can? Maybe the Invasion will shed some more light on it.

Khoi Pham’s pencils work well for the story being told. There’s even a good use of a television in the background that gives a subtle pinpoint to the timeline. It’s just unfortunate that the final page is a redrawn version of a more high-profile artist’s work and comes across as a hand-me-down.

New Avengers has more to do with the Skrull plans, though nothing too earth shattering. It’s not like the recent issue that explained how the invasion came to be and then paid us off with the revelation that the Queen is Spider-Woman. The story has more to do with how part of the Skrull plan came to be. Explained with dialogue, even Bendis dialogue, it probably would have been underwhelming.

This issue isn’t underwhelming. It’s absolutely horrifying. Several pages in, there’s a part with Dr. Strange that gave me the creeps reading it. The slow realization of what was happening was a huge holy shit moment. What followed only proceeded to make it worse. Then, without the weapon of surprise, the rest of the issue continues to make your skin crawl. It’s one horror after the other.

The Skrulls claim to be going for peace and maybe they are, but the way they go about it is disgusting. It’s an act that’s grounded in fiction, meaning that you won’t see many examples of it in real life, but it’s just so cruel and heartless that it’s appalling. I’ve read this issue three times over and it gets harder to get through each time.

It’s nice to see that Billy Tan is improving as an artist. His work here is by far an improvement over his efforts in Spider-Man: The Other. There are so many panels and details that are just nasty. Considering the story I just described, I mean that in a very good way.

If you’re a completist, you’ll probably pick up Mighty Avengers. Only if you’re into Secret Invasion. If you’re looking for Sentry and Ares blowing stuff up, wait a couple months. Then again, you should already know that by now.

Definitely pick up New Avengers. That one’s a keeper.

New Avengers #44:

Mighty Avengers #17: