Valhallahan on 
Julian Hazeldine on 
Casey on 
Chris Striker on Mighty Avengers #14
by James Hunt ~ May 22nd, 2008
Okay, Mighty Avengers has officially lost its identity. We’re now getting a one-off Sentry story. Excuse me? What happened to that Nick Fury arc? This is an issue of New Avengers and there’s nothing anyone can say to convince me otherwise. What, I might ask, is the point of having two Avengers books when the approach - one-off character spotlights - appears to be identical?
A few months ago, New Avengers was the “Bendis” Avengers book and Mighty Avengers was Bendis’ version of a “traditional” Avengers book. Now they’re the same thing! I love the stories, but seriously, it doesn’t remotely benefit the fan-base to have Mighty and New be two different titles right now. I expect this’ll continue well into Secret Invasion.
And, with that rant out of the way…
As noted, this issue is largely about the Sentry, and the Skrull machinations regarding him. We see more of how the mechanics of the invasion are working, which is good, and there’s a substantial moment in the Sentry’s character arc as motivated by his conversation with the Vision in Secret Invasion #2 (also now confirmed as a Skrull, if it wasn’t clear before.) - he becomes the Void. An Apprently well-meaning Void, but the Void nonetheless. Could get interesting!
Koi Pham’s art is probably the weak point in this issue. Unlike his recent X-Men work, it looks scratchy and rushed - could be an inking thing - but it’s much looser and there’s at least one point where we’re seeing three Skrulls talking - Hank Pym, Jarvis and… somneone who appears to be Spider-Woman, but I wasn’t certain, so I looked it up online. No-one else is certain either. Given that Jarvis calls her “Empress” I’m fairly sure this is confirmation that she’s supposed to be a Skrull Jessica Drew as suggested in the previous issue of New Avengers, but it shouldn’t take that much research to recognise a character. Perhaps it was written as ambiguous, but either way, it’s a massive failure for the comic.
Still, while I’m on the subject - given Spider-woman’s recent double-triple-quadruple-agent status, I’m going to suggest that the Skrull-Spider-Woman-Empress never actually managed to replace Jessica Drew, and she’s working for Nick Fury on the inside of the invasion. That’s the kind of half-baked paranoid theory Secret Invasion is making me cook up these days.
Not a terrible issue, but I don’t even know which comic I’m reading anymore. New and Mighty Avengers are telling stories that feel like they should be IN the main Secret Invasion series. You should probably buy this if you’re reading that.
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May 22nd, 2008 at 1:24 pm
Erm… admittedly I haven’t read an Avengers book in a while, but I thought the Sentry WAS one of the Mighty Avengers? I’ve always pictured him as being in the Pro-Reg camp, I don’t remember him being in Luke Cage’s gang…
May 22nd, 2008 at 1:31 pm
Oops! Good point. I have edited the review to remove that misconception. My point that the titles are basically the same thing right now does still stand, though - after all, what confused me was the fact that the last time we had a story like this, it was the single-issue Sentry spotlight in the pages of, er, New Avengers ;-)
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Yeah - I got confused as well: New is supposed to be doing the background and historical stuff, Mighty is supposed to be following Nick Fury. And <a href=”http://www.marvel.com/catalog/?id=8736″the solicit for this issue says nothing about Sentry - it’s supposed to be more Fury stuff.
It seems to me as if the staff suddenly reacted to what the fans said after SI #2 came out - namely ‘WTF was that sequence with the Sentry about?’ - and dived in with this issue to explain it.
May 22nd, 2008 at 2:34 pm
Bugger. Stupid unclosed tag.
May 22nd, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Haha, well-spotted. Pham’s pencils do look pretty rushed, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if this was a bit of a rush-release to plug a storytelling gap…