New Avengers, as a series, has become both incredibly rewarding and rather frustrating of late. During the whole Secret Invasion crossover, it’s been the main place to find answers to the myriad questions of how the Skrull invasion was achieved. As a result, we have issues like this - a brilliant issue of Fantastic Four, in which a few of the “Illuminati” make guest appearances, while the wider cast of New Avengers goes utterly unacknowledged. It’s enough to make you angry.

Except that it doesn’t. By resolving the burning questions behind what can only be described as the slowest-paced crossover ever written - and doing so in a satisfying, single-issue chunk, New Avengers benefits massively from Secret Invasion. The idea of two separate Avengers titles has been all but abandoned during this period, but of the two, New Avengers is just about delivering the better stories.

In this issue, we find ourselves reading about a clone of Reed Richards, and it’s revealed how the Skrulls managed to improve their ability to hide. Even though we know we’re reading about a bio-duplicate, readers will really understand Reed Richard’s turmoil as if it was the real one. Clones with all the memories of the original are fairly dubious pseudo-science at the best of times, but it fits with the Skrull capabilities already established in Secret Invasion, and it brilliantly uses the Skrull’s inherent sneakiness to achieve their aims - they’re not smart enough to invent the technology they need, but they’re more than crafty enough to trick someone else into doing it for them.

Tan’s artwork falls somewhere between Marvel’s current realist house-style and Yu’s scratchier, looser look, with a little Jim Lee mixed in. A run on X-Men obviously rubbed off on Tan, because he draws a great Professor Xavier, though in general only Reed’s interrogation scenes work as well as one suspects he’s capable of.

Once again, Bendis delivers another must-read piece of the Secret Invasion puzzle, and delivers a great Fantastic Four story that makes the most of the chance to push Reed in directions that the real one can’t go. Just try not to think about what the series title on the cover is and you’ll get along with it nicely.

Tags: Billy Tan, Brian Michael Bendis, New Avengers, secret invasion
Publisher: Marvel