It’s become a little clearer, recently, that all the emphasis on Nick Fury’s new team of heroes in Mighty Avengers is acting as a not-entirely transparent lead-in to the forthcoming series, Secret Warriors, which is going to launch out of Secret Invasion. Unfortunately, this realisation leaves me slightly bitter about it, since I’m not currently planning to buy Secret Warriors. While I applaud Bendis’ attempts to put some new characters back into the Marvel universe, I can’t say I find this issue that engaging – it’s already been so long since we were introduced to the characters – who have largely just shown up and shot things in Secret Invasion – that I’m not feeling very interested in how they were trained.

That aside, though, the story does show that Bendis has a good grip on Nick Fury as a soldier who’s never stopped fighting a war. His training methods are brutal (reflecting the modern idea of “what needs to be done”) and he only ever gives people enough information to make them do what he wants. Even so, it almost looks as if his training methods could backfire on him, when the invasion finally blows up and the group finally gets to go into action.

A large problem with this issue is the cast. While the characters were well-defined in their initial appearance, there’s no real development to speak of here, just a lot of interchangeable super-powered types. In contrast with Secret Invasion, the pace is so quick that we don’t spend enough time with the individuals and I’m struggling to remember all the new arrivals so long after their proper introduction. Caselli’s artwork, coloured rather mutely by Daniele Rudoni, is really the saving grace of the book, showing a lot of cinematic enthusiasm. He’s not quite in the same league as Cho, Bagley or Maleev yet, but it’s possible that one day he will be.

It’s become clear lately that Mighty Avengers is a book without an identity, and seems largely designed to service the needs of the crossover. Much like its sibling New Avengers, it failed to show its original premise in action much before that premise was hijacked by crossovers, and not one member of the Avengers team shows up in this issue at all, and not for the first time. Bendis is reportedly leaving the title with #20, and presumably thing will get back on track after that – although whether readers will care about the “secondary” Avengers title without Bendis attached is a different matter altogether.