New Avengers 3, Secret Avengers 37

New Avengers 3
Hickman (w) and Epting (a) and D'Armata (c)

I'm going to just start every review of this book by just saying "Wow." I feel pretty confident about that after this third issue. I think that my love for this book is not, at this point, understated. I've very much underlined it, in fact. The stakes are all raised and everything is happening. The first incursion of another world upon ours has now happened (minus the time the Black Swan destroyed another world) and the plan of the Illuminati worked. They formed the Infinity Gauntlet and Captain America used it to push the other world away. However, the strain of it shattered the gems (all except the time gem, which disappeared) and we're back to square one. Namor jumps at Cap, screaming about how he's doomed everyone. They retire to Necropolis to talk about possible avenues going forward. Hank McCoy has joined the team in the stead of Professor X. Despite the success then immediate failure of their first plan, Steve remains adamant about not building a weapon to destroy worlds, thereby sacrificing their heroism. He tries to rally everyone around him to think of another way, but one by one they reject his optimism. Dr. Strange equates it to simply hoping, the three kings (Black Panther, Black Bolt, and Namor) will do whatever it takes to keep their people alive, as will Reed for his family, and even Hank, the most morally righteous of the remaining group candidly asks Cap "are you seriously asking a mutant what he's prepared to do to stave off extinction?" The issue ends when Cap invokes Tony and their history of "lesser of two evils." Tony directs Dr. Strange to wipe Cap's memory of the Illuminati and everything they've done.


There's just not enough I can say about this book. Hickman toes a line PERFECTLY as Cap goes around the room asking for support. Even after most everyone has turned him down and he's still pleading and AFTER the audience is starting to side with the Illuminati, asking themselves what they would do, given the options, Hickman uses Captain America exactly the way he's supposed to be used. It's not naive optimism and hope preventing him from siding with them, it's fear. Cap's afraid of what happens after this because he's seen it so many times. It's the slippery slope kind of argument but with much more realism to it. There are people in that room who, without a doubt, would make a world-destroying weapon and eventually be coaxed into using it for a "greater good." There are people like Namor who would use it to dominate, people like Panther who would use it to protect, and people like Tony who would use it to win. It's a scary thing and it's a real scary thing. It's not about, as Reed tries to color Cap, trying to ignore a difficult decision because it's difficult, or about, as Namor tries to spin it, the simple preservation of Cap's soul. It's about what this decision leads to and where it will inevitably go. If you're not subscribed to this book, you are missing the best book that Marvel is putting out. I don't say that lightly, and I certainly don't say it definitively (we're still only three issues in), but this book has everything you could ask of it. It's great writing with fascinating characters and questions, amazing art and perfect colors. As someone who very notably loves a lot of books Marvel's putting out, this is the best I've read in a while. Get caught up with it.

Secret Avengers 37
Remender (w) and Scalera (a) and Wilson (c)

I was figuring, when I decided to break today's posts into two Avengers related posts, that they would break down by books that had Avengers in the title (Avengers 5 and Avengers Assemble Annual 1) and books that I was dying to read. Not to belittle Avengers or Avengers Assemble, but I'd say my track record shows me firmly in the camp of New Avengers and Secret Avengers, as far as the major Avengers titles go (guys, there are like five different Avengers titles just in ongoing titles. That's a little crazy). I didn't suspect this post would also be the post where I examined huge questions of morality and extinction. Them's the breaks.

Rick Remender ends his run on Secret Avengers by tying up his Descendants storyline. The story is presented within a frame; Captain America is debriefing the Secret Avengers about what happened in the course of everything. With a nano-mist infecting humans with Descendant technology to convert them into Descendants, the Secret Avengers were split up fighting in New York and in the capital city of the Descendants, the Core. Venom recounts to Cap how he fought Black Ant, unable to bring himself to kill him despite his treachery. Valkyrie had no such problem and stabbed him through the chest. They can't confirm if he's dead or not (jury says "not") but it definitely slowed things in the Core. Meanwhile, the less-contained story is the one in New York. Captain Britain fights with the Torch (Jim Hammond) about why humanity shouldn't be overrun by the Descendants while Hawkeye and Spider-Man try to get their hands on the Orb of Necromancy again to shut down the whole process and eliminate all the Descendants.

This is where the depth of the story comes in. As interesting as it is to see Flash struggle with Black Ant over whether he's alive or not and whether he's related to the Eric that saved Parvez or saved Flash or if he's just played them, it's a very self-contained story. It affects only the two of them (tangentially more, but whatever). That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but we are in a book where the rest of the issue is going to involve the fate of mankind so it's a little small relatively. Captain Britain and Torch have an interesting conversation about why Captain Britain would even want to stop the spread of the Descendants. We've discovered through all this that the Descendants still have some level of humanity to them, they've just removed their flaws and the need to die. Captain Britain argues that Torch has spent his whole life trying to be more human because humanity is important and nothing is more human than dying, or at least than living before you die. It's a little corny, maybe, but it's a.) better worded than that, and b.) not untrue. It's a compelling enough argument to make Torch reconsider what's happening and fly off. Captain Britain then joins Hawkeye trying to stop the Master Mold from killing them to prevent them from stopping this evolution. Hawkeye battles against the virus infecting him, allowing us to see why the Descendants have lasted as long as they have. Even though he's conscious of what he has to do, Clint has trouble releasing his arrow because it's clear that he is better off as a Descendant. His body heals quickly from injury, he can understand more and process more, things make more sense to him, etc. However, it is still an invading force and it is still tainting their humanity and destroying mankind as its known. By the same token, destroying the Orb would kill of the Descendants entirely, forcing extinction. Hawkeye struggles with all of this over the course of just a few short pages. It's really compelling stuff. Eventually Torch flies down and destroys the Orb, having given his whole race and the possibility of a world he might finally fit into for the sake of humanity. It's original and it's moving. It's a fitting end to a solid series.