Secret Avengers #11 (Marvel)

writer: Ed Brisson
artist: Luke Ross

Part of the "Infinity" crossover, which involves Thanos (the Big Chin at the end of The Avengers movie) and the Inhumans (which are an even more sadsack version of the X-Men who never even had the good sense to be popular among fans), this is also one of many Avengers comics that are more or less interchangeable, despite various titles.

(Really, I have no idea why Marvel does that.  Brian Michael Bendis could get away with it when he was writing the Avengers, because he was writing a thousand different Avengers books.  But if you have multiple writers working on them, you ought to be able to differentiate a little better than "Jonathan Hickman, not Jonathan Hickman."  It's just not good enough to slap "Avengers" into the title and then do the same general story with all of them.)

The Secret Avengers were originally concocted after Steve Rogers had temporarily bought the mortal coil, and then came back to find Bucky Barnes, the erstwhile Winter Soldier, was doing a pretty good job as Captain America.  Since Steve wasn't about to just slap on another superheroic identity, he instead became an unmasked agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., and subsequently put together...another team of Avengers.  There were the New Avengers and the Mighty Avengers at the same time, and other than one of them being sanctioned (from the continuing effects of Civil War) and the other not, they did the same kind of fighting all the same.

Because Maria Hill is heavily featured in this series, you know it's all but a S.H.I.E.L.D. series.  Because there's actually a S.H.I.E.L.D. series on TV, I'd suggest it would make a ton more sense to name this series after that and not just as another Avengers title.

But what do I know?

The story frets over Inhumans, and Maria Hill frets over not being active in the field, and the villain character frets over being misunderstood.  Besides Hill there's also the new Nick Fury, who is exactly like the Ultimate Nick Fury but not like the original Nick Fury (read: he's exactly like the movie Nick Fury, which is one of the more unfortunate shoehorning jobs in recent comics history) as well as dear Phil Coulson.  The whole lineup's there, Marvel.  Why pretend otherwise?

Actually, other than random moments of superpowers, this isn't even an Avengers title.  Only its cover suggests that.  But you'd be hard-pressed to assume otherwise.  Just rename.  Or reboot again.  Because Marvel loves it some reboot.  Because this is not an Avengers series at all.  Maybe the storytelling isn't so sharp right now, but with a little more confidence in the concept, there's no reason why this has to be such a...secret.

Oh, I get it.

Cover via Comic Book Database.