Secret Avengers #22
Story By: Rick Remender
Art By: Gabriel Hardman
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Review Score : 8.5/10
Rick Remender comes aboard Secret Avengers and immediately injects the humor and bat shit crazy story ideas hes known for. The question is can he juggle two very different team books and have both be so high in quality? The short answer is yes.
We start the issue off following Captain Britain as he takes on Riot and his sentient mob of humans . The fight is short and it gets Captain Britain from London to Other World which is featured heaily in Remenders other team book Uncanny X-Force. Britain gets a call from Captain America and is transferred to the Secret Avengers new base using Pym Particles. It seems Hank Pym and Beast have been left to their own devices and have created a new Headquarters for the Secret Avengers to operate out of . The kicker is that anytime they are inside of the base they are shrunk down to the size of an Ant . Britain accepts the invitation to join the team and after Captain America announces he is leaving there is a very funny moment between Britain and Hawkeye . Hawkeye lets Britain go on assuming he is the choice to lead until he fires a well placed sticky arrow over his mouth and announces his acceptance as the new leader of the team.
Remender does a fine job juggling all of these characters and their personalities . Captain Britain is Cocky and Regal, Hawkeye is Brash and a bit of a trickster , Hank McCoy gets to have a little more fun than we are use to seeing him have due to Remenders quick wit on the page. Everyone seems to benefit from his writing style. While there is a large amount of humor in this book Remender writes a very dire situation in Pakistan . A suicide bomber sets his sights on a woman and child and manages to have the bomb go off only for the women to reveal that she has the ability to consume the explosion and redirect back into the city. The woman is an Adaptoid and this incident sends the team to investigate the fallout. Other Adaptoids across the world activate and head for Pakistan as well. A fight ensues between the Avengers and The Adaptoids with the Avengers losing their battle .
Gabriel Hardman handles the art in this series and I’m having a hard time enjoying his work. Characters look great but his style is a bit sloppy in areas . Maybe it has to do with the inking but it could be a bit cleaner. The characters all look very unique which I appreciate and he can draw a very kinetic action sequence .I’m also not a huge fan of the washed out colors in the issue. The inks tend to pop a bit too much for me.
Hawkeye instructs Antman to jump onto one of the Adaptoids which takes us to our final scene of the issue and a huge reveal involving Lady Deathstrike and a group of other villains to good for me to spoil. Needless to say between the final page reveal and the promise of Venom joining the team next issue I’m definitely excited to see what Remender has in store for this series .
Mike DeVivo
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