This is a promising start, with a new twist on the concept of the Avengers.  In the past, the Avengers have generally been the big guns with the power to take on high level villains like Ultron, Graviton and Count Nefaria.  This is still a pretty powerful team with the likes of Valkyrie, War Machine and Nova, but Brubaker is going to use them as stealthy infiltrators.  In taking this direction, Brubaker is playing to the strengths he displayed while turning “Captain America” into a kind of “Bourne Identity” for the Marvel Universe.  I suspect Brubaker will feel more at home in this team milieu than when he was writing one of the X-Men books.   In comic book writing, it’s often the little details that provide the cool moments that make a story memorable.  In this story, I love that Valkyrie can materialize weapons out of another dimension when she needs them.  Wonder Woman should have this ability!  I like that Brubaker is linking this story with Avengers continuity by bringing in the Serpent Crown, an artifact that has inspired a number of good Avengers stories.  It’s been a while since the crown has figured in an Avengers story, though.

            I do wonder if the Marvel universe is getting a bit too technologically advanced.  Now the Avengers can explore space because they have a Kree spaceship?  I would think Kree technology would be so advanced that humans couldn’t understand it, let alone adapt it for their own use.  If the Marvel Universe keeps going in this direction, it will become very divorced from our reality.  One of Marvel’s hallmarks is that they have tried to be at least somewhat more realistic than the competition.

            Deodato’s art does not seem to be up to his usual standards in this comic.  The character poses look unusually stiff.  On the other hand, I love the facial expressions on Ant Man when he shows his enthusiasm for going to Mars, and on the Black Widow who at the same moment seems to think Ant Man is nuts.