So what a surprise you’re reading this right now. If you don’t know me, which is surprising, you know that I am not a fan of Nick Spencer. Everyone seems to love him but I find his work either incredibly average or slightly bad. So when I heard that Spencer was taking over Secret Avengers I wanted nothing to do with it. So why did I pick this up, you ask? Well for some reason I felt that I needed to pick it up. Possibly because my copy of Xombi #2 didn’t come in on time, or possibly that I just wanted to give it a try. No joke, let’s give Nick Spencer another shot and see what his chops are with the Secret Avengers.

After reading this, I decided to not pick up the rest of the arc.

I think one of the problems is that, like everyone else involved in this ‘point’less .1 initative, is that it just doesn’t do anything for anyone. If you want to get into the series this isn’t a good jumping on point unless you just want info on Steve Rogers. But if you were a regular reader like me, then it just does nothing but to fill up space. I don’t want to say ‘filler’ because that’ll send a million people on me like locusts for saying the word. But that’s what this is. A boring plot involving all informants in the world getting killed because someone leaked the info. Now that sounds like an interesting plot, but what it boils down to is Rogers saying: “Okay find this guy and fight as many AIM soldiers as you can”. That’s the sparknotes version because one thing that I loathe about Spencer’s writing is up in this issue and that’s too many word balloons. Spencer just has a tendancy to overwrite his material and my god is there a lot of word balloons to cover. Even a small moment between War Mach–Iron Man 2.0 and Ant-Man turn into who can say the most things in a single panel. The pacing of this book is pretty off too because we’ll spend a load of time with exposition but then Spencer does one quick page of fighting. Nick Spencer just does nothing with the plot here. He goes from Point A to Point B with no real purpose other then to see the team in action.

I’ll give Marvel credit though because they certainly are trying to keep the aesthetics of this book in the style of Mike Deodato Jr. Like Will Conrad, Scot Eaton is perfect for the book on paper because he provides a nice gritty look to the book. Of course the pages I can see that isn’t cluttered with word balloons look good on paper. But looking closely there are some cracks in his work. Faces are definitely a probably as Cap’N Steve changes looks in almost every panel. Plus size seems to be a problem because one moment Steve towers over everyone but the next he’s smaller then War Machine. Plus the most hilarious panel of the week happened towards the end. When the mission goes south, Rogers slaps a computer aside in frustration. But Eaton draws it in a way where there is very little force in the slap so it looks like the computer is lighter then a feather. (Plus Cap’s arm is freakishly huge in that panel)

Here’s a moment that sums up my experiences with Nick Spencer in a nutshell: The ending has a great moment, seriously, where Spencer has the oppertunity to explain Roger’s apparently ‘whoring’ himself to the government. It’s an interesting thing to ponder because it does feel like Roger’s has been acting too ‘pro U.S.’ as of late. He’s for the PEOPLE of the United States and not the government. But Spencer just takes too long to give Rogers and explaination and the ending just seems flat and too short to feel like I learned something about him. Maybe that’s what the focus of this .1 book should’ve been and not a random mission that ultimately has no bearing at all with anything. The cover by Mike Deodato seems to suggest something dark is going to happen. But from what I see it’s just another mediocre attempt by Spencer to write a mainstream comic. I’ll be back to read this series when Warren Ellis comes back, thank you.