With the first issue of Secret Avengers, it left a lot of people surprised. Myself included, but only because I was shocked at how entertaining it was to read. For me, unless Brubaker somehow manages to screw this up, this is my Avengers team. It has everything a need for the title: a good mystery, an intriguing mix of characters, and a surprised antagonist in the midst. Can Brubaker and Deodato keep the good times rolling?

Although this isn’t as remarkable as the first issue, this is still a solid second issue by Brubaker. With anything he’s written, the story (and the mystery) always seems to move at a slow pace. Even for an Avengers team, we’re not going to be seeing much action right now. Sure, Brubaker sprinkles in a bit with a few weird henchmen and all, but we still have no idea what is going on yet. Personally I think it fits with the title, since this is a Spec-Ops team, sometimes it doesn’t really matter what the big picture is. As long as your still on pace with finishing the mission, that’s all the Spec-Ops team needs to handle. I think we see a good amount of characterization with Irredeemable Ant-Man and War Machine; this could be a fun pairing in the future. The mystery with Nova is also intriguing and it looks like it’s going to get ugly next issue. So while there isn’t any real ‘wow’ moments like the first issue, it’s still a solid attempt this month for the story.

Deodato’s artwork also seems to have improved a bit. Last issue, even as POTW for me, had some weird moments with character models and faces. I barely saw any problems with this issue here. Then again it is hard to really mess up anything when practically nothing happens till the final few pages. When the action gets heavy though, the panel layouts are nicely done. I will say that Deodato does some great backgrounds in here and the coloring is a bit better this time around.

So while I got really nothing to say about this issue, don’t make it seem like it was bad. This was an enjoyable, if not somewhat slowly paced, second issue. Next month should heat up as the shit is really going to hit the fan for the team. As long as Brubaker and Deodato bring their ‘A’ game to each issue, I will still continue to say this is THE Avengers team you need to read.