I’m not sure if it’s me or Ed Brubaker who is to blame for the mild disappointment I’ve felt with this series so far. I loved ‘Sleeper’. I adore ‘Incognito’. He followed Bendis’ excellent ‘Daredevil’ run without missing a beat. His run on ‘Captain America’ has been so good it single-handedly inspired me to become a comics writer! So why can’t I get as excited about ‘Secret Avengers as I assumed I would?

Deodato has been on great form from the off on this book. To me his art manages to feel both classic and current at the same time and the layouts in the action sequences are just first-class and a blast to read. He really hits it out the park on the big points like the first full shot of CapNova, but also nails the subtler moments like Steve gazing down at Serpent Crown. If I have any complaints about the art it would be that it seems too dark at points for a big space adventure, but I can really see the potential for the more espionage driven plots that I’m sure are to come.

So yeah, it must be the story that’s troubling me. A lot of my problems with this initial arc come to a head in this issue. Yes, the story has been suitably epic-space-adventuring-end-of-the-world type stuff – surely a deliberate nod to the old-school giant-sized crises the Avengers always faced in the past – but there seems to be something lacking in the smaller, more human side of the book. We have a team of disparate individuals with lots of potential for conflict, complex relationships and character moments, but we’ve yet to see any of that. I’m not reading Steve Rogers: Super-Soldier, but I’ve kind of felt like I have been, just with a bunch of bizarre guest-stars.

There is no doubt that having Steve Rogers gain the power of Nova in order to fight a possessed Richard Rider is a pretty cool comic-booky idea, but it never really gets cooler than the cover. The whole thing comes off as an anti-climax with little point. Is the moral of the story meant to be that Steve Rogers is awesome and the rest of his team don’t really have to do anything? Seriously, I think Valkyrie gets a whole single line in this. Thankfully there are some very promising signs of greatness to come. The Ant-Man sub-plot in this issue is excellent and is EXACTLY the kind of fun character work expect from Bru, and I’m intrigued by the Nick Fury sub-plot. I’m going to put any disappointment with the first arc down to growing pains and eagerly await some true-Bru goodness. I can understand wanting to start things off with a bang of a crazy planet-spanning story, but I reckon a bit more room for development in the first arc would have helped a lot.

Perhaps Bru’s just set the bench-mark spectacularly high or I was just expecting too much, but this issue was only really good when it could have easily been great. I have faith going forwards, though. After all, I can’t remember how long into it I fell in love with his Cap run…