Secret Avengers #1 - Nick Fury Jr is a dick

[ablackraptor]

Long story short for those not in the know, Secret Avengers was rebooted, and part of that is reinventing the team for New!SHIELD, where they'll be doing secret Missions, just like before, but this time they'll be mind-wiped after every mission, so they won't tell the other Avengers.


To start with, Clint and Nat are the first recruited for SHIELD's new initiative, and despite the fact neither like the idea of the operation, they agree to sign up for missions they won't remember after they're blackmailed by something unidentified. Then, they go out on their first mission:



I know its standard practice for Nick Fury to be, well, a very bad word, but he always did it in a way that makes you, not want to punch him in the face, but to cry out that it was a brilliant piece of jackassery. Then, you know, get on with the face punching.
But his son, who I'm still not happy about, seems to be carrying that.
And, it turns out, that the real mission was to test out the memory implant tech, to see if the blanked memories are still blanked when they get possessed and other such, like, say, what happens to Hawkeye in the preview (I'd post that but it requires too many pictures to get the whole thing, so...).
It also turns out, that the memory erasing implants also allow them to alter the blanked out memories, so when they get reactivated, they remember things different from what really happened. You know, like things that would make them unwilling to work for them.



They wanted to test out the memory tech, so they thought the best way was to shoot an Avenger? OK, what was the plan if it failed? What would happen if the memory stuff gave away and Clint remembered he got shot? What would they do when Captain America came knocking on their door demanding to know why Hawkeye was shot by SHIELD to test out some special tech?

Anyway, the next issue brings in Taskmaster (Yay!), issue three's recruiting the new Iron Patriot (who is almost definitely Rhodey), issue Four's recruiting Hulk, then I assume they'll be recruiting the remaining agents in need of recruiting. Honestly I would've proffered Bobbi be the second recruit, but you have to wait for nice things. I'll assume they'll be adding more team members each issue for the first five or six issues, then release that as a trade, it seems the most likely.

Comments

[kevinroc]

Marvel just released a teaser image for Ion Man 3 of Don Cheadle wearing the Iron Patriot costume.

[mrstatham]

And we do know how Marvel just likes to shove those movie tie-ins right up our butts.

[halloweenjack]

Quite a few things are done in comics just to drive up the sales figures, and Joss Whedon is making the Marvel division of Disney a shitload more money than Bendis is.

[ablackraptor]

Maybe they should think of having Joss write some comics then. He's still got some very critically successful comic runs under his belt as it is, no reason to not at least offer him a book or two to write, even if its just a movie tie-in series.

[mrstatham]

I'm not entirely sure where Bendis has to come into the equation other than I've mentioned him elsewhere. And that's still no justification for the manner in which Marvel do shoehorn in these ridiculous tie-ins, as if more people are actually buying comics because of the movies, when it's blatantly not the case. Whedon might make them more money than Bendis, but he's making money on movies that don't directly affect comic sales.

[ablackraptor]

I think its somewhat relevant considering Bendis is at least partially behind some of these stories. I mean, I'm pretty sure he created Marcus Johnson, and is responsible for a few other things.
Plus, it may be because Bendis is Marvel's biggest talent right now. For the past decade, he's been the big guy in charge of all the main books. That's been handed to Remender and Hickman now, but Bendis is still largely at the centre for most of this.

[mrstatham]

Why is Spencer setting out to make Hill an asshole again? I'd hope she'd know better than to be involved in something like this after Fury left SHIELD because of shit like this. And dammit, I actually LIKED Hill in Invincible Iron Man.

[bruinsfan]

She's been one consistently in every appearance I've seen in New Avengers.

[ablackraptor]

Well, there is a reason Cobie Smulders refers to her as the 'biggest [word not appropriate for Scans Daily] in the Marvel Universe'.

[mrstatham]

Which, again, seems to be based on the most 'popular' storyline she's in.

[ablackraptor]

True, I guess her personality during Civil War is to her what dying is to Jean Grey and hitting his wife is to Hank Pym: Happened once, and despite others doing it far more often, they're the one who'll never live it down.

[mrstatham]

Which stinks, frankly. I hate that whenever most people bring up Hill, they seem to have the 'telling Captain America to do as he's told or get his ass arrested' scene in mind as defining her whole character, despite them often knowing full well who wrote that scene and what his attitude toward America tends to be.

Yes, she used psychics on Spider-Man, yes, she was kind-of obnoxious in some of her early appearances, but given the way Marvel was leaning at that point, 'obnoxious' could be said of a lot of Marvel characters. I also hate that they gave her shit for the things she did, despite the fact you could guarantee Fury would never get the same treatment.

[ablackraptor]

Agreed, though Fury does, at large, tend to get similar treatment at times too, especially in adaptations. My biggest problem with EMH was its depiction of Fury at times made me gt annoyed. But I do agree, Hill gets it worse, EMH was pretty bad with her too.

[mrstatham]

I'd agree, if you're talking about the old volume of New Avengers. Fraction and Bendis himself did a hell of a lot of work, to me, making her more palatable from about Secret Invasion onward - she appeared to have learnt her lesson from Civil War, although maybe not being written by Millar helps. Here? This is straight back into the dickery, and like Daisy - She should know better. Maria KNOWS her predecessor got his ass thrown out of SHIELD for this kind of thing.

[darkknightjrk]

I don't remember her not being an asshole anywhere else, really, but then after a while I only read Invincible through S_D, so that may have something to do with it.

[norj]

They weren't testing the bullets, SHIELD wanted to be sure that the memory implants worked so they had him captured and interrogated by the bad guys.

[ablackraptor]

That's what it was talking about? Huh, I must've read it wrong.

[ablackraptor]

OK, double read it and you're right, and I've now fixed the entry. Don't know how I got the idea it was the bullets they were testing.

[protogarrett]

Nah... this won't bite SHIELD in the ass. It'll be cool.

Also, is that Maria Hill or Daisy Johnson. (Poor Daisy... she got to be an Avenger - in the background - for one mission. Seemed like a waste of a good plot line having a SHIELD agent controlling the Avengers from within, though I suppose that's what this is now.)

[mrstatham]

Hill's working with this team of Avengers, presumably with some overlap with her appearances in Hulk - who I think knows about this stuff already. Daisy is still the current Director of SHIELD, from what I know - which is one of the reasons the 'Von Bardas op' gets referenced here. Daisy was involved with that and that involved memory implants just like the ones being used here.

[chieflewal]

Yeah you'd think being an world security force that's messed up so bad in the past, they might kind of lay low, play it straight, maybe do some desk work for a while.

[filthysize]

Oh boy. This premise makes the ending of Brubaker's Winter Soldier really awkward.

[chieflewal]

Ha. Yes. Sometimes I wonder what it's like sitting in that room on those Marvel retreats.

[filthysize]

Brubaker's not with Marvel anymore. Safe!

"Okay, nobody tell Ed we're undoing his ending, like, a week later, okay? Good. Now onto our next movie tie-in event."

[sun_man]

wow this was awesome. Nick Fury is the fucking man! Definetly going to be following this book

[ablackraptor]

I'm more following it for Clint, Taskmaster, and Bobbi, but it will at least give me time to familiarize with Nick Fury Jr. I still think that introducing his son was a terrible way to change the character to look like Samuel L Jackson though. I would've proffered if they just had him use some spy tech to change his face for spy reasons,or you know, kept him ow he was, I'm not picky, so long as he has an eyepatch I'm happy.

[salinea]

I think it's way more creepy to have a character who has always been white but who now appear as a PoC via tech. It's, like, blackface, which is pretty damn creepy.


(I think Psylocke is very creepy too).

[ablackraptor]

I guess so. Never really thought about it that way. Still, I think there's a better way to 'Jacksonize' Fury without replacing him with his son who conveniently loses his eye and ends up just taking Nick Fury's name and position in the Marvel Universe despite being just a marine (admittedly being a marine is a big deal, but not on the same level of being a super spy with personal relationships with everyone).

[darkknightjrk]

I think what bothered me more was the reveal at the end that his name actually is Nick Fury. That just seemed like too much. I've thought since then that it would have been better if they find his birth certificate says "Marcus Nicolas Fury," and people decide to nickname him "Nick."

That said, I kinda love how they lampshaded that whole thing here and related it to Bond chronology. :D

[ablackraptor]

It is kind of weird, considering that, if he's spent all this time going by the name Marcus Johnson, why would he suddenly start using his father's name again? I mean, its kind of weird to start using a name you've never used yourself, while hanging out with all your dad's 'friends' who all know that name as the name of an immortal one eyed sour puss.

Honestly, its like those bad Smallville fics where Lois Lane dies and her cousin Chloe assumes the name Lois for no other reason then the writer proffers Chloe and thinks this is a good idea. Or, you know, kinda like how they did that in the show itself concerning Jimmy Olsen.

[alan_smithee]

On a social-political level, there is something disconcerting about a grown African-American man discovering that his father is effectively "THE MAN" and a key part of the military-industrial complex and then completely disregarding his identity to be effectively mirror the life of his father.

or something...

[ablackraptor]

Well, Marcus/Nick Jr was already an accomplished Military man before he knew who his father was, and while he keeps getting a lot of big important jobs to do, he is largely just another SHIELD agent at this point, in fact I'm pretty sure he's not even that high ranking, so its more of just he transferred over to the division his father used to be in charge of rather than trying to mirror his father's life.
Now, if he was, say, a banker or school teacher who discovered his father was Nick Fury, then as instantly and willingly put in charge of SHIELD on the simple grounds that his father was Nick Fury, then there'd be something up with it.

[darkknightjrk]

Yeah--in the first page he appears in, Nick is referred to as Agent Fury.

[icon_uk]

Why would ANYONE agree to sign up for a series of missions involving mindwipes, when SHIELD has, on numerous occasions, been completely compromised by bad guys?

[ablackraptor]

They actually don't explain why. Nat and Clint ask for one good reason why they should sign up, Coulson then says something that isn't shown, and they instantly agree.