The Initiative Has Been Disassembled
Hank Pym deals with the loss of his wife in the aftermath of the Secret Invasion and decides to leave the Initiative. Tigra is also finding it difficult dealing with her pregnancy by the Hank Pym Skrull imposter and is deciding whether or not to keep the child. The Shadow Initiative is sent on a mission to capture Hardball who has defected to Hydra. With Norman Osborn now in charge, he makes plenty of changes disassembling the Initiative and closes Camp Hammond down.
My Thoughts:
Christos N. Gage handles the writing with exception of the first issue which was co-written with Dan Slott. This series has never been one of my favorites and rarely manages to get me excited. It's had a few good moments but has failed to be a standout series in my opinion.
I did like what happened in this volume and found it to be completely appropriate. It would make sense now that Osborn is in charge that he would make several drastic changes within the Initiative and wasn't at all surprised to see him put people like Taskmaster and the Hood in charge. It will be interesting to see how those two handle the young students there.
I do like how they expanded on recent events involving Hank Pym and Tigra. That was a nicely added touch bringing a little emotion to the series. The rest of the story was pretty action-packed involving the return of Ragnarok, a fight between the Shadow Initiative and Hydra, and the Gauntlet and Tigra being forced to run from H.A.M.M.E.R. agents.
The issues centering around Reptil was better than I thought it would be. At first glance I thought the character was going to be a little boring and uninteresting. However, he shows promise and could possibly evolve into a more formidable hero in the future.
The art in the first issue was done by Steve Kurth whose style was great. The next four issues were drawn by Humberto Ramos. Ramos has a unique and easily identifiable style which you either like or you don't. Personally I have always enjoyed his style and love seeing it. Steve Uy did the pencils on the Reptil issue.
If you're the person who keeps up with the big story arcs and enjoys reading all the tie-ins, this is directly tied into the events of Dark Reign. If you've never read an issue of this series before I wouldn't recommend this being a good place to begin. You'll have to decide if this series is something you want to become invested in. If so I would say start at the beginning to get the whole story.
Rating: 3/5
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