Comic Vine Review

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Secret Avengers #9 - This is the Way, Step Inside

4

More developments with M.O.D.O.K.'s plans. What will Maria Hill and the Avengers do next?

The Good

There's been some crazy things happening in this series. The whole idea of M.O.D.O.K. defecting from his terrorist ways to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. was strange from the beginning. While it appeared he was actually doing some good things for S.H.I.E.L.D., it turns out all of their recent problems and attacks were because of M.O.D.O.K. But has he had an actual change of heart? There's so many questions and so much going on, you can't be too sure of anything.

While this series has a smaller team, we've been seeing them spread out in different story threads. Maria Hill is trying to figure things out about M.O.D.O.K. with Spider-Woman, Phil Coulson is still missing, Hawkeye discovers why he's been hanging out with Deadpool. And there's still the matter of what will be the fates of Nick Fury Jr, Black Widow, and Lady Bullseye (even though she's not an Avenger).

Ales Kot splits the issue up by touching on the different situations with most of these characters. There's also M.O.D.O.K. who is making the next move in his updated plan. There may not be big action directly going on but you get a sense of a lot happening. There's the feeling that more is going on and we're not even close to finding out all the information.

Michael Walsh continues to capture the feeling and essence of the different characters in their individual struggles. There's always subtle signs of emotion on the characters' faces or through their body language. Walsh mixes up the perspective from scene to scene or panel to panel to give some variety to how everything plays out. Matthew Wilson's colors make everything look nice and neat. Because there's so many different locations, the mix of colors makes it look very appealing.

The Bad

For a team book, we don't get to see a lot of teamwork. A small joy in the early issues was seeing how all the characters interacted with each other. Having them spread out gives the book a bigger feeling but it also makes the characters feel more unattached from each other. I'm still waiting to find out how a couple of the team members will do given what's happened to them a few issues ago. Despite this, I still love this series.

The Bad

What has M.O.D.O.K. done? It seemed he was actually defecting to S.H.I.E.L.D. but recent revelations have shown he's been the cause of the team's problems. But then again, maybe he's not as bad as it seems. Ales Kot is giving us a lot of different plotlines and showing different layers to the characters. Michael Walsh's art and Matthew Wilson's colors are like candy for my eyes. It would be nice to have the team come together once again since this is a team book. But with all the different crazy situations happening, you can't help but be hooked. SECRET AVENGERS delivers a great mix of intrigue, suspense, action, humor, and M.O.D.O.K. What more could you ask for?