Nick Fury and the reunited Howling Commandos lead the 1200 S.H.I.E.L.D. agents who refused the automatic transfer to Norman Osborn’s H.A.M.M.E.R. into battle as they attempt to steal a helicarrier or three out from under H.A.M.M.E.R.’s noses. They’re outnumbered five to one (and that’s before Hydra shows up) but those are just the kind of odds that guys like Fury and Dum Dum Dugan live for.
Hickman writes one hell of a badass Nick Fury. He’s not the suave lothario of the Steranko era; he’s more like the bastard clone of Bruce Willis and Clint Eastwood who’s seen more combat than the average Joe will see in five lifetimes and every word that comes out of his mouth makes you wish that you could grow up to be half that cool.
He tells a mean story as well. Reading this book makes me wish Hickman was writing a G.I. Joe title, as he obviously has a good handle on high-tech special ops intelligence vs. terrorists kind of stuff. This book has a foot in both the bleeding edge tech spy world and the crazy, magical powers superhero world: which puts it squarely in the Marvel Universe.
And the book is still only two hundred and ninety-nine cents. So that’s nice.
This issue flew by, and not in the good way. I’d say roughly 99% of the book was a fight scene, and with gigantic panels (maybe three - five per page) and more double-page spreads than are ever necessary, it took about 2 minutes to read the whole thing. It didn’t exactly feel as though I was getting my money’s worth and almost felt as though nothing happened at all. I’m going to issue a “filler alert” on this one – stretching it out for the trade, perhaps?
Cover art to SECRET WARRIORS #5 by Jim Cheung
It really felt like nothing got accomplished in this issue, but I’ll be damned if this title isn’t moving to the top of my must read list anyway. However, this issue felt like a big setback in that regard. If you’ve been picking up the series and haven’t made it to the shop yet this week, you could honestly just skip this issue and wait for the next one. Seriously, nothing really happens.
But overall, I’ve been very impressed with this first storyarc and if Hickman can keep it up, I’ll be in for the long haul. I’m giving the issue a C+ due to the whole “2 minute read” thing. It was still fun, and doesn’t deserve a failing grade, but it did not live up to expectations and didn’t feel like it was worth $2.99. I’ve read worse; I’ve read better.
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I was disappointed too. As I said on the Comicscape board, last issue they apologized for being all exposition and no action. They said this issue would be action packed. And it did have some action, but it also had more exposition! But I agree there were too many captionless spreads. Not enough fighting, too much big picture stuff. The balance was off and the need to go back in time (twice!) to set up the action (which is what they said they were doing last issue) killed the pacing.
Also, what the hell is this book about? It started out being about Nick's super team, and in this issue (SPOILER) for the big fight, they didn't even show up until the second to last page! It also looked like this title was going to be about how SHIELD was actually a front for HYDRA all these years. When is that ever gonna get payed out? How are they Secret Warriors when both HYDRA and HAMMER know that they exist? How is it a secret any more? Or is this book actually just about a post-SHIELD big organization? What is the focus? Who are the people we're supposed to care about? Why are we now focusing on Dum Dum and Gabe? Where is Puck, for example? This title is too confused to care about. Not confusing, as in complex. Just confused as in they don't know what they want to be, they just want to slap a Darque Rein title on the cover to try and keep it somehow relevant. When, instead, they could just be relevant.
C-Plus was generous 'cause the action wasn't even very good. One nice unexpected betrayal in the first scene, and nothing much else going on. C-Minus.