Mighty Avengers #12 Review

MIGHTY AVENGERS #12
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Alex Maleev

Not sure why they chose that cover for this issue, as not one of those characters appears in the book. In fact, not one Mighty Avenger, unless you count the recently defected Spider-Woman, shows up here. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it's bad enough when they have fake or sensationalized covers for events that happen in books and now we're getting completely random covers altogether. I guess I miss older covers that gave you some idea of what a book was about.

This month's issue takes a break from current events and tells us what happened to Nick Fury post-Secret War. If you didn't read that mini-series, it was actually pretty good and worth a read if you're interested in what lead to Fury's ousting from SHIELD.

Anyways, the issue is comprised of flashbacks to various time periods, dating back to over 2 years ago, Marvel time, and deals specifically with Fury's first encounter with the Skrull infiltration.

During Fury's self-imposed retirement, Countess Valentina DeFontaine, the same one that recently killed and replaced Dugan in Secret Invasion, pays Fury a little visit. Fury, always the spy, follows her while using his cloaking watch and finds her talking to another human about getting Fury's access codes and doing it for the Queen and so on. Fury returns to the apartment and holds the imposter at gunpoint, demanding to know who she is and what she wants. When she refuses, he shoots her in the head, killing her. I'm a little confused at this point, as she bled green from the initial wound and I thought they bled red blood with the new undetectable replacement. The dead Countess reverts to her Skrull form, leaving Fury to ponder the situation.

Another scene showed Fury infiltrating the SHIELD Helicarrier and having a chat with the then newly appointed Director Maria Hill and giving her some vague advice on watching out for the Skrulls without actually mentioning Skrulls.

Finally, we get closer to the presnet where Fury hooks back up with Spider-Woman and she becomes a triple agent for SHIELD, Hydra and Fury. Fury actually tells her about the Skrulls, which makes me curious about her actions with Skrullektra.

The issue ends with Nick Fury looking over a bulletin board full of photos of numerous heroes. He has several circled in red and others in blue and, I'm assuming an artists error, has doubles of all the Young Avengers for some reason. My guess is red circles represent definite or high propability Skrulls and blue circles are either not Skrulls or people he is unsure of.

Verdict - Check It. There's no Skrull reveals here, there's no major revelations on Fury's underground movements and, while not a bad issue, this doesn't answer any questions I had about Fury or Skrulls and does nothing to bolster my interest in Secret Invasion. I did like this issue and it was a good read, but I expected a lot more from this considering we're smack dab in the middle of a major event.

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