Secret Avengers #1
My rating: D- will not be following the series until new writers come into the mix.
A lot of people have been complaining that it draws too strongly from movieverse Clint and Natasha. For me, that happens to be a major selling point. Because really, there are 4+ different versions of Clint and Nat running around and all of them have different characterizations.
So all that would be fine for me, if they actually pulled from the movieverse in a meaningful and interesting way.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
Things I liked a lot about the idea
- Natasha and Clint
- SPIES
- A starting plot centered around black magic (with strong Lovecraft references)
- Coulson, Fury, and Hill
Things that were awful in practice:
EVERYTHING
The plot was rushed and the writing was sloppy, for one. It was needlessly edgy and violent. Natasha was awesome, and that was pretty much the only okay thing about it. Less awesome was all the skeevy shit with memory implants. Like, it's completely unbelievable to me that any version of Natasha would be okay with that, especially after Coulson programmed them without their permission before they'd even agreed to hear the whole story.
And what happens to Clint in the first issue is almost worse than the Avengers heartwashing. I say 'almost' because there was zero narrative accountability for what happened and it was easily as shitty as anything that Loki did to Clint or made Clint do. Clint and Natasha are just treated like objects and completely stripped of their agency and I'm not okay with that (especially in the case of Natasha who's entire backstory is about taking the things that were used to oppress her and turning them into her tools of empowerment).
Great idea, but executed poorly.
A lot of people have been complaining that it draws too strongly from movieverse Clint and Natasha. For me, that happens to be a major selling point. Because really, there are 4+ different versions of Clint and Nat running around and all of them have different characterizations.
So all that would be fine for me, if they actually pulled from the movieverse in a meaningful and interesting way.
[Spoiler (click to open)]
Things I liked a lot about the idea
- Natasha and Clint
- SPIES
- A starting plot centered around black magic (with strong Lovecraft references)
- Coulson, Fury, and Hill
Things that were awful in practice:
EVERYTHING
The plot was rushed and the writing was sloppy, for one. It was needlessly edgy and violent. Natasha was awesome, and that was pretty much the only okay thing about it. Less awesome was all the skeevy shit with memory implants. Like, it's completely unbelievable to me that any version of Natasha would be okay with that, especially after Coulson programmed them without their permission before they'd even agreed to hear the whole story.
And what happens to Clint in the first issue is almost worse than the Avengers heartwashing. I say 'almost' because there was zero narrative accountability for what happened and it was easily as shitty as anything that Loki did to Clint or made Clint do. Clint and Natasha are just treated like objects and completely stripped of their agency and I'm not okay with that (especially in the case of Natasha who's entire backstory is about taking the things that were used to oppress her and turning them into her tools of empowerment).
Great idea, but executed poorly.