Secret Avengers #16

The best way to read a comic book is with lots of natural light. This makes spring and summer the best months. What I find is that a post-run endorphin high improves the experience as well. I stumbled upon this one evening after work. It was early summer. I was just back from a run in Fort Tryon Park. The light coming through my sixth floor studio apartment windows was ample and had a green-tinted aqueous quality. I dug into an Iron Man comic book. At that point I probably hadn't read a comic book in a decade. The experience was mind-blowing. Iron Man battled Mandarin and a bunch of dragons on mainland China. I was young, fit and my brain was coursing with natural opioids. I flew along with Tony Stark as he fought in mid-air with the dragons; plus, Mandarin blasting away with those damn rings of his. The green of the dragons was highlighted by the green light pouring through my open windows. From that point forward, this would have been 1991, I was convinced that comic books are much more than a juvenile, toss-off media. Now this is widely acknowledged not only by aesthetes but Wall Street as well since comic-book-derived blockbusters keep the big studios afloat.

Secret Avengers, currently in its third volume, has never been much more than mediocre. (Though that is not entirely true -- Rick Remender's volume one run was noteworthy for its exploration of artificial life.) I think Secret Avengers was designed to maintain a sinister vibe in Marvel's Avengers franchise once Dark Avengers, the seminal Marvel title during the early days of the Obama administration, was cancelled.

I must say I greatly enjoyed the last issue, Secret Avengers #16, of the second volume, seven scans from which you can inspect below. In the first four, Mockingbird fights a battle to the death with A.I.M. Scientist Supreme, Dr. Andrew Forson. It is always good to see a tertiary hero get some time in the spotlight. Artist Luke Ross outdoes himself here. He maintains Mockingbird's femininity but captures the brutality of the fight with Forson. She takes a knife to the pelvis and returns it by forcing the blade into Forson's face. Ross's use of multiple inset panels to capture the action is superb. As an example of the medium, I don't think it gets any finer.

Then, for the pièce de résistance, take a look at the last three scans of a wasted Mentallo sitting on an A.I.M. Island beach at sunset as nanobots trickle out of his ear and into the surf (capturing sort of what I felt like reading that post-work, post-run Iron Man comic book long ago). Writers Nick Spencer and Ales Kot are to be praised.