Secret Avengers 18: Swallow My Von Doom Radiation

I was honestly kind of pissed when I first finished Secret Avengers 16; I tossed it on the table and said, “Thanks Warren, but I read it when it was called NextWave.” Then I remembered a few things:

1. I LOVED NextWave and:
2. I am a cynical mouthy douchebag prone to bitching prior to thinking, and:
3. I hate your face. Fuck off.

Secret Avengers isn’t as over the top as NextWave was, I’m guessing because you can get away with being over the top when you’re dealing with characters nobody cares about. After all, it’s okay if Monica Rambeau stomps the testicles off of Forbush Man because even in the ranks of seriously antisocial, Mom’s basement dwelling superfandom, I defy you to find anyone who cares about what damage occurs to those testicles and / or the foot after the kick. Seriously, why not have Machine Man be a shitfaced misanthrope? Before that, he was forgotten. Which would probably make you a shitfaced misanthrope. But as usual, I digress.

Secret Avengers feels like Warren Ellis is taking a middle ground to the madness of NextWave and the continuity of the Marvel Universe – yes, Steve Rogers, The Black Widow, The Beast and Moon Night are more mainstream characters, but to me, this story clearly takes place out of current continuity. I don’t recall hearing anything official about Secret Avengers being outside of standard continuity, but the biggest tipoff is that Steve Rogers appears as the leader of SHIELD, whereas in standard continuity he has returned to duty as Captain America due to the sacrifice of Bucky Barnes, the orders of the President, and the constant whimper of “But guuuuuys, there’s a Captain American moooooovie out!” from Marvel’s Marketing people. But again, I’m drifting.

If you’re looking for fun in a single-serving, one-and-done package, this book delivers. Big, stupid action sequences. Nuclear-powered Cadillacs. Von Doom Radiation (Which is how I will now refer to my semen). Excellent dialogue, and simple, yet solid line work by Jamie McKelvie that filled in the gaps that could easily have come into a book with such a focus on the dialogue… with one glaring exception: there’s a panel sequence where a tank fires a shell at our heroes’ car. The Black Widow curses, and the shell… Well, fuck it – here it is:

It took me three reads and a lot of flipping pages back and forth to figure out where the tank that fired the rocket was in relation to the car, how the car must have maneuvered in order for it to miss, and based on the perspective, figure out if it actually missed or if it just punched through the back of the car, simultaneously killing The Beast and giving heart attacks to the Marvel Marketing guys trying to lure Kelsey Grammar into a sequel.

But frankly, that’s a minor storytelling bitch when in the same book you get a panel like this…

…that tells you everything you need to know about how Black Widow feels about Beast’s yammering without saying a word (PROTIP: She won’t be working with Beast’s Von Doom Radiation anytime soon).

I don’t have a star system for reviews, but we’re talking about a book containing the line, “You are a borderline psychotic who wears a white bag over his head in public,” while winning me a million time travel bar arguments at SDCC (“If you just move through TIME, the Earth will have moved, and you’ll die like a pig outside a pod bay door in ten seconds, you filthy Trekkie!”) and ending in a nuclear explosion. If you don’t think that sounds like a fun comic, you’re dead inside. Check it out.

And while you’re at it, check out this preview of McKelvie’s art on Secret Avengers 18, out on September 28th (via Comic Book Resources).