Avengers the Initiative Vol.3: Secret Invasion

Avengers the Initiative kicks it into high gear with a Secret Invasion.  The story is told through two different perspectives, Crusader who is a cadet at the Camp Hammond & a Skrull who has turned his back on the Empire.  The second main character is 3-D Man who is currently part of the Hawaiian team of heroes.  The story goes back & forth between the two characters as they react to learning about the Skrulls & fighting from two different sides back to Camp Hammond.   I really liked the characterization of both Crusader & 3-D Man & I really liked this book up until the last page.  Part of me wishes it it could have ended differently but I don't know how that could have been accomplished.

The Mighty Avengers Vol. 2: Secret Invasion

This is a great companion piece to Secret Invasion just like volume 5 of New Avengers.  This collection sets up so much in just a short amount of time.  The origins of Nick Fury's new team Secret Warriors in set in motion in this book.  There is a lot of back story in these issues about when the Skrulls replaced certain heroes.  I really liked this book & I have a new respect for Secret Invasion now that I have read these to main Avengers titles.  There is a nice epilogue showcasing the funeral of the Wasp.  Tony Stark has been demoted by the government & removed from S.H.I.E.L.D. only to be replaced by Norman Osborn.  To find out more pick up the upcoming Avengers title Dark Avengers.

The New Avengers Vol. 5

The Secret Invasion is in full swing & this book is a great supplement of stories that give more of a back-story than a side-story.  I like all of the planning & build-up that the Skrulls have set in motion to prepare for their invasion.  This volume & Brian Michael Bendis's Avengers run as a whole has given me a new appreciation for the Secret Invasion story-arc.  I would recommend that if you're are looking at reading Secret Invasion or any event set forth from Marvel Comics from Avengers Disassembled to the current running Secret Wars make sure you are reading the Avengers titles concurrently alongside it.  The X-Men are still relatively separate but are still involved with major Marvel events.  This volume alone makes me want to pick up Secret Invasion again & reread it.

Avengers the Initiative Vol. 2: Killed in Action

A lot happens in this volume characters die, allegiances change & new characters arrive.  It seems that the first round of recruits has even graduated by the end of this collection.  This book is Avengers trying to be X-Men with a training facility except they don't know how to train these kids instead it seems like trial by fire every step of the way.  Dan Slott is still writing this book but is now sharing those duties with Christos Gage.  These young heroes are constantly paying for the mistakes made by the adults in this collection everything from poor leadership to the brilliant idea that it was OK to create clones of M.V.P. & give one of those clones their most powerful weapon.  A new batch of recruits arrive & they look even sadder than the first batch.  Really the only high point of this series is that it spins off into New Warriors.  Bring on Secret Invasion because skrulls are showing up everywhere.

Avengers the Initiative Vol. 1: Basic Training

Before Dan Slott joined the Spider-Man collective that retooled Amazing Spider-Man after the One More Day story-arc he also joined Bendis in telling a new tale set in the Avengers stable.  Set after the events of Civil War & tying into World War Hulk, Tony Stark as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. has instituted a 50 state initiative to train heroes for every state.  Some of the heroes picked or created for this series have very little depth.  Cloud 9 is by far the most interesting of these characters while The Gauntlet is just a painful character to read.  I like all of the posturing & references to the survival of the New Warriors which had a short lived series that started up around this time.  The Initiative has some great instructors in Yellow Jacket, War Machine & Justice.  However there is one major character who feels really out of place in this series & that is Peter Henry Gyrich.  As a fan of the 90s X-Men cartoon I thought he was primarily an X-Men villain.  I really want to know more about M.V.P. it looked like he died but there is clearly more than meets the eye to his character.  Out of the three of Avengers titles on the shelves at this time this is clearly the least interesting.

The New Avengers Vol. 4

This volume of New Avengers takes place concurrently with the events in the first volume of The Mighty Avengers.  There are references made to the World War Hulk story-arc that happened after Civil War.  So far all of these Avengers titles have been taking place before Brand New Day because Peter Parker is still wearing the black suit.  Luke Cage really shines in this collection he is rapidly becoming a fan favorite of this series I really like the dynamic created by this team of Avengers.  The second half of this collection is the Illuminati mini-series showed how the Marvel Illuminati set in motion the events that lead to the Secret Invasion story-arc.  They even gather the Infinity Gems to prevent another Infinity Gauntlet event.  This leads to Uatu the Watcher to arrive showing grave disappointment in Reed Richards in particular.  The Watcher even states that if Reed uses the Infinity Gauntlet he will destroy everything.  Later on the group confronts the Beyonder in the Asteroid Belt & believed that have convinced him to leave their universe.  It seems very vague on where the Beyonder did go but it provided a little more background to who & what he is.  I really like how Bendis has instilled this idea of the Illuminati in the Marvel Universe it makes sense & I can see the early seeds being planted for Secret Wars which is going on currently.