Mighty Avengers Vol. 3: Dark Reign

This final volume of this iteration of the Mighty Avengers takes place following the events of Secret Invasion & goes all the way to Siege.  This is a new team of Avengers since Tony Stark is on the run & Norman Osborn is now in charge of the America's sanctioned Avengers team under the guise of Iron Patriot.  Hank Pym is here to clear his good name after the Skrulls dragged it & his reputation through the mud.  Other members of this team include Hercules, Amadeus Cho, Jarvis, Vision, Stature, U.S. Agent & Quicksilver these are the main members of the team there are a few guest members throughout the series.  Scarlet Witch appears to return but be weary not everything is as it appears.  Overall I didn't think this series was all that bad it is not as integral to the overall story as New Avengers or Dark Avengers but there is a wackiness that really pays off in this series.  If you are a fan of any of the characters that make up this team of Avengers then this series is for you.  Hercules disappears near the end of this story due to the mini-event Assault on Mount Olympus.

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.

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.