Secret Avengers #13
Writer: Nick Spencer
Pencils: Scot Eaton
Inks: Jaime Mendoza & Rick Ketcham
Colors: Frank D’Armata
Letters: Dave Lanphear
Cover artists: Adi Granov (regular)/Lee Weeks (variant)
Editor: Tom Brevoort
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Price: $3.99 US

After reading this comic book, at first I couldn’t quite decide if I’d read one of the smartest Marvel publications so far this year or one of the corniest, most ham-fisted ones of 2011. There are a lot of things I enjoyed about Nick Spencer’s plot and script. The political elements, the over-the-top notion that saves the day, a couple of sharp turns of phrase and a believable connection between two characters despite the fact that one of them had only just been introduced all made me smile. But for every strength that Spencer’s writing brought to the book, there’s a flaw that detracted from the reading experience and took me out of the story. I was only planning on writing a capsule review (one of my Quick Critiques) of this comic book, but I found that as I got going, I had a lot more to say about it than I expected. As I sorted through the pros and cons that I perceived, I ultimately realized that no, this wasn’t one of Marvel’s strongest offerings of the year, but rather a strong foundation upon which a rickety house was built.