Nice cover by Marco Djurdjevic, this one referencing Avengers #5. That guy was one of Marvel’s absolute top cover artists for awhile in this period and then just… poof. He went to work on like a video game or board game or something, but I don’t know if anything came of that, either. Very curious. He was really good! This month in Mighty Avengers, your creative team is the classic Daredevil line-up of Bendis, Alex Maleev and Matt Hollinsworth. The A-Team! These 3 bringing their A game is tough to beat! Much like NA 40, this issue opens with the end of a previous one, this time Secret War 5. Unlike in that case, it’s not the same artist, so Maleev redraws a couple pages of Nick Fury being revealed as an LMD and telling the assembled heroes he’s going to disappear. This time, we see some of it from his perspective, signing off, standing up from a computer, and walking away from his life.
Regular Nick Fury adopting Ultimate Nick Fury’s look as a disguise is hilarious. Next morning, Contessa gets up and puts on her wig, and says she’s going to get breakfast. Nick engages a cloaking device and follows her, and his paranoia is rewarded as he finds her meeting with someone, saying she gained his confidence, but it will take a week.
Alex wins the prize for craziest Skrull corpse, no contest. I think it’s great that you can see Nick having his cascading “What does this mean/why did this happen/who else is a Skrull?” experience the various Avengers have been having silently on this page. You can say a lot with a little with a great artist. Soon, a cloaked Nick watches and videos from a nearby roof as other Skrulls find the body and converse in their language. Then we skip shear 2 weeks to Maria Hill waking up to Nick in her room, on her computer.
Nick executes a daring escape via wingsuit and cloaking device, and Maria is left with nothing but what he said to her. Her guys can’t find him after the cloak.
And from reading NA 40, we know for sure this is Nick Fury making the rare completely incorrect play, which is actually pretty fun. That guy’s always 2 moves ahead. Not this time.
Well, they’ve shown their hand. I think we can expect Nick to resurface aaaaany second now. This kinda spy stuff is exactly the right material for this art team. So, you know, sure, these last 2 posts have no Spider-Man in them. But they’re pretty important to the story, and he’s in the story, and I’m covering the story. So why not cover them, too? I don’t know, man. Ultimately there’s no rules and why am I even worried about this, but that’s just how I do things, I guess.