Dark Avengers 9 on 09/09, now we’re talkin’. When last we visited the various Avengers books, we left New Avengers 2 months behind Dark Avengers. But I think, chronologically, this arc of DA comes next, so here we go. Welcome Mike Deodato’s copy of Poser back to the blog. Or don’t. I don’t! This issue begins with Victoria Hand going to Norman Osborn’s lab, trying to get ahold of him, but he’s locked in and won’t come out. He should just stay in there.
They continue to have an awkward conversation about how Ares is working for the bad guys and won’t admit it, and then he storms out, leaving Phobos alone. How and why Phobos is a child, I don’t know, but Marvel god stuff is always changing. Then Phobos hears a “beep beep.”
Ares somehow follows them back to the new Secret Warriors safe house without being noticed despite driving the world’s largest and presumably loudest motorcycle. Back at the fort, Nick Fury is making his charges read up on AIM when Ares kicks in the door. The team watches him tear through their base on security cameras, Fury weirdly just standing there, until Ares is in the room with them, and has also smashed most of it on the way in.
I always thought this was weird. This is Secret Warriors stuff. Yes, it’s important for Ares, a member of this book’s cast, but it’s more important for Phobos and his team. Seems like something that should’ve happened in their book. To drive that point home, Ares leaves, and the team celebrates the fact that Phobos can stay with them. Fury says they obviously have to abandon this base, and chastises Daisy for letting Ares follow her, and they pack up and head back to their own comic.
Bullseye having to have that stupid target carved in his forehead because of that awful Daredevil movie rankles to this day. Bendis, at least, came up with a pretty gnarly and memorable way to make it happen in Daredevil, but still. The comics pandering to a movie audience that’s never coming bothers me in general, but especially when the thing they copy is stupid. 22 years as I write this since that movie was released, long after it was been resigned to the trash bin of history and replaced with the infinitely superior Netflix show, Bullseye still has that stupid thing on his head in the comics. Bullseye was on the Netflix show, shouldn’t comics Bullseye look like him now? We hates it, precious. Still. He got off light compared to Ms. Marvel. But that’s for… much, much later.
Well, dang, the Sentry’s dead. Again. I’m sure it’s permanent this time. That extremely thrilling final page is Osborn emerging from his lab. By the time this issue was out, we knew we were driving toward the overdue end of this Norman Osborn nonsense. It could not come soon enough for me.