I imagine anyone tasked with a cover like this is just desperately trying not to think of the Frank Miller Wolverine cover. It’s pretty deeply ingrained in the comics imagination.
Iron Man lets off a “concussion burst,” and then a couple more, to knock out everyone they want knocked out. When they ask why he didn’t just do this back at Stark’s, he points out he was trying to, but they were all in the way. They start talking to Harada all grown-up-like, IM still occasionally zapping or Spider-Man webbing a ninja, when Cage socks the Silver Samurai in mid-sentence. That’s rude.
Oo, time for thrilling exposition!
This isn’t really lining up with what I know of Silver Samurai (“Hi, Jessica?”), but what I know isn’t a whole lot. He sure did used to be pals with Viper, tho. He even points that out as Jessica insists they’re taking Viper into custody. But he says he’s going to take credit for the fall of the Hand and use that to rebuild his name, and the Avengers leave. As they fly, Spider-Man notes that, if the Sentry had been with them, it would’ve been over in minutes, but Cap says Sentry isn’t ready yet. Jess says Harada is already talking to the press, and Tony says they should do the same. That it’s time to announce the new Avengers to the world. Cap is taking the implication that the US government is responsible for Harada and others being kidnapped hard, and Tony wonders why. Meanwhile, in the back of the jet, Spider-Man is desperate to know who Ronin is, but all his guesses go nowhere, and Ronin and Cap are keeping it a secret… for some reason? Then, in a sequence that ought to be claustrophobic and tense, but is frankly beyond David Finch’s skills in this period, Viper wordlessly communicates to Jess that now’s the time for her to escape, and Jessica unhappily, stealthily opens an emergency hatch.
Jess grabs Cap with her legs, but isn’t strong enough to carry both of them, and then Iron Man grabs her, noting it was a close one. Back in the plane, there’s a brief argument about whether she could’ve survived her escape, and how it could’ve happened, and Ronin seems to know, but doesn’t say anything.
Who could he be? And why does he suddenly, allofasudden, out of nowhere, need Cap to tell him what Iron Man’s saying?
Because “he” wouldn’t have known what Iron Man was saying the whole time due to being deaf! Womp womp! There is literally no reason Echo needed to wear a fake man suit. None! One more page, tho:
Gasp! Cap isn’t totally dumb! Will Jessica come clean? What happens if she does? That’ll all have to wait til the block after next. In what this experience cemented as typical Bendis fashion, a year after insisting no one had figured out who the villain of Disassembled was despite everyone figuring out who the villain of Disassembled was, Bendis insisted at the time that this was always the plan, that Ronin was always Echo, despite that making no sense whatsoever. Despite the fact that it was perfectly teed up to be Daredevil to the point that literally anyone else wouldn’t make sense. It was only years later that he admitted the truth of the behind-the-scenes DD changes. Part of the problem was his DD story wasn’t over yet when this saw print, but his final issue was only 4 months away, the secrecy wasn’t gonna last much longer. And it still took a long time after the fact for him to admit what happened. Just a weird series of events. And a pretty unsatisfying unmasking. Even sillier, we’ll never see Echo in the Ronin suit again. But anyone who’s seen the Marvel movies can probably guess who its next occupant is. And I don’t know if it was meant to be, but that’s Dave Finch’s final issue of New Avengers. Seems a rather abrupt exit. His next regular gig a revamped Moon Knight series, of all things. But I think it was the age-old strategy of putting a very popular creator on a not-so-popular book to juice sales. Anyway. New Avengers will not have anything like a regular artist for a whopping 14 issues after this. Which was somewhat by design, but even so, what quickly became Marvel’s biggest title not having a regular artist was and is pretty insane.