Secret Avengers #5
Written by Ed Brubaker
Art by David Aja and Michael Lark
Holy crap, why couldn’t we have opened with this issue? After four issues of nothing making sense but for some reason everyone is on Mars, and Nick Fury apparently being evil, we’ve finally got an issue that not only gives us story in a single serving dose, but actually has a well crafted Brubaker story that has been missed in this title. The evilish Nick Fury from the previous arc needed explaining, as Nick Fury is supposed to be in Secret Warriors without any more L.M.D.s, and yet, here we have one. So it needed explaining, and that’s what we got as Brubaker reminded readers why we used to call everything he did awesome.
The story, especially with the art, felt in the vein of his runs on Daredevil and Iron Fist, though that could very easily just be because the artists he had on both of those books are splitting duties here. Given the gritty nature of the story, which could have fit in just as easily with Jon Hickman’s Secret Warriors as it does with this title, the art team makes for a much better fit than Mike Deodato, who is an excellent artist, just not who I would think of first for this kind of an issue. As it stands, the issue looks amazing and is a nice throwback to Bru’s other series.
The story itself is about the secret history of the Nick Fury working for the Shadow Council, who is a Prototype Life Model Decoy that was reprogrammed to become Nick Fury by Fury’s brother, the villain Scorpio, and his people the Zodiac. He wanted it to believe it was real, and that was the biggest problem they came across, since the real Fury wouldn’t exactly work for the bad guys. The programming via the Zodiac Key was enough to break the A.I. and leave this synthetic man believing himself the real deal all the way up until S.H.I.E.L.D. captured him and brought him in to see just what the hell he was.
That was a decade ago, and since then he’s broken free. Still believing himself to be the real Fury, he continued doing his Fury thing while on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D., which….it’s exactly what you’d expect. A trail of terrorist cells and arms dealers for five years before they finally caught up and captured him. He believed himself to be Nick Fury, he became Nick Fury, and he did just what Nick Fury would have done. Brubaker does a lot to humanize the droid, and it goes over rather well. Sure, you know that he’s not real, but you feel for him just like Fury does. Of course, this origin story needs to tie back around, so it does cap off with how fake Fury joined the Shadow Council, as well as revealing a little bit of what their purpose is.
This issue was without a doubt the best this book has had so far, which may not sound like much given that it’s only five issue in and the first four were kinda crappy, but it was a good read. Brubaker played up to all of his strengths and he came in with two artists that could compliment him. The next arc is promising some kung fu treachery, as well as Shang Chi and the Prince of Orphans, and with the Shadow Council plot finally rolling, I’m very excited for it. Especially if the issues are half as good as this one.
Overall?
8/10
