Secret Avengers #30 offered readers a nice little swerve by making Taskmaster, rather than Max Fury, become the wielder of the three-piece crown the Shadow Council have been lusting after all this time. Either way, the outcome is bad for the Secret Avengers, as the malignant force known as Abyss is threatening to spread across the globe and consume everything. And only Venom and Ant-Man are left standing in the field. Much like Uncanny X-Force, Rick Remender is a master of pitting his heroes against insurmountable odds.
The Venom/Ant-Man dynamic proves to be one of the highlights of this arc. They're easily the most psychologically damaged of the various team members, and their mutual lack of trust in each other adds a fun edge to their retaliatory attack. The fact that the reader has no idea when Ant-Man might suddenly give up his facade and betray the team adds an extra tinge of drama.
But as has always been the case with this story, it's the pencils of Matteo Scalera that are the main draw. Scalera has really exploded onto the superhero scene with this series. His pencils offer all the gritty darkness one would expect from the seedy underbelly of the Marvel Universe, but he balances that with a sense of style and energy that give the book a distinctly different feel from the past two years' worth of stories.
If there are any complaints to be had with the series right now, it's that it doesn't seem overly interested in functioning as a team book. Many of the Avengers are out of the picture and/or brainwashed, leaving only a handful with any significant screen time. The new Masters of Evil are a disappointment as well. They've become nothing more than recognizable vessels for Abyss to speak through. Still, there's enough drama and intriguing character dynamics, as well as fantastic art, to keep the arc humming along.
Jesse is a writer for IGN Comics and IGN Movies. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following Jesse on Twitter, or on IGN.
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