Avengers: The Inititative #10 (Marvel – Slott / Gage / Caselli / Rudoni)
For some time you’ve known the secret of the SCARLET SPIDERS. Now here’s what happens when CLOUD 9 finds out! Just how will the Initiative’s resident headcase react to Michael, Van, and Patrick? And if that wasn’t bad enough, just wait till you see what happens to another of our longstanding cadets! More death! More mayhem! No mercy!
The cover of the issue says “One Must Die!”, well here’s a bit of a spoiler, maybe one must die and a whole bunch may die. The re-animated mentally unbalanced clone of M.V.P. who has named himself K.I.A. continues his rampage to kill anyone who had to do with M.V.P.’s death. This is part 3 of 4 of this story arc, so it might be tough to jump in and catch all the nuances, but it will still be enjoyable. With his ability to mix action, drama and comic relief into both dialogue and action sequences, Dan Slott continues to show the fans why he will be one of biggest writing forces in 2008. It seems like he could take any character and make him worth reading. I laughed out loud with the interaction between Ant-man and Taskmaster. And with some help from Christos N. Gage, Avengers: The Initiative is the book a year later you wish you were getting. The art / coloring partnership of Stefano Caselli and Daniele Rudoni is superb. I don’t care what kind of big names are out there, you really can’t beat the talent that is working on this book.
This issue also holds some spoilers / background info for New Warriors fans out there.
Grade: A
