PUNISHER'S COSPLAY and COMICS: MARVEL CATCH UP - SECRET AVENGERS volume 1: MISSION TO MARS (#1-5)

MARVEL CATCH UP - SECRET AVENGERS Volume 1: MISSION TO MARS premier edition hardback (Collects Secret Avengers #1-5)

Writer: Ed Brubaker

Art: Mike Deodato, Will Conrad, David Aja, Michael Lark and Stefano Guadiano

Published by Marvel Worldwide

Review by Stewart Loud

Set after the end of the Marvel Siege, Steve Rogers has put together a covert strike team of heroes to operate behind the scenes and tackle threats best kept secret from the world. Equipped with state of the art S.H.I.E.L.D. air craft and technology, Steve's dream team of War Machine, Black Widow, Moon Knight, Valkyrie, Beast, Nova, Ant Man and Sharon Carter are there to carry out missions involving everything from industrial espionage to travelling to other planets and beating the living daylights out of whoever Steve tells them too.

Okey Dokey! With Fear Itself in full swing now, I'm going to be collecting together and writing about some complete runs of Marvel comics released between the end of the Siege and now to recap on what's been going on in the Marvel 616 Universe in an effort to bring you all up to speed and maybe give you some ideas of what you might want to read before I write about the Fear Itself storyline. All spoiler free I promise, just wanna give you all a brief idea of what to expect.

Been far too long since I caught up on current events in the Marvel Universe and this book seemed like as good a place as any to start. I've been a big fan of former Captain America, Steve Rogers since the Marvel Civil War and I'm very interested to see what he's been doing in his new role as the US head of all things Super Human after he replaced Norman Osborn once everyone realised he was completely barking mad and it had been a terrible mistake to put him in charge in the first place which is the main reason I chose this series as one of the runs between Siege and Fear Itself to collect.

It's a staggeringly cool line up of heroes to cram into one team and the first five issues are fairly action heavy throughout with a story involving some sort of clandestine mining operation on Mars. Nice to see the new Ant Man in a more mainstream group after he provided a lot of the comic relief in Avengers: The Initiative for a while before joining the Thunder Bolts. Always liked his character. Fans of all the other characters can expect a decent amount of ass kickery as they discover more about the mysterious new threat to life as they know it involving ancient alien artefacts and shadowy secret societies. Plenty of action and intrigue and what the hell is Nick Fury doing with that black clad bunch of reprobates?!

Nothing mind blowing but well written, interesting and nicely illustrated throughout. Definitely worth a look if you like any of the characters involved. I enjoyed all five parts from start to finish and I can't wait to get stuck into all the other Marvel titles I've got in the post to me at the moment.

SCORE 7/10

Here are some links to my other Marvel catch up reviews:

Secret Avengers Volume 2: Eyes Of The Dragon (#6-12)

Avengers Volume 1 (#1-6)

Avengers volume 2 (#7-12 and #12.1)