The Pull List: Graphic Novel Edition (Part Two)

Another fortnight, another edition of The Pull List. As usual if you’ve missed any of the previous entries you can check them out right here.

As you may have read yesterday, with only four comics on the pull list this time out, I thought it was about time I caught up on my graphic novels. I’ve alread covered the first three on the list, now on to the last three…

The Pull List – 31/1/10
Captain America: Man With No Face
Dark Avengers Vol. 1 – Assemble
New Avengers Vol. 10 – Power
New Avengers Vol. 11 – Search for the Sorceror Supreme
Secret Warriors Vol. 1
Secret Warriors Vol. 2

Yesterday I reviewed the first three of six hardbacks, and as I said then: 6 hardbacks, 6 Marvel titles, 6 superb additions to any collection. First up today is New Avengers Vol. 11, in which the New Avengers help Dr. Strange track down the new owner of the moniker “Sorceror Supreme” – again, as with Vol. 10 the action never lets up, from the battle between The Hood and Dr. Strange, to the all-out war in New Orleans between Dr. Strange, the New Avengers, Damien Hellstrom and the dreaded Dormammu. The real highlight of Vol. 11 however is the de-masking of Spider-Man in front of the rest of the Avengers gang – turns out that Luke cage’s wife Jessica Jones used to go to high school with Peter Parker and had a huge crush on him! The reaction of Cage to the revelation is absolutely priceless, even  more so when Spidey talks about how if Cage and Iron Fist broke up then possibly… Billy Tan’s artwork is yet again one of the delights of the book, and the team up with Chris Bachalo only raises both artists game. The end of the book begins the move into the Siege storyline with Loki making her first move against Norman Osborn via a now Dormammu-less Hood, which leads us into New Avengers Vol. 12 – Powerloss, which is released March 24th…

Secret Warriors Vol. 1 follows Nick Fury, the now-powerless ex-chief of S.H.E.I.L.D., as he builds an all-new army of heroes (the Secret Warriors of the title) and regains control of his Howling Commandos – whilst battling the all-powerful Hydra, whose reach Fury learns, extends far beyond ANYONE would ever have thought. Marvel’s Secret Warriors is a strange beast, part superhero comic, part old-school war book, with a dash of new-wave comic design courtesy of scribe Jonathan Hickman (Nightly News). The book is actually a tough read – there’s so much going on, both action-wise and script-wise that it’s a lot to take in. But that’s not a bad thing, in an age where some comics drag stories out over multiple issues, the frenetic pacing of Secret Warriors is a refreshing change. The pacing is also perfect for the immediacy of the plot, Fury and his team(s) are against the clock in their fight against Hydra and that timing transfers perfectly to the page….

The next volume in the series, Secret Warriors Vol. 2 continues the convoluted spy vs. spy vs. supervillains tale that began in the first book, taking things up a notch, adding even more immediacy to the story, whilst at the same time adding even more plot threads into a tale which is now so complex that it threatens to go into the realms of an X-Files-like unanswered conspiracy story – it’s only thanks to some brilliant storytelling from Hickman that it remains followable. However where Secret Warriors will I end I have no clue. The overall plot has so many threads running throughout each book that there is no clear end in sight, which makes for interesting reading. Whether Secret Warriors can or will survive in Marvel’s ‘Heroic Age’ remains to be seen – a book as dark and foreboding as this probably has no place in a lighter hero-friendly age. Which is a damn shame… If it is cancelled, hopefully Hickman will be given another major Marvel title to weave his magic on…