Avant-Goût VO: Review Mighty Avengers #16 [Eng]

[ENGLISH] While the Secret Invasion continues in the pages of the eponymous title, Bendis keeps using both of the Avengers series to reveal the « making-of » the Skrull masterplan. Since the whole story began with Elektra’s autopsy, it was only a matter of time before we would learn what happened to the Hand’s leader. Unfortunately, this new episode isn’t quite as flavourful as the previous ones, due to a huge lack of revelations…

After Hank Pym and Jessica Drew last month, Bendis is now ready to reveal what happened to Elektra. But maybe he should have played that card a little earlier, since the main problem with this episode is that we aren’t going to learn anything new. Since it’s a fact that Elektra was replaced by a Skrull, you don’t exactly need a PhD in criminology to figure out that she has taken a beating and has been « taken care of » (since we don’t yet know what the Skrulls are doing with the original bodies). There it is: I just summed up the whole thing, but without breaking the non-spoiler policy that allows us to write those reviews. Sounds like a problem to me…

To be honest, I must point out that Khoi Pham does an honorable job pencilling the multple fights throughout the episode (you didn’t think Elektra would go down without trying, did you?). The only interest of the fight scenes is to see which power combinations the Skrulls came up with to bring down the gorgeous ninja. And that’s not much if you’re not a hardcore fan (and/or didn’t read the old X-Men episodes featuring Mimic, where the idea is essentially the same). This is a real pity since, in my opinion, last month’s Avengers episodes showed us how the whole flash-back technique can be interesting when Bendis fills the voids of the Secret Invasion storyline, while implying things that could have a major impact on the bigger picture (did the Skrulls have anything to do with Cassandra Nova’s actions or The Scarlet Witch’s nervous breakdown…?) Whatever. Since Secret Invasion has been really intriguing so far, and considering the fact that it has to last 3 more months, we can easily forgive Bendis for this temporary slump. Let’s just hope he still has a few aces up his sleeve…

[Antoine Maurel]