the New Avengers #46 - Marvel

Much like the last issue of Mighty Avengers . . . there wasn't an Avenger in sight this issue. The actual title of this book should be, the New Avengers . . (sometimes! Unless they're busy!). I'm being a little critical. It's kind of like our homes . . it's where we live, but we're not always there. Right? Anyways, this issue was all about giving us information on the Hood's Syndicate of Criminals. Basically, it caught us up on what's going on with them now, and . . to show us that they're just as embroiled in this Skrull invasion as the rest of us. It starts out with some SHIELD agents interrogating Madame Masque. The Hood comes in to rescue her, but after he shoots 3 or the 4 agents, they both find out that they were all actually Skrulls. So, they take the one that survived back to question in front of his whole organization. They torture him enough that he reverts back to his Skrull form and tells them that they just wanted someone inside their organization. Their group was new . . it surprised them. From there they piece together the rest of the Skrull plan, and the Hood comes to realize that probably every super-hero group out there has been compromised. He also finds out that he can use his 'hood' to glean out the Skrull conspirators. There's only 1 in this group . . the Slug. The Slug? Exactly! But now . . now the Hood has to figure out what to do next. He's got a lot on his mind. So he goes to the source of his powers, to ask . . "I want to know what I can do. You hear me? I want you to tell me exactly what this hood does. ALL IT'S SECRETS! TELL ME!" That's when it's revealed that the source of his powers is actually . . . Dormammu! Didn't really see that one coming. Anyways, as usual, Brian Bendis wrote it. This one I actually enjoyed, in that it got us caught back up with this group . . and showed us that they're still out there . . posing a threat. I really liked Billy Tan's pencils. He has a fantastic sense of flow to his work. I also like that he does different variations of the panels. I think it helps to keep the story interesting. Really, my only disappointment with this particular issue is that we didn't see a single Avenger. It seems to me that this story could've been told in a 1-shot or something.