Comic Reviews-5/21/08

Mighty Avengers 14
Bendis continues to expand upon his Secret Invasion mini. He has used both Avengers titles to supplement and fill in the back-story of the Skrull invasion. I believe this is an excellent idea, which has been well executed.
In this issue, we are shown flashbacks in which the Skrulls gain information and plan for the upcoming invasion. The Jarvis imposter is given complete access to the Avenger’s files. Later he meets with others to discuss how to deal with the Sentry. Their plan, which was featured in Secret Invasion 2, was to convince Sentry that his Void personality had taken over. The plan works, because the Sentry retreats from battle. Only now, the Void persona has taken over and saves his wife from a Super Skrull.

Checkmate 26
This is the first issue of a new creative team. We witness the origin of the Chimera. The man is called Adam Sharp. He is a soldier in Iraq and suffers severe wounds and is left for dead. Checkmate is apparently running a medical program in which nearly, but not entirely dead soldiers are used in an all weather soldier program. I have two problems with this scenario. There doesn’t appear to be any consent given for this program, and the Sharp’s friends and family are allowed to believe he is dead. This whole program seems to be in direct violation of what the new Checkmate is supposed to be about. Perhaps this is a rogue program, if not than I won’t be reading Checkmate for much longer. Overall, I found this to be an interesting, yet disturbing first chapter. The artwork was really murky, but was not to distracting from the story.