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Bendis and Mack tell the tale of Echo!

Back when Brian Michael Bendis was writing his historic run on Daredevil, he and artist David Mack introduced a young girl named Maya Lopez. She was deaf, but she could just watch someone fight and she would be able to emulate that person’s moves immediately, earning her the nickname Echo. She was first used as an assassin by The Kingpin to hunt Daredevil, but Daredevil got her out of the racket and recommended her to Captain America for a membership of sorts to the New Avengers. Since then, Maya assumed the identity of Ronin, and became a scourge of Japan’s underworld. But when Elektra and The Hand captured her with the intent to turn her into one of them, the now-criminal New Avengers had to come and bail her out. And Echo herself performed the most controversial events of the last year by sticking a sword through Elektra’s chest, and with Elektra’s death, she was revealed to be… a Skrull. And thus began the whole “Secret Invasion” event, in which Skrulls are believed to be infiltrating all levels of the superhero infrastructure and exploiting an already-widening rift between the heroes of the Marvel Universe after the events of Civil War, where anyone could be a Skrull.

In New Avengers #39, we see what Echo’s life with the Avengers is really like and how she deals with it. There are some newer questions that are asked about her past, specifically with Logan. He hints as to their past together (Was it a romantic past? Was it sexual?) and there’s a fun exchange between them about who is hitting on who. After that, she splits to find Daredevil to find out what it was that made him recommend her for a position on The Avengers. Unfortunately for her, It’s not really Hornhead… it’s a Skrull who is intent on killing her and taking her place on the team. Interestingly, this seems to be a Super-Skrull variant that has powers of members of the X-Men as opposed to the Fantastic Four. It has Cyclops’ optic blasts, Nightcrawler’s bamf-ing (that’s more fun to say instead of teleportation) and either Human Torch or, as Logan points out as he comes to help her out, perhaps Firestar’s powers. The two of them fight the Skrull off together, and Logan goes on to explain that she is the perfect target for infiltration since she’s the only one on the team with no ties to anyone else.

This then leads to some quality time with Hawkeye, who starts out trying to help her through her inability to understand why she’s on this team by relating his own previous identity crises. This then leads to some real ‘quality time’ with Hawkeye. If you can’t figure out what I mean by that, you clearly haven’t had much ‘quality time’.

First off, personally, I really am not onboard with the whole of the “Secret Invasion” idea. It has too many easily-exploitable points; the main of which is the ability to invalidate important events that have already come to pass (like how Quesada and Straczynski did with Spider-Man). It’s a flawed idea, but I’m still hoping that Bendis will be able to pull it off. This issue follows the Bendis Formula: have two or three really talky issues and then have a few slam-bang action issues to even it all out. This is one of the latter and it’s pretty darn cool. Sure, it has the talky, but the action sequence, especially with Mack providing art for this issue is really very exciting and kinetic. I’ve always really enjoyed Mack’s art, and it’s nice to see someone other than Leinil Yu servicing the New Avengers. Nothing against Yu since I really enjoy his art, but sometimes it’s a little too sketchy, whereas Mack’s art is just about flawless. My only real complaint about this issue, and the series in general, is that it seems to be completely out of step with everything else that’s going on in the Marvel U. There’s no discussion of Spider-Man and his memory wipe of sorts, there’s no overlap with what’s happening with Luke and Danny in Immortal Iron Fist and there’s Logan, who should be in Russia right now according to the pages of Uncanny X-Men. I just want some continuity, guys. It can be worked out on what is, in essence, a more intimate team book.

I’m just really hoping that Bendis can really knock this premise out of the park, because on the heels of really terrific event titles like Civil War and World War Hulk, there’s a lot riding on this.

New Avengers #39
“Echo”
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by David Mack
Color Art by Jose Villarubia
Letters by RS and Comicraft’s Albert Deschesne

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