Review by Ian Keogh

Dan Slott inherited The Mighty Avengers with the previous volume and following an opening arc that didn’t quite hit the spot he introduced one big idea after another. Want an example? Well, in an audacious start The Unspoken doesn’t pick up on the surprise Hank Pym had waiting at the end of Earth’s Mightiest, but instead reveals the previously untold story of how Black Bolt became King of the Inhumans. It ties in with the mission Quicksilver and USAgent have been sent on.

There’s also a surprise to the art. Last time round Khoi Pham was competent, but no more, but he’s obviously a work in progress as his three chapters here are a big step forward. There’s greater imagination to the page layouts, and a slightly different look to the two stories playing out over Pham’s three chapters. Sean Chen on the remainder is already proven quality, but here strangely lacklustre. This has none of the imaginative sweep that characterised his run on Iron Man.

While Pym has again advanced the technology of the Avengers HQ, in China Quicksilver and USAgent discover an ancient threat back in action, someone operating on almost planetary scale and unafraid to employ technology the Inhumans shun as ethically wrong. Meanwhile, the remainder of the team want to know the Scarlet Witch’s secret, and she’s not at all keen to reveal it. With Christos Gage scripting Slott’s plots, the writers manage not only to include a well populated Mighty Avengers team, but a second team of Avengers, the Young Avengers and The People’s Defence Force, China’s team of superheroes. Using so many characters means most are barely seen, but the overkill is justified by a threat convincingly established as needing that kind of combined power. The character moments are great and as a bonus there’s a fateful conversation between Pym and Eternity that redefines him.

This slimmer paperback has since been combined with the following Siege, in Mighty Avengers: Dark Reign, and subsequently as Mighty Avengers by Dan Slott: The Complete Collection.