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"Tell me the truth... what are you going to feel when you put a bullet in one of those men, Nick?"

"Recoil."

Exactly!

SUCH a cool book when Fury is taking lead.

Is anyone seriously reading this book to read about the sons and daughters of obscure Marvel characters?

Yup, I sure am.

I'm a sucker for super-powered offspring, especially of obscure characters.

The Fury bits are great, though, no doubt.

Why are you turning this comment section into a den of lies, Ian?!?!

I enjoy the other parts of the title, but the Nick Fury scenes do work better. And, as I've been saying since the first issue, "Nick Fury: Agent of Nothing" is a fantastic title for a book. Much better than "Secret Warriors."

Nick Fury is awesome, but I'm enjoying the parts with the kids as well. Phobos and Daisy are turning out to be awesome IMO. I'm enjoying Bendis's books as well, but I think it's funny that the characters he creates are put to use and made awesome in other books not written by Bendis.

The Bendis hand is involved in the plotting according to the credits.

Has Hickman done any interviews on this ?

SUCH a cool book when Fury is taking lead.

Is that "taking lead" as in assuming command, or "taking lead" as in being shot at?

Or will either do?

I've now heard a few good things about this book and I've been loving the covers, so I just gave the first issue a try.

Sigh.

I gave up on Marvel a long time ago and every time I try a book again I'm reminded why.

This is the first issue of a new series, so you'd think it might want to explain what's going on in the series, but no. They even devote a separate text page at the beginning to explaining the set up, which is a great idea, but, alas, it contains nothing but a macho manifesto and no information.

So we're dumped into a story in media res as four agents we've just met are raiding some secret base (yup, the same way that every Image book began) and get caught in a clash between two other armies. Which two armies? We never find out. What the war about? They don't say. What was the objective of our heroes' mission? Nothing, just "recon". We learn nothing about our heroes but their codenames and their real names, which we get from captions. We can't tell what their personalities are, or their relationships, or even their powers! Our heroes then re-convene and they talk and talk and talk for the rest of the book.

The one good bit of dialogue was between Fury and a twelve year old playing video games on his couch. His kid? Maybe. Fury calls him a "twelve year old diety," but it's unclear if that's supposed to be sarcastic or very serious. You say that the concept of the book is that these are the kids of obscure superheroes, but you'd never discover the concept from reading the book itself.

The crazy thing is that they burn through all that dialogue without establishing any plot OR character. The whole trick with dialogue is usually to achieve a balance of essential plot information with affecting character moments. Yet this book, which is wall-to-wall dialogue, doesn't give us ANY essential plot information OR affecting character moments. Instead, all that that talk falls into one of two categories: bad-ass posturing and ominous hints. Sigh.

I know, I know, if I don't like current Marvel comics, I shouldn't read them, but it's really frustrating, but because I spend a lot of time reading and re-reading Essentials by the truck load and I can't help but wonder what these characters are up to today. It's so painful to me to confirm over and over again that comics basically never recovered from the Liefeld era. This comic had a lot more in common with "Youngblood #1" than it did with the Marvel comics of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.

I suppose they need at least one other character to justify the plural in the title.

I would buy Nick Fury: Agent of Nothing if it was him leading raids with the nihilists from The Big Lebowski.

I haven't read Secret Warriors yet, because I've gone trade only, but will be reading it based solely upon Jonathan Hickman, but Nick Fury isn't awesome. Nick Fury should be awesome, but in my 25 or so years of buying comics Nick Fury is tied with Namor as the most schizophrenic badly defined character in comics. I'm a dick. I'm your friend. I'm whatever my current writer wants me to be. Seriously, get a personality and stick with it.

The "Recoil" line in issue #4 of Secret Warriors is the best depiction of Fury in recent memory outside of Garth Ennis's work on the MAX line.

I mean, it can't compare to the "Nobody fucking won!" scene in Fury or him going apeshit on one of the Generals in Mother Russia, but as far as the Marvel Universe goes, this is the best stuff that's been done with him in a long long time.

Gotta admit, I love YoYo and I was bummed when she got her shit ruined so early on.
But I have to agree, the scenes with Fury are far and away the best. However, I think that the scenes with Phobos are also very cool.

[...] Agent of Nothing 16 05 2009 There a review hyping Secret Warriors @ Comics Should Be Good , but it’s this comment by Matt Bird that pretty much refllects my point of view, although I [...]

I kinda like the god kid actually.

I've been saying and thinking for a few months now that the whole caterpillar thing is silly and that it's clearly holding back all involved, including the characters themselves.

Matt Bird:

"So we’re dumped into a story in media res as four agents we’ve just met are raiding some secret base (yup, the same way that every Image book began) and get caught in a clash between two other armies. Which two armies? We never find out. What the war about? They don’t say."

Firstly, one of the agents says "There are Hydra agents everywhere!". We are then told from Sentry's dialogue and the caption boxes that the other group is HAMMER, and then they tell us exactly what HAMMER is and what Hydra is.

"What was the objective of our heroes’ mission? Nothing, just “recon”. "

It was to see if HAMMER showed up. Fury says this near the end.

"We learn nothing about our heroes but their codenames and their real names, which we get from captions. We can’t tell what their personalities are, or their relationships, or even their powers!"

It's an ongoing, we have plenty of time for that. Plus we saw Druid using magic powers, Stonewall playing the strong guy, Hellfire using the flaming chain and Quake pushing people away with her using her powers. The only one of the group to not visibly use their powers was the super speedster.

"The one good bit of dialogue was between Fury and a twelve year old playing video games on his couch. His kid? Maybe. Fury calls him a “twelve year old diety,” but it’s unclear if that’s supposed to be sarcastic or very serious. You say that the concept of the book is that these are the kids of obscure superheroes, but you’d never discover the concept from reading the book itself."

It's perfectly clear to me. The kid himself calls himself Phobos god of fear, Fury then in a very serious dialogue tells Daisy to keep an eye on him because he is a god and the last thing he wants is an apocalyptic meltdown from an adolescent diety. Didn't read as very sarcastic to me.

Personally I'm loving the book, from all of the various angles.

I'm not really feeling this book either, and I'm sure I would dig it more if Fury was the focus...

NickT, you're totally right that I could have gleaned a lot more from a closer reading. I'm not saying "I tried and tried and I can't figure it out", I'm saying "the circumstances weren't clear from a casual reading." That's the standard I hold mainstream comics to, but I genuinely appreciate that some people feel that that shouldn't be the standard for comics anymore, even for mainstream superhero books.

The Nick Fury in this book isn't Nick Fury. And I don't mean that in a 'he's being portrayed out of character" kind of way.

Check out the scene when the kids discover the closet full of LMDs, one of them has a cockpit.
(see the scene here: http://platypusrobot.blogspot.com/2009/05/what-is-nick-fury-hiding.html for a quick and easy reference)

Nick Fury in this book is some kind of tiny alien, I guarantee it!

[...] Warriors #4- I’m generally with Brian on the subject of the Latch Key Kid Young Avengers West Coast being a distraction to all of the [...]

I can sympathize with Matt Bird.

I'm living the Marvel Zombie dream right now (all of the monthlies I buy are Marvel at this point, and I'm always reading Essentials) but I would not exactly direct someone to pick up this comic to sell them on reading Marvel Comics. I like it a lot, but it's not going to win over a reluctant reader. And I'm still waiting for that moment where I give a toss about the teen heroes.

The new Spider-Man may do the trick. but I'm seriously done trying to turn people onto reading something they are resistant to. Everyone is free to have their own opinion, after all and there are plenty of comics to read out there.