Avengers Undercover #5 Review

Okay, time to see who joins the bad guy in Issue #5 of Avengers Undercover!

The issue picks up right after Zemo’s offer to join him and the other villains. Since this is a big decision he decides to wait until breakfast for them to decide whether they are in or out, letting his captains show them around the city. Constrictor takes Chase and Deathlocket, Daimon takes Cullen and Nico, and the rest go with Madame Masque.

Nico and Cullen go to Hell Town, where dark wizards and monsters live in four blocks of Hellstrom Manor. There Cullen shows that Daimon summoned a cage of hellfire to help him release the soul demon bonded with him. While there Daimon tells her to stop beating herself up over trying to kill him because they all understand she was just trying to protect her own and states that she’s wallowing in misery while he’s stopped pretending he’s not a monster.

At Constrictor’s Snake Pit…really, that’s what it’s called? No creativity. Anyway, Chase is having a blast playing Basketball while Excavator explains that he and his friends mostly do simple work, destroying stuff for an hour and then spending the rest of the time doing whatever they want. Deathlocket finds this dumb, but thinks she needs some dumb in her life.

Madame Masque doesn’t take her kids far. She basically tells them that Hazmat, Cammi, and Axbro were natural leaders, which meant they can live like her and get anything they wanted. She doesn’t try very hard to convince them to take the offer since they seem smart enough to realize they’ve been offered the world on a gold plate. The three realize that they’re being played, but the options are limited to join the bad guys or go to jail, but Hazmat states who heroes go nuts all the time and avoid prison (except for Cyclops apparently) so if they did something to make them heroes again they could get away.

Nico, on the other end, gets involved in some Demon MMA and finds it cathartic. Then a demon hits her and she goes nuts on it and beats it senseless with her witch-arm until she snaps out of it and flees. Daimon chases after her and, after she fears she’s become no better than her parents, he resurrects her ex-boyfriend Alex Wilder…who should be wearing all white and be in limbo. I have mixed feelings about this.

They all meet up again, except for Deathlocket being smitten with Excavator and Cullen, who has already gone evil, and the leadership trio tell Chase and Nico their plan about going undercover to get their hero credit back. Obviously they haven’t thought this out well, and Chase complains he never wanted to go down there in the beginning, Cammi tells him they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, and to pick.

At breakfast Zemo gets his answer. They all are in, except Cammi who leaves to go take care of her mother. Zemo says they should respect that her decision was to leave, but she gets taken down by Constrictor as the comic ends.

Okay review time.

So this is where they decided to go Undercover. It’s… going to end badly. Hero or not, the world already sees them as damaged goods so this won’t get them out of jail either way, so this will fail in the end.

Admittedly we could see they were being played, but they really didn’t have a choice. Cammi was offered up for that reason, to show what would have happened otherwise. Still, at least we’ve reached the starting line and I can’t wait to see where it goes, so 5 out of 5.