Book Review: Marvel's The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week

Book: Marvel's The Avengers Prelude: Fury's Big Week (digital issues 1-8) plot by Christopher Yost and Eric Pearson, written by Eric Pearson

Illustrations by Luke Ross (#1 and #3), Daniel HDR (#2 and #4), Agustin Padilla (#5 and #7) and Wellinton Alves (#6 and #8)

Ink by Luke Ross (#1 and #3), Mark Pennington (#2 and #4), Don Ho (#5 and #7) and Rick Ketcham with Don Ho (#6 and #8)

Color by Chris Sotomayor and letters by Chris Eliopolous with Joe Caramagna


Edition: Trade Paperback

Description:

The Newest Installment Of The Official Marvel Cinematic Universe Tie-In Comics Is Here Just In Time For Marvel's The Avengers Movie!

How will S.H.I.E.L.D. maintain the status quo in a world full of gamma-powered rage monsters, hammer-wielding gods and men in iron suits? What exactly is the Avengers Initiative? If you thought you knew everything there was to know about Director Nick Fury and the elusive agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- think again!



Rating: 4 stars

Review:

Fury's Big Week did a terrific job of tying in Marvel's Phase One movies: Iron Man 2, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger while setting everything up for The Avengers movie.

Director Nick Fury had a very busy week trying to keep everything from going sideways. There were several rather immediate problems that were at the forefront for S.H.I.E.L.D.. First was keeping tabs on Tony Stark who was quickly self-destructing. But with Black Widow (Natasha Romanoff) undercover at Stark Industries, she provided plenty of information to Fury about Stark's increasing erratic behavior. A S.H.I.E.L.D. scientist determined Tony was being poisoned by the palladium seeping through his arc reactor.

Next was Agent Phil Coulson stumbling upon an atmospheric discovery out in New Mexico. He was tasked with taking a team out there to investigate the situation and to keep an eye on Dr. Jane Foster who was already there studying the phenomenon. Fury also sent Hawkeye (Clint Barton) out there for further assistance. The last problem had Black Widow being tasked with monitoring General Ross' continued pursuit of Bruce Banner.

Every incident showed that S.H.I.E.L.D. was going to need help down the line because dealing with monsters, gods and high powered tech suits was going to require a bit more power. And after putting out all of those fires, Fury was attempting to find Captain America who was believed to have crashed somewhere in the arctic. All of that aside he still had to deal with the bureaucracy of the World Security Council who want him to divert attention towards activating the Tesseract.

I like this because it felt like I was reading all the scenes that could have been included in the movies. The other heroes (Iron Man, Hulk and Thor) are shown but Fury, Coulson, Black Widow and Hawkeye get the focus in this as they try to deal with all of the problems that keep popping up.

I may have waited a while to read this but I'm glad I finally did. It's a solid story with a good amount of action scenes, it's very behind the scenes of how S.H.I.E.L.D. operates.