by Spencer Irwin

This article contains SPOILERS. If you haven’t read the issue yet, proceed at your own risk!

The nice thing about team books is the wide and varied casts that allow the creative team to explore each story from multiple perspectives. The nice thing about weekly series is the sheer amount of space they have to work with, giving them all the time in the world to explore even the most wide and varied of casts. That seems to be the idea behind Avengers: No Surrender. Thus far Mark Waid, Al Ewing, and Jim Zub (with Pepe Larraz on art) have used each issue to explore the perspective of a different Avenger. While the first issue largely used Lightning as an outside POV and the second didn’t lean enough into Falcon’s unique perspective, Avengers 677 digs deep into its spotlight Avenger, Quicksilver.

In fact, the very first page is practically a masterclass, not only recapping the cliffhanger from last week’s issue, but using it to immediately establish the traits of Quicksilver the creative team will spend the rest of the issue exploring: his ego, his need to prove himself, and his constant failure to do so.

Voyager saves the Avengers from the Black Order instead, and Pietro spends the rest of the issue nursing his wounded pride. In fact, this failure seems to only exacerbate a still simmering conflict between Pietro and Rogue (which I assume played out in the pages of Uncanny Avengers), where Pietro apparently failed to follow Rogue’s orders, and nearly cost Synapse her life in the process. Quicksilver’s quest for redemption (both to Rogue and himself) can come across as selfish much of the time, and certainly leads him to make some foolish mistakes, but the creative team is smart to remind readers that Pietro’s actions aren’t just about pride.

Pietro’s not just upset that he failed, but upset that he nearly cost Synapse her life as well. There is good to Pietro and his intentions…but that doesn’t mean he isn’t foolish to run off and put himself in such great danger.

The focus on Quicksilver also adds some extra intrigue to the ongoing plot. This week, Scarlet Witch manages to cure Vision of the paralysis that’s afflicted much of the teams, but in the process, freezes Quicksilver instead. In any other issue I might think he was frozen randomly in a sort of equivalent exchange (free one Avenger, freeze another), but given this issue’s focus on Pietro and the writing team’s emphasizing his connection with Wanda (which currently seems a bit strained), I can’t help but wonder if this is less about whatever force did this to the team in the first place and more about Wanda and Pietro themselves. It’s an intriguing character-based hook to dangle, exactly the kind of cliffhanger this series needed.

The conversation doesn’t stop there. What do you wanna talk about from this issue?