Avengers Assemble #9

This arc continues the focus on the Avengers movie franchise if not the cast of the movie itself in that the big 4 are here but Black Widow and Hawkeye are dropped in favour of Captain Marvel and Spider-Woman. (The next arc will redress the balance somewhat by featuring BW&H instead. But DeConnick will show her bias by completing the threesome with Spider-Woman.) Lake Vostok is real. Its existence was confirmed in 1993, and Russian scientists drilled for samples in 2012. But as Tony Stark mentions, the Fantastic Four dived into it in their #576 dated Apr 2010 (and found an old offshoot of Atlantis). Stark issued the team challenge to pit Bruce Banner's pure science skills against his own engineering ability. But of course they'll spend most of their time hitting things. Which means it's a wise move on Banner's part to go as the Hulk. But it probably wasn't so wise to let Hulk do the selection of the team.

Kelly Sue DeConnick takes over as writer of the series. And Stefano Caselli is artist for this 3-issue arc. The issues in this arc don't have titles, but the publisher's blurb for this issue supplies the phrase 'Science Bros' which is what the collection will go with. The cover is somewhat misleading in that 1 of the 4 featured characters is Captain America, who doesn't actually do much this issue. Next issue he will be replaced on the cover by the more thematically correct Thor - but Cap will actually himself be in the thick of the action. Last issue Carol Danvers was MS Marvel and now she's Captain Marvel. The previous arc was set before Avengers vs X-Men, wherein Carl resolved to take on the mantle of Mar-Vell, as seen in the recently begun series of that name by DeConnick. Spider-Woman will be a favoured character of Kelly-Sue's, both in that series and this 1.