Customer Reviews

Secret Invasion

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Ever since Brian Michael Bendis first took the reigns on the Avengers franchise, he's been building to this story. The Skrulls, a race of shape-shifting aliens, have among them a religious sect that believes the Earth was created for them by their god. They have slowly infiltrated Earth, replacing a relatively small number of key individuals using new technology and techniques that render them undetectable to humans. The infiltration was revealed to the heroes before this series started, and they didn't take the news well. As of the first page of this collected edition, the two Avengers teams have very little trust for their teammates, and even less for the other teams. Spider-Woman is the only Avenger who trusts people on both teams, and even that trust is limited. (This could be due, in some degree, to the fact that it's usually Reed Richards and the rest of the Fantastic Four that have deterred Skrull operations in the past.)

This collection is almost devoid of the set-up. Rather, the eight issue "Secret Invasion" miniseries it collects serves as the culmination of five years of planning and plotting. If you want answers to the whys and hows of the invasion, you'll need to pick up the tie-ins collected in New Avengers, Vol. 8: Secret Invasion, Book 1 (v. 8, Bk. 1), Secret Invasion, Book 2 (New Avengers, Vol. 9) (v. 9, Bk. 2), Mighty Avengers, Vol. 3: Secret Invasion, Book 1 (v. 3) and Mighty Avengers Vol. 4: Secret Invasion, Book 2 (v. 4, Bk. 2). What you'll find here is the fight that settles the matter with as much finality as battles can settle anything.

Your opinion of this volume will likely depend on your familiarity with recent Avengers history and what you're looking for. If you want to see the developments that led to the invasion, you'll need to pick up all volumes of New Avengers and Mighty Avengers, as well as the Avengers Disassembled, House of M (Marvel Comics), Secret War (New Avengers) (singular, not plural) and Civil War volumes. If you want to know how the invasion and infiltration was accomplished, you'll need the New and Mighty Avengers volumes I have already linked to. If you're looking for a great big fight, including a huge number of Marvel heroes and villains, then you're in the right place. Bendis' scripts are adeptly illustrated by Leinil Yu (pencils), Mark Morales (inks) and Laura Martin (colours), but that's as far as this goes. The fight is very well done, and there are a few surprises and thoroughly enjoyable moments scattered within, but without the buildup, it's a whole lot of meaningless combat. It never promised to be more, which is good, because that's not what it delivers.

I have been anxiously following the build up to this story for years, as have many others. I have previously enjoyed Bendis' work on House of M, New Avengers, and many others. But this book is a gigantic flop.

The first problem is the pacing. The beginning of the book drags as far too much time is spent in the Savage Land. Then the back half of the book is rushed to the point where the final confrontation is just brief afterthought. It's almost as if the authors got through half the issues and then realized they were running out of pages with which to wrap up the story!

Indeed, it seems as if this final phase of the Secret Invasion is resolved over the course of 24 hours (Marvel U time), when readers have been following the build-up over the course of several years! How much richer could this book have been if the whole thing wasn't tidily resolved with 4 pages of illustrations featuring every character Yu could squeeze on a page simply shaking their fists and glaring at each other?

The second problem is the way the characters are used. There is virtually no invention or creativity in terms of the way the characters interact, either dramatically or when the fight scenes and battles take place. The witty banter is rehashed and too drawn-out, and worse, the fights are just "scenes" in which one or two panels of a lot of characters posing stands in for a sequential illustration of a true battle.

The book is full of nonsensical plot elements. For example, early in the story a spaceship full of Skrulls impersonating a gaggle of superheroes (some dead? some duplicates of the living? some older versions of the living/dead?) crashes to earth in the Savage Land, and our present-day heroes investigate. This episode dominated the first half of the book, but the reader is left mystified as to the point. It isn't even clear what the motivation of the Skrulls was in creating such a ship full of obvious impersonators.

Another mess is the confusing existence one group of Skrulls who are apparently brainwashed into thinking they actually ARE the people they are supposed to be impersonating, vs. the other group who are simply made to LOOK like the ones who they are impersonating. The two different groups apparently have completely different characteristics, abilities, and methods of concealment/detection. It is impossible for the reader to tell the difference, however, and the differences seem to be arbitrary and constantly shifting and contradictory in any case. Finally, the plot mechanics of how the heroes at last detect and reveal/defeat the Skrulls is lazy and unconvincing, to say the least.

Bendis' biggest problem throughout this story is that nothing much happens, and what does happen, happens at the wrong pace. The narrative thrust gets completely bogged down in a series of "witty" interactions that ultimately are meaningless, alternated with the usual (and utterly boring) bragging, boasting, and threatening that simply rehash classic super-hero/villain blab fests. It seems hard to believe that this is the writer who gave us the cleverly plotted and inventive House of M.

Possibly most offensive of all, is the terrible work of the artist, Leinil Francis Yu. He indeed has a unique style, with an interesting use of line, and, looked at individually, his drawings might be considered good. However, he lacks any ability to tell a sequential story from panel to panel. Page after page is filled with repetitive pose-downs between heroes, or between heroes and villains. The battle scenes are simply a series of posters, processions of static images. The battles are not illustrated sequentially and logically. One of the biggest missed opportunities in this work is that we don't get any sense of the various characters' powers and abilities interacting with each other. The characters just pose and flex and execute their most basic moves in jumbled panels of frozen action. Eventually, the book becomes a procession of halfway decent cover art.

I will say that the individual Secret Invasion tie-ins, the issues involving the Secret Invasion story in New/Mighty Avengers and Ms. Marvel series, for example, were very well done, and are consistent with the basic problem that I and other reviewers note: effective build-up, lousy payoff. In fact, the issues of the Avengers written to tie in are a series of stories looking back at the past few years of Marvel History with an eye to showing how cleverly the Skrull invasion was plotted and carried out. It is clear that Bendis was more excited about revealing to readers his labyrinthine build-up to this story in the Avengers books than he was in actually executing the denouement in this Secret Invasion limited series.

Secret Invasion: The Infiltration is a pretty handy companion to Marvel's next big mega-event, but that being said, this is only worth picking up for those that have been out of the loop and are new to the proceedings. For those that don't know, it has become clear that the shape-shifting alien race known as the Skrulls have infiltrated the planet, and possibly every superhero team in the Marvel universe. Collecting the classic debut of the Skruls in a very early issue of Fantastic Four by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, as well as recent issues of Secret Invasion writer Brian Michael Bendis' New Avengers, as well as the first and final issues of Bendis' New Avengers: Illuminati mini-series, Secret Invasion: The Infiltration provides readers with some solid past and more recent history that leads up to the event. The thing is, the issues collected here can already be found (or will be found soon) in other TPB collections, so if you already own any of them, this TPB isn't worth picking up unless you're a die-hard completest. Other than that though, Secret Invasion: The Infiltration is worth picking up for those that have been out of the loop or don't follow any of the aforementioned series', but that's it.

SPOILERS, SPOILERS like a mutha...

This following is for fans of old school Fantastic Four:
- Reed Richards: "You -- you killed my family. You're not here to save us. It's all lies. You're here to punish us."
- Skrull Queen: "Well, you should have thought about that before you found it funny to turn our brothers into cows."

You've got Jim Shooter to thank, yeah, for the Big Company Crossover Event-itis which has been plaguing both the DC and Marvel houses for years now. Shooter started it off with 1984's quite friggin' awesome SECRET WARS maxi-series. DC's CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS promptly followed, and the glut was on. More than two decades later and me feeling a mite crossovered out, here cometh SECRET INVASION, which links the more recent Marvel's big events into one extended, semi-cohesive story arc. Years in the making is Secret Invasion, remarks bald-pated writer Brian Michael Bendis. It has ties with House of M and Civil War, and extends back to the very first issue of the New Avengers title and to who knows how much further back and how all-encompassing. Personally, I'm now thinking, Jack "King" Kirby... SKRULL!!

So after long teases and build-ups and massive promotion by the House of Ideas, we finally get to it: SECRET INVASION, eight issues written by the Bendis and drawn with awkward, jangling energy by Leinil Yu. And it's... okay. I thought Bendis did a terrific job setting things up in the first issue, rendering me all kinds of intrigued. Briefly (and I'm lying when I say "briefly"), in issue #1, a Skrull spaceship crashlands in the Savage Land, necessitating a look-see by both New and Mighty Avengers. By the way, I do like how the renegade New Avengers gain transport to the Savage Land, as it's so a poke in the eye at the Mighty Avengers. Anyhoo, Avengers, New and Mighty, bump into each other, get to squabbling but before that comes to a head, Tony Stark collapses and a horde of surprising someones pour out of the Skrull ship.

One wonders why it took this long for the Skrulls, given their shape-shifting nature, to hit on this particular ploy. But they finally have. And because of the Skrull's long-range, carefully contemplated behind-the-scenes tweaking of events and their thorough infiltration of the super-powered community, paranoia and dissent have greatly weakened Marvel's mightiest heroes. The Scarlet Witch has decimated mutantkind. The Hulk is out of commission. And so the Skrulls finally come out of hiding. Skrull sleeper agents, long in place, engage in simultaneous assaults on the Baxter Building, on key facilities run by Stark Enterprises, and even on Thunderbolt Mountain. Reed Richards and Tony Stark, deemed to be two of the biggest threats to Skrull Happyville, are dealt with. Second stage is global invasion, as armies of Super Skrull variants pop up all over the world, although the comic book tends to focus on Skrully doings in New York. With the main Avengers stuck in the Savage Land, the Young Avengers and the Initiative scramble to take on the New York invaders. They don't do so well, and are lucky to get their behinds saved by...

Okay, if it seems dire for the good guys, that sounds about right. Bendis is perfectly fine in how he sets up the conflict, and you can feel the peril and can cut the tension with a knife. Predictably, the Sentry - possibly the most powerful being on Earth but, to me, a useless tool - is easily disposed of. Skrull Queen Veranke, in her guise as Spider-Woman, mindf*@%s Tony Stark so convincingly that it had me wondering, is he Skrully? Ronin is reunited with a loved one (but is she Skrully?), and retro-costumes make a comeback.

I do like that the Skrulls also wage a media assault on the Earthlings, in which they justify their actions. Their shapeshifting ability rendering them experts in espionage and subterfuge, it makes sense that they would also resort to more cerebral gambits, and not just restrict themselves to blatant displays of force. Their TV air time (probably sponsored by RC Cola, if you're up on your "Super Skrull" song) assures us that they have come to save us from ourselves. And it's realistic to me that there are actually folks who buy into that, as Bendis demonstrates in issue #6. Having said that, other than many uttered "He loves you"s, there's barely a mention here of the prophetic Skrully Scriptures, which have long guided the Many-Clefted-Chinned-Ones in their staging of the invasion. You pretty much have to check out the past year's issues of NEW AVENGERS to get the lowdown on Skrull religion. By the way, I did get a chuckle when Reed is being taken out and the Skrull sleeper agent tells him: "He even loves you."

There's a lot of stuff going on here, a host of sub-plots. And I guess that's one downside to large company crossover shindigs, that these little sub-plots get kinda glossed over. The Bendis just has too many spots to cover, and in only eight issues, most of which apparently has to be devoted to punchfests (issue #7 alone is essentially one extended "You hit me, I hit you"). Or so it seems. The impression left is that it all feels too busy, too rushed; Bendis doesn't slow down enough or allow enough reflective moments to give the reader time to let all this sink in, before the brouhaha picks up again. Nick Fury (and his huge honking gun) and his spanking new Howling Commandos pop in and out to save New York, but since I don't get a peek at the times in between the fighty fights, I'm not as invested in them. For someone whose long-awaited return I've been anticipating, my reaction to Nick Fury was surprisingly "meh." As well, I would've liked to have seen more of the Hood and his criminal posse and how they fared. Thor shows up for a mo, with his hammer and his thees and thous, and I dig that he disses Tony. Alas, Bucky Barnes, one of my new favorites, gets even less screen time. And did I see Daredevil in the background? I guess, if you want the full Secret Invasion flavor, you have to pick up the various tie-ins and associated mini-series. Corporate Marvel is really intent on maximizing their profits here.

The stakes are huge, and there's even an Uatu joke to that effect. The scale is epic, and I guess that's my beef with tapping Leinil Yu as SI's penciller. I liked him on the NEW AVENGERS title, as he added an interesting quirky twist to the storytelling. But, on a massive, widescreen venue like SI, Yu to me just doesn't have that polished style and appropriate sense of grandeur. I don't dig how he draws the Skrulls when in their mid-change, either. And there are times when Yu's storytelling gets a bit murky, to the point that I found myself having to go back to see what exactly he was trying to convey. Bryan Hitch, Salvador Larroca, Stuart Immonen, I can't help but feel that any one of these cats would've rocked this series.

I'm not sure that this next thing is even a complaint, as much as it is a resigned observation. The Skrulls have accessed techonology which now renders them undetectable to Earth's warning systems, magical, mutant, or technological (just how is chronicled in NEW AVENGERS #44). Yet Reed is able to pretty briskly whip up a countermeasure device, and, just like that... detectable. Seeing as Reed himself was sorta instrumental in the Skrull's newfound undetectability, I guess this is apropos. Still, it smacks of too convenient a deux ex machina.

By the end, there's a shuffling of the status quo (And if you're not a fan of Tony Starks, then you'll relish this series, as start to finish dude gets kicked around). New comic book titles will spring from SECRET INVASION, formerly dead characters will resurface, etc. But the rawest punch in the gut is the death of a major classic superhero. I don't mind it when a character dies, by the way, so that an "event" can be even more relevant. But please do it right. CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS did it right and with verisimilitude with the deaths of Supergirl and Barry Allen. In SI, I don't feel that the character's death is given the weight and moment it deserves. Bendis carries this out almost in a nonchalant manner. And, for some reason, one panel bugged me to bits. So this character croaks, and an ensuing caption reads that, because of this death, "whoever survived... whoever was left... would be insanely ticked off." Norman Osborn, the Hood, and Bullseye are in this panel, with many of Marvel's superdupers, but why would these three particularly give a hoot regarding this hero's passing? Yeah, I know, this is nitpicky stuff. But I don't buy it (And Daredevil in this panel looks really, really anguished). Anyway, I still think that Steve Rogers is coming back. Same with this character.

As someone who doesn't bleed money, I'm having to ease off on purchasing comic books. Not that big of a deal since, for a while now, both Marvel and DC haven't been impressing me with these company events. SECRET INVASION ends as an ominous set-up for the next big Marvel extravaganza, called Dark Reign, and I'd be more into this if Lex Luthor hadn't already walked this road. As it is, as I've said, I'm scaling back.

But, despite the artwork and Bendis's underwhelming execution, SECRET INVASION does have its moments. Bendis still has his knack for dialogue, so there's some snappy banter going on here. Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Luke Cage, and Clint Barton get a lot of screen time, with Spidey here and there doing his wiseacre schtick. Clint, especially, gets a chance to cut loose. There's one awesome sequence in which he takes up the bow and arrows from the fallen Young Avengers' Hawkeye and rapidly takes out a gaggle of Skrulls. There's a nice reconciliation scene between Luke and Jessica (in the middle of a massive Skrull throwdown, natch). And the return of one favorite female crimefighter has got me pumped, as this hints of an addition to the New Avengers' roster. But, mostly, I'm just relieved that my main man Spidey isn't a Skrull... or is he?

After a few years of build-up, Brian Michael Bendis' supposed master plan for the Marvel Universe since the beginning of "New Avengers" is at hand. This trade paperback collects all eight issues of the main title of Marvel's 2008 summer event (April to November), which sees the alien Skrulls make their bid to conquer Earth. The result is a decidedly mediocre event; there are high points, and long stretches where little happens.

This story began in "New Avengers" in 2007, when the supervillain boss of the Hand, Elektra Natchios, was revealed to be a Skrull spy. From there, a parallel story arc in "New" and "Mighty" Avengers that saw everyone become massively paranoid while mostly not doing anything about the invasion. In #1 of this series, the invasion finally kicks off. The central gimmick of this new Skrull invasion is that the Skrulls have upgraded their stealth capability to the point that they can essentially escape detection by all conventional means. However, the actual story is anything but `secret'. Having achieved total surprise, the Skrulls proceed to voluntarily reveal themselves and wage an open war on Earth in the city streets.

The first issue, where the Skrulls drop the hammer on Earth's primary lines of defence (the Avengers, the Fantastic Four, SHIELD, SWORD) is, for the most part, masterfully executed. Bendis, who can often let his stories drag, masterminds a fairly compelling series of setpiece openings, lending the story considerable scope. However, things quickly go off the rails in #2, and subsequently about five issues are spent with Avengers running around the Savage Land fighting Skrull duplicates of heroes from the 1970s. There are occasional interesting scenes here, such as Black Widow's scenes taking the initiative, but it's mostly dull. Other plots over this same stretch, such as Maria Hill's, stagnate as well, until the plot suddenly begins barrelling forward past the half-way point, with the introduction of a technological deus ex machine that solves the Skrull reveal problem.

I don't in principle object to Reed Richards' solution, but it is a less interesting way of solving the situation, and is coupled with a total breakdown in the dramatic handling of the Skrull replacements. In the early stages of the story, it seemed that the thought-bubbles used by the characters in "Mighty Avengers" would be the clues used to guess who was replaced. However, the story switched gears and said that the Skrulls were flawless mimics who actually thought themselves to be the people they had replaced. Under these rules, absolutely anyone could be a Skrull and there would be no way for people to guess, which sucks any level of fan participation: one is just waiting for the wholly arbitrary reveals.

Having wasted a lot of time in repetitious conversations in the Savage Land (Bendis all too often indulges himself in pages of repetitive and irrelevant banter between characters that is far less clever and purposeful than he thinks it is), the final battle, denuded of the scope that the first issue gave it, becomes a free-for-all in Central Park, and is literally concluded as an afterthought in a narrative flashback. Bendis likewise keeps pulling in more new characters every issue who don't do much of anything; Nick Fury's much-built-up return doesn't amount to anything (though he gets a great line), and the New Captain America and Thor, prominently featured on the cover of this trade, barely have any lines (particularly Bucky, whose debut in the wider Marvel Universe had far more potential than is shown here). The final issues likewise feature the rise of Norman Osborn, which happens almost entirely in tie-in stories until the critical moment, which thus has little build-up within this story itself.

Lest I give the story no credit, there are enjoyable moments to be found in Bendis' writing, hints of a much better story to be found here. Leinil Yu's art is excellent; far better than I had ever expected after his work on "New Avengers" earlier in the year. This is in part because of the participation of Laura Martin (colours) and Mark Morales (inks).

It's a shame, because there is a great concept to be found here, as shown by the work of other writers in the tie-ins to this event, who produced great work: Paul Cornell's "Captain Britain and MI-13", Fred Van Lente and Greg Pak's "Incredible Hercules", Joe Pokaski's "Secret Invasion: Inhumans", and Matt Fraction's "Secret Invasion: Thor" all come to mind.

This book starts off with an extremely old Fantastic Four story about Skrulls. Just a neat little thing Marvel threw in. I skimmed it quickly, then started the actual book. Turns out, I already read the first part. And the second. And the third. The entire book is taken from other books that have already been printed in tpb format...

Still, a great read by itself, if I didn't already own the respective books it took material from.

I'm one of the guys that bought some of those slick variants, love Ellis' Thunderbolts and am a fan of Yu's artwort, so i'm no hater. but WOW this was awful.

There were so many wasted moments with potential for something grand ,but NOPE.
it will forever be a "what if" in your mind. Heroes are all confused and they just say "cool things" in the middle of battle. the editing is so bad it seems everyone is making a cameo over and over.
and the Skrulls planned this for decades and they failed miserably. hybrid Skrulls are cool and all but when you see a Galactus Skrull its like WTF.

even the art seemed rushed.

overall, after this and Civil War, being so close to greatness, and yet to see them fall on their faces, it has made me drop some Marvel titles.

FAIL.

Killer follow-up to Civil War. Artwork is great and the story is lots of fun. Definitely recommended to pick up if you've already read Civil War.

"Secret Invasion"
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Illustrated by Leinil Yu
(Marvel Comics, 2009)
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At last, the culmination of several years worth of relentless crossover, tie-in mega-"events" that have dominated Marvel's output for the last several years. It turns out that many of the reality-wrenching events -- "Civil War", etc. -- were the result of covert meddling by the alien Skrull empire, which has mounted a global invasion by infiltrating Earth's security forces and various superhero teams. This eight-part grand finale is intended to tie it all together. I picked up this volume after having first read several of the tie-in graphic novels (primarily the Avengers-related titles) so I felt I was fairly well-prepped for the big denouement that would explain it all. Unfortunately, I found the main event to be a bit garbled and rushed; it was more of a big slugfest than an explanation, the plot itself is a bit confusing.

I think we were all supposed to have read the fanzine articles and know where this was headed, rather than have the story itself explain things. Various characters were resurrected, but some were "real" and others were not. The real-deal Thor appears and helps tip the balance of power, after having been killed off a while ago when his own book came to an end. No explanation - he just appears, and is accepted as the genuine article. In a similar vein, Captain America also shows up to lead the charge, but I was never sure if he was the real Cap or not -- he showed up in the Savage Land, and might have been a Skrull replica, but turns out to be human, yet it's never made explicit in "Secret Invasion" if this Cap is really Steve Rogers, or Bucky, his replacement. Meanwhile, we get a LOT of two-page battle spreads with dozens of combatants zapping and smashing one another, the sort of thing that used to flood Marvel books, for a page or two, but which became thematically flat this time around.

Worse, still, is the way the series ends, with the abrupt set-up for -- groannnnnnn -- yet *another* continuity-changing crossover blah blah blah storyline, the "Dark Reign" series, where bad guys like Norman Osborne (aka The Green Goblin) are put in charge of the world's superheroes. Whatever. As a longtime Marvel fan I am really, really tired of these endless parades of crossover "special events." The last few have simply sucked the air out of most of their super books, particularly promising titles like the New Avengers, where the characters themselves have no room to breathe. There's no personality left in the books, only grand story arcs and mechanistic plot devices that often do not seem plausible or in keeping with the old Marvel realities. Maybe these things sell more copies of books, as "must-read" books, but enough is enough. In the final analysis, the Skrull invasion was a disappointment, and the coming Dark Reign story cycle seems tiresome and contrived. Please, make it stop! (Joe Sixpack, ReadThatAgain book reviews)

I liked this event. Good follow up to the civil war and great start to the dark reign of Norman Osborn.