I asked some friends to recommend a series to reread during the month of September, and my former cohost from The VeXed Men (rest in reruns), suggesteI asked some friends to recommend a series to reread during the month of September, and my former cohost from The VeXed Men (rest in reruns), suggested revisiting The Secret Invasion.
If you want the full, full, full experience, you just have to read about a billionty Marvel books stretching all the way back to Fantastic Four #2 (that's right, not the 1998 #2 or the 200whatever #2, the 1961 flagship Marvel title). Luckily, Marvel stitched together a Most Important Pre-Secret Invasion Collection, and it's ... adequate.
The book opens with Fantastic Four #2 by Stan Cameo King Lee and Jack I Will Punch A Nazi To Death Kirby. It's absolute silver age silliness. The characters are waaaaaaaaaaaay Over The Top, they speak their every woeful thought, and almost every non-hero character's dialogue makes them sound like a complete idiot. It's the template of Silver Age comics, and it focuses on The Fantastic Four being mimiced by a group of shape-shifting aliens called The Skrulls. An aboslutely silly 3/5*
Next up is the opening issue of Brian Michael Bendis's "Illuminati". This is his retcon that there has been a secret cabal of six of the most important superheroes who meet in secret and help control the fate of the Marvel Universe. It was a fun series, and this issue made me want to go back and read the whole Bendis Avengers era starting with Mark Millar's Civil War: A Marvel Comics Event. This issue shows them attacking the Skrulls on their homeworld. It's fun to see that the Secret Invasion was definitely being planned even as Civil War unfolded. It's why this era of Marvel was so tightly plotted (not necessarily tightly written). And this was the issue that really started to pull everything together. 4/5*
New Avengers #31 & #32 are the actual first shot in the Secret Invasion, as the New Avengers team battles the hand, only to discover that one of their enemies is a Skrull, and has probably been a Skrull for a long time, meaning theMarvel Universe has been manipulated by The Skrulls since even before the Civil War. These issues were so good, that I thought When I'm done with this, I'm going back to read Civil War, and I'm going to read every Avengers and Ms Marvel book that feed into this event. God, I love Bendis, why don't I read him all the time? 5/5*
Oh, Mighty Avengers #7 is why. His writing is uneven, especially during this period where he was writing five million books a week or so. If you're spread out among so many stories, they're probably not all going to be great, and this one is a clunker. I don't remember Ultron making Tony Stark a woman, and then manipulating the weather like some 1940s Batman villain. I don't want to read that. And every character in this book had thought balloons in nearly every panel. It felt like Bendis thought this book was somehow So Smart that he had to explain every character's motivation in thought balloons, and it totally doesn't work. It kills any momentum threatened to be built up, and it makes every character sound like a whiny middle-schooler with wet pants. This was definitely skippable. But it does lead into the Venom Bomb storyline, which I'd totally forgotten about. 2/5*
The final issue of the Illuminati issue reveals that one of the six members of The Illuminati has been a Skrull, possibly since their very first adventure. So the Secret Invasion threat is very real. There are Skrulls Everywhere. Stakes are set, consequences occur, and the Secret Invasion is ready to roll out in full force. 4/5*
The story from Avengers The Initiative Annual #1 was a dud. The idea, at the time, was that Tony Stark had started The Initiative. Basically, every state in the USA gets a superhero team, which means a ton of inexperienced and unqualified heroes are suddenly given access to loads of credibility and power. Oh, and also, it means There's A Skrull In Every State! This whole story could have been a page long and been just as powerful. None of the characters in the issue are memorable, and I'm pretty sure none of them were ever used again once The Initiative book was shut down. 1/5*
I know I'm not being overly positive about this book, but it is a nice collection of stories to lead into The Secret Invasion if you're not going to just start with Civil War and plow through The Age Of Crossover Events (Civil War 2005-7, Secret Invasion 2008, Dark Reign 2009, Seige 2010, Fear Itself 2011). I do recommend it as a jumping on point for people interested in reading The Secret Invasion books before the TV series starts.
I did not include the last two issues of this book (New Avengers #38 and #39), as they are also the first two issues of Secret Invasion, Book 1, which is the next book I'm reading....more
I was cohosting a comic book podcast when this series was coming out, and my partner spoiled the end of this volume (with my permission) so that I wouI was cohosting a comic book podcast when this series was coming out, and my partner spoiled the end of this volume (with my permission) so that I would know exactly what was going down in Secret Wars. It seemed like a cool idea, and I was excited to see how it was actually fleshed out in the series.
It's not. The reveals in this volume feel incredibly forced, largely unsatisfying, and don't make a ton of narrative sense. This is kind of a Final Episode Of Lost level of "Oh no. Why have I spent so much time on this?"
The last issue, in particular, that is sort of a Steven Rogers fever dream, and sort of supposed to provide some allegorical resonance about his relationship with Tony Stark, going all the way back to Civil War, is tacked on garbage. It's like, five minutes before the end of a wedding, a Best Man suddenly realized he was supposed to decorate a newlywed couple's car and he runs out and Scotch tapes parts of his dinner to their car. Ta.....da?
This was a massive disappointment. Probably my least favorite book that Hickman had worked on. I definitely can't think of how I'd sell this to a customer other than saying "Well, if you really need to know how Marvel reached its Giant Reboot of the 2000s, this is it. It's ... okay, I guess." But mostly it's a lot of unsatisfying noise that acknowledges continuity but doesn't honor it, and spends two years slowly building to an event before completely fizzling out at the end....more
I really want to love the lavish scale of Jonathan Hickman's run on Avengers, but instead of taking all the dispirate parts of the story and focusing I really want to love the lavish scale of Jonathan Hickman's run on Avengers, but instead of taking all the dispirate parts of the story and focusing in on specific characters, Hickman keeps throwing more nostalgic continuity at readers, hoping that his new twist on familiar Marvel stories will make up for the fact that the story has been moving at a snails pace since the very first collection.
Now there are Beyonders in the mix, warring with the Builders, and the Annihilation wave, and the Shi'ar, and the Kree, and the Mapmakers, and the alternate universe versions of The Avengers? And they're not like the Beyonder from the previous Secret Wars, they're more evolved because that Beyonder was a baby Beyonder?
There's also some inevitable betrayals, preventable betrayals, characters brooding over their earlier motivations. I would say this volume has 4:1 exposition to action, and that makes it action packed compared to previous volumes. I just don't care about the characters as much as I should, given that about 1/3rd of the Marvel Universe are now Avengers and are supposed to be major parts of this story.
I'm afraid that, unlike his Fantastic Four run, the series is not going to coalesce into something I'm glad I read, and I'm going to regret spending all this time reading a story whoe consequences on paper far outweigh my emotional investment....more
In action stories where there are a dozen or so moving parts, a bunch of characters coming together to overcome a problem, be it superheroes, a group In action stories where there are a dozen or so moving parts, a bunch of characters coming together to overcome a problem, be it superheroes, a group of bank robbers, a government and a group of scientists responding to an approaching meteor, there is a point in the film/tv series/comic book/novel where we transition from excessive narration, character beats, and introspection and we get down to the fistfights, shocking reveals, and denoument.
That's where we're at in Hickman's Avengers run.
We're eight months after the last part of the story, everything is changed and feels more urgent, but rather than really understand the changes, we just throw the characters into the action and see what happens.
And, naturally, there are chess references.
It sort of works here. I believe all the characters' motivations. I like the way the plot is unfolding, but it's The End Of The Marvel Universe, and I'm not emotionally involved in any way. There's too much logic and not enough pathos. It's like listening to someone talk about a hobby they love, and have them clinically reproduce a Wikipedia article on every possible aspect of their hobby, as opposed to listening to someone's engrossing story about the part of their hobby that they really love. Yea, I'm getting the information I was hoping for, but it's just ... flat.
Second to The Manhattan Projects, Vol. 1: Science. Bad., this might be the most disappointed I've been in Hickman's writing. Again, it's not terrible. It's not even technically bad, it's just unfulfilling given the scope of this story. If you're a fan of large cast epic tales, this still might be for you. I was just hoping there would be at least one storyline that engaged my emotions as much as it engages Hickman's knowlege of Marvel conitnuity....more
for the first time, I'm going to sit down and read the entirety of Hickman's Avengers run from this volume through Secret Wars. I read it in bits and for the first time, I'm going to sit down and read the entirety of Hickman's Avengers run from this volume through Secret Wars. I read it in bits and pieces when it was coming out, which is not a good way to read any of Hickman's superhero work.
I'm not sure I read this volume at all, which I enjoyed much more than the beginning of his run on adjectiveless Avengers. There's a clear threat, some new characters, continuity porn for fans of Bendis's Illuminati storylines, and some top level art by Steve Epting.
The premise: that the multiverses are converging, and always at the planet Earth, isn't a new one for comics or Marvel, but it's given an interesting sense of urgency as this cabal of The Most Responsible Superheroes (The Illuminati) make this a top priority, journeying to wherever in the world a rogue Earth shows up in the sky, and doing their best to stop their Earth from being the one that's destroyed.
Their is the usual internal squabbling, and the group doing something awful to one of their members (remember, the first time we saw them, they flung Bruce Banner into space). But, overall, this is a more hopeful story featuring The Smartest And Most Responsible Heroes On Earth.
This is a great lead-in to a run that's about to get super complicated and hard to follow.
I recommend this for anyone who enjoys superheros battling apocalyptic scenarios, particularly those who enjoyed Bendis's Illuminati stories....more
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