The Revolution loves big events. Be it from Marvel or DC, I get excited over big events like I do over the big summer blockbuster movies. And often, the excitement and anticipation to the big events are far more fun than the big events themselves. Many times, the big events fail to live up to the hype.
I will readily admit that I am suspicious that Secret Invasion is going to be much of an impressive story. I have a feeling that we are going to get an event that is going to be a rather thin read with not much in the way of actual storyline, plot development or character work and heavy on “shocking” random Skrull reveals and over the top action scenes designed to evoke that “Oh shit!” moment from the reader.
Basically, I’m expecting Secret Invasion to be like your average blockbuster summer movie that relies on flashy special effects and adrenaline pumping action scenes to distract the reader from the fact that there is little to no story, terrible acting and poor dialogue.
With that in mind, I will remain cautiously optimistic and hope that Secret Invasion #1 provides for some enjoyable popcorn for the brain. Let’s go ahead and hit this review.
Creative Team
Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Leinel Yu
Inks: Mark Morales
Art Rating: 5 Night Girls out of 10
Story Rating: 6 Night Girls out of 10
Overall Rating: 5.5 Night Girls out of 10
Synopsis: We begin with a flashback to years ago with a bunch of Skrull soldiers approaching their Queen who had been banished. The Skrulls inform their Queen that the Skrull homeworld has been destroyed and the Skrull armada nearly wiped out. The Queen says that the scripture was right and that now her people have come back to her. The Queen then says that she will now tell her people what must be done.
We zip back to the present in one of Stark’s labs where Tony Stark is meeting with Reed Richards and Henry Pym. Tony reveals to Reed and Hank the body of the Electra Skrull. Tony fills Reed and Henry in on the fact that the Skrulls have infiltrated Earth. That these new Skrulls are totally undetectable by any means of science or magic. Tony says that Reed and Henry are the two smartest men on the planet and asks them to study the Skrull and figure up a way to detect these new Skrulls.
We cut to the Peak, the headquarters of SWORD. Dum Dum Dugan arrives at the Peak and meets with Agent Brand. (Uh, didn’t she die over on Astonishing X-Men?) Suddenly, Brand is alerted that a Skrull ship has entered Earth’s atmosphere and is headed to crash land in the Savage Land. Brand orders for her assistant to contact Tony Stark immediately.
We cut back to Tony still meeting with Reed and Henry. Suddenly, Tony is alerted by Maria Hill that a Skrull ship has crash landed in the Savage Land. Tony tells Maria that he will investigate it himself. Tony won’t tell Reed and Henry about the crashed Skrull ship and simply tells them that he will be calling to check in on them.
Iron Man takes off and contacts Spider-Woman. She tells Tony that only she and Jarvis are currently at Avengers Tower. Tony tells her to get the Quinjet ready and to call the rest of the Avengers and get them back to Avengers Tower immediately in order to head out to the Savage Land to investigate the Skrull ship.
Spider-Woman then calls Luke Cage and tells him about the Skrull ship that crashed in the Savage Land. Spider-Woman says that at this point she trusts Luke and the Secret Avengers more than Tony. (Of course.) Spider-Woman tells Luke about the crash landed Skrull ship in the Savage Land. Luke hangs up and then calls someone else and asks for a “quick drop.”
We slide back to Avengers Tower where Black Widow is standing outside of the Quinjet. Suddenly, the Secret Avengers arrive on the scene courtesy of Cloak. Spider-Man webs up Black Widow and the Secret Avengers steal the Quinjet.
Three minutes later, Iron Man, Ms. Marvel Wonder Man, Ares, and Spider-Woman arrive on the scene. Iron Man asks Black Widow where the Quinjet is.
We cut back to the stolen Quinjet. Iron Fist points out that Tony can control the world’s satellites and will be following them. Luke doesn’t care. We see the Secret Avengers arriving at the Savage Land. A dinosaur chomps on the Quinjet and knocks it out of the air. The Secret Avengers emerge from the wrecked Quinjet. Wolverine says that he will track the way to the crashed Skrull ship.
On the way, the Secret Avengers pass the site where they had their first battle. Wolverine says that this isn’t why they are here and to come on. The Secret Avengers arrive at the crashed Skrull ship. Suddenly, Iron Man and the rest of the Mighty Avengers show up on the scene. Iron Man tells the Secret Avengers to step away from the ship and that they are under arrest. (Oh lord; we aren’t going to go through this old song and dance once again, are we?)
The two sets of Avengers square off. Luke ignores Iron Man and starts to tear open the Skrull ship. Luke comments that Tony must be a Skrull since he doesn’t want the Secret Avengers opening this ship. (Of course.) We see Luke prying away at the ship. Suddenly an orange light on the ship turns green. (Way to go, dumbass.)
We then cut back to the Peak. Suddenly, Dum Dum Dugan’s eyes glow green and he says “He loves you…” The Peak then blows up. All the agents in the Peak are covered by protective bubbles as they float amid the wreckage of the space station.
We cut to Avengers Tower where Jarvis’ eyes are glazed over. Jarvis says “He loves you…” and enters an alien virus into the Avengers Tower computer system. We then see Iron Man’s armor freezing up and being attacked by the virus. Iron Man collapses to the ground.
We then shift to the Helicarrier where Maria Hill is being informed that they have a full systems malfunction. Maria Hill orders everyone to abandon ship. We see the helicarrier tilting to its side and it begins to crash.
We then see the alien virus that Jarvis uploaded attacking and shutting down all of the Stark Enterprises facilities across the country. We zip to the Raft and see the alien virus hacking through their system and releasing all of the prisoners. We slide to the Cube and see the alien virus shutting down their system and releasing all of the prisoners. Marvel Boy notices that the security systems have been decimated and decides that it is time to leave the Cube.
We slide over to Thunderbolts Mountain where Norman Osborn is meeting with several Thunderbolts. Suddenly, the wall explodes and all the Thunderbolts are knocked out. We see Captain Marvel standing in the gaping hole of Thunderbolts Mountain.
We shift to Manhattan and see a guided tour group in the Baxter Building. One of the tourists slips away from the group. The tourist is a Skrull and he turns into Sue Richards. Skrull Sue then walks past Johnny and Franklin and enters Reed’s lab. Skrull Sue then opens the Negative Zone portal and creates a massive breach in the portal. Skrull Sue says “He loves you…” We see the Negative Zone breach beginning to suck in the top part of the Baxter Building.
We cut back to the Savage Land. Iron Man is having a complete seizure from the alien virus. Luke smartly exclaims that what Iron Man is doing is nothing but a trick. (Of course.). Suddenly, the Skrull ship opens and out steps Power Man, Wolverine, White Queen, Jewel, Captain America, Scarlet Witch, Beast, Hawkeye, Ms. Marvel, Mockingbird, Wonder Man, Thor, Iron Man, Vision, Phoenix, Invisible Woman. All of them are in there 1970’s glory.
The 1970’s characters square off with the combined Secret and Mighty Avengers. The 1970’s Ms Marvel asks “Is this it? Did we make it back to Earth?”
We slide back to the wreckage of the Peak. Agent Brand is desperately trying to contact the helicarrier. Brand says that they only have got about ten more minutes of air left. Suddenly, Agent Brand sees a massive Skrull armada arrive outside of Earth’s atmosphere.
We cut back to the Stark lab where Reed and Henry are working on the Electra Skrull. Reed says that he thinks he has figured out how the Skrulls made themselves undetectable. Reed asks Henry if he knows what the Skrulls did. Henry replies that he already knows. Henry pulls out a gun on Reed and blasts him into goo. Henry Pym then turns into his Skrull form and says “He even loves you.”
Comments
The Good: Secret Invasion was an okay issue. It wasn’t a bad read, but it certainly wasn’t anything amazing. I will admit that Secret Invasion #1 offered up plenty of brain candy and was certainly a fun read. This issue is pretty much what I expected. Secret Invasion offered ample over the top dramatic scenes of stuff blowing up in order to entertain and distract the reader from the lack of substance in the story.
Bendis certainly gets Secret Invasion off with a huge bang with this debut issue. We got plenty of action and also didn’t have to wait very long to see some Skrull reveals. I appreciate the fact that Bendis treated the reader to several Skrull reveals in this issue rather than making us wait several issues into the story.
Bendis wisely made sure the three Skrull reveals in this issue were not any real big names. They were big enough names for your average reader to know who the characters, but small enough that Bendis didn’t reveal too much early. It was just enough to get the reader excited for more Skrull reveals to come in the later issues.
At first, I will admit that I was concerned with the pacing of this issue as it lumbered along in the beginning. I was a bit worried that the pacing would be as poor as what plagues the New Avengers. I was pleasantly surprised to see that my fears were unfounded as Bendis cranked up the pacing and intensity of this issue with a sudden list of catastrophic events that practically overwhelm the reader.
Bendis has a catastrophic event hit just about every major facility in the 616 universe. Iron Man’s armor is down, Stark Enterprises facilities are down, the helicarrier crashes, the Peak is blown up, the Raft is busted open, the Cube is busted open, Thunderbolts Mountain is blow up and the Baxter Building is eaten by the Negative Zone. And then the Skrull ship opens up to reveal a bunch of 1970’s versions of various Marvel characters. Oh yeah, and the appearance of a Skrull armada.
That is a lot to happen in just a half of a comic book. I’m glad that Bendis wastes no time kicking off this story and gets things moving quickly in this debut issue. This is how you properly kick off a big event. It is imperative that the writer grabs the reader by the collar and rips them out of their seat and takes them for a wild ride. And Bendis certainly does that. Like a quality summer blockbuster movie, Secret Invasion #1 has tons of “oh shit” moments.
Bendis also teases the reader with the flashback scene where the Skrull Queen references some scripture. Bendis also teases the reader with the “He loves you…” statement by the Skrulls in hiding in this issue. Just who is this “He?” I’m hooked and I can’t wait to learn more about this individual. This religious twist on Secret Invasion was a surprise. I wasn’t expecting this angle at all. I’m curious to see what Bendis does with this plotline.
The appearance of the 1970’s heroes was completely expected, but still a neat scene. I figure that there are three possibilities concerning who or what these characters truly are. They are either clones, Skrulls or the real deals. Now, I just don’t think there is any way that these 1970’s characters are the real characters. That would create too much of a massive retconning of a majority of the 616 universe and pretty much render most of Marvel’s comics over the past 30 years totally pointless.
Plus, there is no way that Marvel would have JMS put all the time and effort bringing back Thor just to reveal that he is actually a Skrull. Also, once Steve Rogers got killed, he didn’t revert to Skrull form so we know that this 1970’s Captain America can’t be the real one, either.
That leaves these characters being clones or Skrulls who don’t realize that they are Skrulls. Much like Captain Marvel over on his mini-series. It appears that the opening of their space ship triggered the various “sleeper” Skrulls into action and lead to the massive attacks on the various installations in the 616 universe. I am going to guess that these 1970’s characters were designed to create confusion and chaos on Earth during the planned Skrull invasion by their armada.
Personally, I would love it if Wolverine was really a Skrull so we could get rid of so much of the horrid handling of his character over the years. I am certainly curious to see what Bendis is going to do with this group of 1970’s characters. This is definitely an interesting plotline that should provide the reader with plenty of entertainment.
The Bad: Secret Invasion was a bit of a shallow read. Bendis serves up some ordinary dialogue. All of the character talk with the exact same voice. This is a typical problem with the dialogue in any team book that Bendis writes. The characters are all flat and one-dimensional. I know Luke Cage is one of Bendis’ favorite characters, but he continually does Luke no service by writing him as one of the dumbest characters in the 616 universe.
I thought I was going to go insane if I had to listen to more of the same old tired and beaten to death dialogue of how Tony is Skrull and how he is the devil and clearly responsible for everything wrong in the world including your bad hair day that you had today. Seriously, I have had enough of that over on New Avengers and other assorted titles for the past year.
I also was less than pleased with having to sit through yet another incredibly lame and mind numbingly boring showdown between the two sets of Avengers. We have seen it one too many times. And it always entails the same dialogue and always ends with pretty much nobody doing anything. It is the same crap we have gotten countless of times in New Avengers. Honestly, I hope we never have to read this scene again.
The story itself was shallow and predictable. Secret Invasion #1 had a paint by numbers feel to it. It seems like Bendis wrote this issue with a checklist by his side of everything he needed to do in this issue and simply ticked them off one by one. The issue just came across as rote. The entire structure and feel of this issue was quite mechanical.
Secret Invasion #1 wasn’t a real creative effort. I rarely rate issues that consist of nothing but destroying things particularly high. That is the easiest part of writing a story. It doesn’t require much effort and talent on the writer’s part to crank out an issue where everything gets destroyed. The real talent and effort is in creation. What a writer can create in the wake of a destruction issue is what is really tough and a good measure of a writer’s skill. Hopefully, Bendis has something intriguing and satisfying in store for us out of all the wreckage from this issue.
And like I was worried, the Skrull reveals were not all that exciting for me. The problem is that the “surprises” via the Skrull reveals are not plot driven surprises. They are gimmicks. The entire “Who’s a Skrull?” aspect to this story has such a gimmicky feel to it. The nature of the reveals makes it harder on the reader to get invested in the story when it seems like all the Skrull reveals are totally random in nature and designed to “shock” without any substance.
It was unfortunate that both Jarvis and Dum Dum are actually Skrulls. I have always liked both characters. And it was absolutely no surprise at all that Pym was a Skrull. You knew that either Reed or Pym had to be a Skrull in order to keep the other one from discovering how to detect the Skrulls so early on in this story. And between the two, I went with Pym. Why? Because Pym’s character gets dumped on more than any other character in the 616 universe. So, now Pym is a Skrull. Naturally.
Leinel Yu’s artwork was unimpressive. It was resolutely average. This is certainly not the type of artwork that I expect on a big event. Big events absolutely must have top notch high quality artwork. Secret Invasion most certainly does not. The middling artwork gives this issue a boring look that robs the story of some of its summer blockbuster big time feel.
Overall: All in all, Secret Invasion #1 was a fun little read that serves for some nice popcorn for the brain. This issue doesn’t require much from the reader and is best served by the reader letting go of demanding too much from the story and simply going on for a ride and not questioning things along the way.
Secret Invasion #1 will appeal to most comic book fans. Bendis makes this issue very reader friendly. The reader is not required to have an encyclopedic knowledge of the 616 universe nor do you need to read a million other titles just to understand the story going on in Secret Invasion. This will make Secret Invasion #1 easy to enjoy and quite accessible for most comic book fans.
Secret Invasion #1 is a comic book equivalent of summer blockbuster movies like Independence Day. If you can appreciate the fun that those types of movies deliver then you will probably get a kick out of Secret Invasion.
11 thoughts on “Comic Book Review: Secret Invasion #1”
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i like yu’s art and style. i thought it was really top notch. different strokes for different folks.
writing off the 1970’s heroes as just skrulls, or clones, or the real deal is really doing a disservice to the writers. i think that they’ll probably be a mix of all three, and even a robot duplicate(vision). i think your assessment is correct in that it may possibly be story wise just to serve as a distraction from our heroes. although i do think by the end of the stories we will have peace between the avengers and no more god awful “you’re under arrest” “you’re a skrull” dialogue.i also get the feeling that the climax of this story might be luke cage and stark becoming friends again(at least i hope)
i think the whole who do you trust? might not ust be a gimmick based on the religious undertones. i’m optimistic that this story might have a message of faith in friends and trust, or some such hallmarky concept,
Let me just fire the opening salvo here and say that Yu’s artwork is junk. I can’t believe this is who they tapped for such a major event.
I agree with you about the art. It just bored me to the point where I had to wonder who that bald little rotund man was. It sure didn’t look like Jarvis to me. For such a major event Marvel should have assigned a top notch artist, or at least insisted Leinil go back to his old style of artwork. The story itself was average at best, but the dialogue was mind numbing.
Hey, stephen, I think the climax of the story will be Luke kicking Tony in the vagina.
I’ve neither rabidly pro- or anti-Bendis; I like MA most of the time, find NA dreary, and I loved the Illuminati miniseries mostly. I thought this was a pretty good start; I’d probably give it a 7 or 8.
Yu’s art is now actually quite good with inking and Martin’s colours, which really just makes them letting him go without those things on NA even more ridiculous.
As for Pym being a Skrull instead of Reed, I reached the same conclusion, but I based it on the fact that Reed is a much bigger character, with his own book currently being written by Mark Millar, while Hank is one of about 20 characters in a Dan Slott series that is heavily tying into SI.
It was cool to see Brand and SWORD incorporated into the story (generally, there’s some decent scope here, although there’s been no mention yet of the X-Men, the other major superteam on the planet).
So far, the Skrulls are effectively creepy villains, although lacking a central figure (though that “queen” person I imagine will fill that role).
I think you’ve easily undervalued this issue by about 2 points on your scoring scales.
As you’ve said, we aren’t going to get far discussing art. I like it fine (better actually), and maybe it will come out on time.
As for the story, it isn’t the same old “You’re under arrest!” I thought that too at first and groaned. I don’t see Ms. Marvel caring about this in her solo title at all any longer, for example. But the New Avengers stole a Quinjet! They should be under arrest for that. (Forget about registering.) And I can get behind MM and IM’s comments when I look at it that way. Iron Fist is a billionaire last time I checked. Why don’t they get their own Quinjet?
I know you love Iron Man, but, of course, he is going to get hit most by a computer virus, both in the Iron Man systems, Stark operations and SHIELD operations. That’s just the way it is. Don’t take it so personally as an Iron Man fan.
For the first issue, this did the job well. With such a huge cast, and so many things to set up, how much individual character development do you realistically expect? You’ve got to set the status quo for new readers in and event like this, and they did it nicely.
There was some cool stuff here. The 10 minute air bubbles? Scientifically ridiculous, I’m quite sure, but cool anyway.
And now all the Avengers are stranded in the Savage Land where they can’t do a damn thing but inevitably battle their doppelgangers? Silly. But terrifying for the rest of the planet. That’s the interesting part. The world might be quite screwed while they are down there.
There’s a chance you might be giving a lower score because you fear the future issues might not hold up or never deliver the character development you crave. It is a problem when to take off those 2 points for lack of character development, but maybe issue one is not the place.
It’s fun to talk about this though, which is great. And I don’t even care about who is a Skrull and since when. I’m just enjoying it so far.
Concerning McNiven and Civil War, there was all kinds of factors to the delays and it wasn’t all his fault. Both he and the writer, Mark Millar, got sick during the course of the story. Millar was hospitilized at one point. Combined with multiple rewrites throughout the arc and it adds up to delays regardless of the artist. McNiven did cause some delays, but it’s not entirely his fault and it’s not entirely to be blamed on his drawing speed. He’s done monthlies before Civil War and never had a problem with deadlines. I just don’t like people all of a sudden lumping McNiven in with the likes of Hitch and Lee and the other ‘one issue every 6 months’ crowd.
As for Secret Invasion, pretty much agree with you on all points Rokk. Average, overstylized art for a major event, piss poor dialogue and a B-movie, summer blockbuster premise combined with the only hype being Bendis copy and pasting his sound bytes from interviews into his characters speech bubbles every month.
No one sounds like a Marvel character. It’s Bendis speaking through every character. While I enjoy his Bendis-speak, it becomes so much more noticeable when he does huge team ups or event books like this where we get literally 30 different Bendis’ in one issue.
I don’t even want to discuss the numerous Battlestar Galactica similarities. BSG is far from original with its new Cylons. Even Deep Space 9 had the Founders and the Dominion, but BSG did the whole infilitration, religion, huge armadas and dozens of other coinicidentally identical things as Bendis is doing in Secret Invasion a few years back when it first came back on the air.
SI isn’t identical to BSG, but every other page I see identical BSG plot points and it’s a huge detriment for me. I don’t think they are intentional or any kind of plagerism, but there was some kind of influence and Bendis must have watched the show.
As for the story, Bendis does what Bendis always does – writes characters and plot elements any way he wants. Extremist for Tony is a biological type of armour, but you can’t just hack into it with an alien virus and cause him to go into seizures. Hell, computers don’t interact with foreign coding. It wouldn’t be an alien virus. It would be a binary computer virus built to interact with our computers and would literally have to be written in code that makes the proper calls to our processors. You can’t just hack like this and I always hate shit like this. Hell, a computer on the Helicarrier wouldn’t be able to crash the ship. It would have failsafes to prevent that or even manual overrides. Tony can take control of any system on Earth, but Hawkeye can rip out the motherboard of the Quinjet and make it still fly so Tony can take it? I didn’t know Clint was a computer expert and had any knowledge of Extremist, especially since he’s been dead so long. None of these things make any sense to me and are Bendis-isms where he just writes whatever sounds good and no one stops him. I’m positive he doesn’t even read the Iron Man title.
I did like this issue, but there are so many things I don’t like about it at the same time. The Pym betrayal was predictable, but still a good scene as was Sue blowing up the Baxter Building.
Oh, I don’t know if you know or not, but Dum Dum was killed off in the SI: Prologue issue and replaced by the Skrull then. It’s fairly recent, so he’s only been a Skrull for a little while now.
“And it was absolutely no surprise at all that Pym was a Skrull.”
It had to happen. Right or wrong, fandom is never going to see Hank as anything more than a wife beating lowlife. Thats not going to change, so the only thing to do is have it turn out to not really have been Pym. I mean, they could comit to chracter growth, ahve him face his personal demons, gorw and be better for it, but thats a lot of work.
“Jarvis’ eyes are glazed over. Jarvis says “He loves you…” and enters an alien virus into the Avengers Tower computer system.”
Remember back in One more day? Aunt May was dieing, and Jarivs lovingly was by her side, even paying for her care. YOu can’t fake that kind of love.
“That would create too much of a massive retconning of a majority of the 616 universe and pretty much render most of Marvel’s comics over the past 30 years totally pointless.”
And Marvel would never recont decades of stories. How would they do it anyway, Have Wolverine become a dog boy, have Spiderman use Satan as a divorce atternoy? Pure crazyness.
Personally I’m praying 70’s Spidey at least is the real, it would clear up so much shit he’s been through.
When was wolverine a dog boy? Surely you’re thinking of the character “Dog” Logan from Origin who wasn’t Wolverine?
And I like Yu’s art
oh yeah, my mistake. I’d blocked that story arc out of my brain. And now I remember it, so thanks…