Teh Official Secret Invasion Thread (OR: I is not a Skrull)

I read the free booklet they gave out in my comic shop explaining what all this skrull stuff is about. Phrases like "what is this shite?" crossed my mind. Oh well.

it's like the bad marvel version of The Thing :(

Willie Lumpkin: "It's not Murdock."

> it's like the bad marvel version of The Thing :(

Or Cylons. I can't help but wonder if they're going to try to use Skrullies to sort out the Spider Man continuity clusterfuck.

I won't complain if this is used to explain inexplicable out-of-character fugues MR. FANTASTIC and get rid of the Sentry. If it's actually enjoyable on a World War Hulk level, bonus!

I'm prepared to like this.

So if Bendis or whoever pushed Nick Fury underground years ago as a seed for a future continuity-wide storyline (whether or not they knew it would be Skrulls at the time), do you think there's anything going on in the M.U. right now that's being set up for '09 or '10's big esstravaganzapalooza?

Welcome, my friends, to the show that never ends.

Ever.

::shrug::

Maybe Bucky will turn out to be a Skrull, meaning he was dead all along. Huzzah, oldschool continuity restored.

OR - the twist could be that EVERYONE IN THE WORLD is a Skrull, but had been pretending to the others not to be. So now a new era of Skrullish world peace beckons.

Hopefully this'll ret-con all that Scourge non-sense from the '80's, and Turner D. Century will reemerge alive and well.

I'm hoping it turns out that Johnny Storm's wife, who was revealed to be a Skrull in the early 90s, was actually...a Skrull!

(Where is she in all this, anyway?)

You mean LYJA LAZERFIST? Hopefully somewhere getting a namechange.

Jeez, is that her porn name or her real name?

That's almost as bad as Steven Grant naming one of the Spaceknight backup characters "Gloriole".

http://www.marvel.com/universe3zx/images/thumb/4/4c/Lyja.jpg/440px-Lyja.jpg

Her Wikipedia entry reminds us that her main problem isn't her name, but Defalco's "Crazy womenfolk!" characterization, where she continuously delays revealing to the Torch that their "egg" is actually a corny mutant tentacle monster that will kill them all if it hatches. It also reveals that her plotline was left open: "Lyja left to attempt a normal life, masquerading again as a human woman." So, if anybody wanted to try and resuscitate her, Secret Invasion offers an opportunity. That said, the current Marvel regime seems to prefer resuscitating crappy characters only if they were most prominent in the 1970s; they're very good at it, but it also leaves a vast swath of horrible dangling characters out to sea.

As for her Lazerfist powers, the Wiki text reveals that this, too, is a dangling plotline, and one that reveals how unfocused Defalco's plotting was at this point, since despite being editor-in-chief and the only person writing a title featuring any of these characters, he can still end up producing something like:

The implant was subsequently absorbed by a normal human, apparently an electronics expert named Raphael Suarez, who gained the "Lazerfist" powers, and attempted to contact the Fantastic Four for their assistance. However, after the hectic events that followed the hatching of the "egg", Raphael wandered off, realizing the Fantastic Four were not going to be of any help in their current state, and has not been referenced since.

I have a feeling this is going to tie in to Dead Cap Am...and so will read it until it doesn't.

http://www.comicsbulletin.com/news/images/0803/WhoDoYouTrust11.jpg

That's almost as bad as Steven Grant naming one of the Spaceknight backup characters "Gloriole".

And another shred of my innocence dies a quiet death.

Yeah, uh, sorry 'bout that...

Oh but I'm totally stoked about this. It didn't quite "take" when Skrullektra was first unveiled, but I LOVED the following paranoia issues of New Avengers - although I think the momentum was badly squandered due to delays, trying to stay synchronized with Mighty Avengers, etc. But the core idea is great, high-concept stuff; if you were going to do a BIG EVENT this makes a lot of sense to me. I think reading the Illuminati miniseries also helped a lot, not for really fleshing out the Skrull plot at all (in fact, it's a sort of aimless series and I would happily ditch the Beyonder issue) but just for amping up the overall sense that Marvel is a world where Big Things happen and Weighty Figures make Decisions with Far-Reaching Implications. So I'm extremely optimistic, even after the partial bungling of Civil War and the hopeless meander that was Messiah Complex...

although I think the momentum was badly squandered due to delays, trying to stay synchronized with Mighty Avengers

Joe Q knew what Frank Cho was when he got into bed with him.

But yeah, I'm pretty excited about the whole thing too, more than Civil War and WWH.

is it worth reading this if i haven't been reading any marvel u books and won't read any of the other books that tie in?

I'm guessing not. It's not at all self-contained, I'm afraid--the dramatic tension is all about who's been under deep cover for a very long time.

SI #2 was much better than #1!

...I really, really can't get behind the 22 pages for 4 bucks BUT WITH A NICER COVER thing.

that's exactly why I didn't pick up #2, despite liking #1 far more than I expected.

I really want to sit back and enjoy this it the culmination of 5+ years of Bendis-ian involvement with/manipulation of the Marvel U, but they have to get a lot of this "Who's a Skrull? Who's not a Skrull?" shit out of the way fast. The whole doppelganger trope has become such a tired fictional staple at this point, and one which is rarely done well enough to justify its omnipresence. Just have all of the Skrulls reveal themselves so we can go, "WO", and then unleash the batshittery already. I don't think anyone is going to have any real investment in the story ("The real Captain America was in space this whole time? Pssshh. Right.") until they do.

I mean, I just caught up with the last six months or so of New Avengers in the past week or so, and my sympathies go out to everyone who's had to trudge through that steady stream of non-stop, overly-verbose paranoia, examined from every possible angle, in real time.

NEXT ISSUE: Luke Cage and Dr. Strange start singing "All Along the Watchtower"

I mean, I just caught up with the last six months or so of New Avengers in the past week or so

So what'd you do w/ the other 6 days, 23 hours, and 45 minutes? :D

Ha ha. Right? This is the first Bendis event that I'm attempting to read in real time, so we'll see how nuts it makes me.

He's gotten a lot better at BIFF BANG POW event-sized conflagrations (maybe) since House of M, but I'm starting to think that he's got a studio writing everything under his name except Ultimate Spider-Man (and maybe the first issue of SI). Whoever's responsible, they really need to stop with the dialogue-heavy plot-free arc padding when the story's plot-heavy -- it's like watching a 7th grader stuff her bra with three boxes' worth of Puffs Plus.

Generally speaking, I've really enjoyed his huge Daredevil/Alias/Secret War/New Avengers/House of M/Civil War(sorta part of his whole thing)/Mighty Avengers opus in story terms, and I think his dialogue has gotten waaaaaay less obnoxious (I didn't even read any of his Marvel stuff for years on the basis of a lot of his cringeworthy pre-Marvel dialogue) if no less excessive. But, yeah: we don't need, for instance, a refresher course every month in how Luke Cage doesn't trust anyone and a full rundown of every possible manifestation of said mistrust towards everyone he interacts with. WE GET IT ALREADY, BENDOID.

Ha -- so of course, after #1 set the table quite nicely, #2 slips into the same old pattern of wheel-spinning plot machinations abetted by pro-forma BMB dialogue. Only development of note that happened -- "real" Hawkeye / Echo saved "old" Mockingbird. And BMB got to write as "old" Luke Cage ("Christmas!"), so there's that. Oh -- and now there are multi-powered Superskrullies running around (which you knew was going to happen if you read the last issue of New Avengers, which was all about SKRULLS).

Tho I might've misses something as my reading skills have really gone to the dogs thanks to TOO MANY COMIX.

Which is to say that Douglas' & Garrett's impulses are OTM (tho Mark Morales is making Leinil Yu's look as good as it's even been since LY's former inker, Garry Allanguinan (sic?) retired from tracing).

(Leinil Yu's ART, that is)

Issue #1 was a good setup and Issue #2 seemed like it could have been told in about half the pages, there was I think three full two page spreads eating up six pages of comic.

I'm not a regular Marvel reader, so maybe my thinking is way off, but I get the idea that there are probably a whole lot less of the Skrulls that have actually infiltrated things than being let upon.

Being that I don't read much Marvel, I really liked that last issue of New Avengers as it tied together a bunch of the stuff I had not read.

I kind of hope that Hawkeye/Ronin/Goliath/Clint Barton doesn't turn out to be a Skrull. I hated seeing him get wasted in Avengers Disassembled and he was always one of my favorites.

I'm not really enjoying the Secret Invasion miniseries, but I am loving the individual related issues in Mighty and New Avengers. The Avengers is a much, much better comic when the Avengers are not in it, and Alex Maleev is the artist.

Hey, Dr. Supes. Is one of your superpowers changing thread titles? If it is, can you change this one to "Teh Official Secret Invasion Thread (OR: I is not a Skrull)" I typoed it when I first opened it. It's hell to search for it.

Because I've been obnoxiously dumping this all in the weekly thread, I'll move my complainin' here:

Secret Invasion...it wasn't bad, but so little happened. Like, what, one kind of major thing happened. And a sort of major thing that anyone reading the crossovers already knew was going to happen. And then one potentially really major thing was hinted at but ultimately left unresolved. Really, Bendis? Really?

*****

Secret Invasion would have been better if the big NY fight scene hadn't been so gaudy and awkwardly told.

Yeah. Yu is another one. Occasionally pretty pictures, but no ability as a storyteller. I honestly couldn't even tell what was supposed to be happening on that next-to-last page.

Not as bad as the "Sentry flies into the sun and...something happens" sequence in Mighty Avengers a few weeks ago. That shit was dire.

Interesting things are happening, but the storytelling flow isn't there. Which is crazy since one guy has written almost all of it.

I feel like the "too much continuity, not enough substance" beatdown that DC is getting over Final Crisis seems much more applicable here. And I like Yu, but he doesn't seem like the right guy for the job. I get the feeling this woulda been better with more JRJR-campery.

The continuity-heavy nature of SI makes sense, given that it's the culmination of 5+ years of storylines in the MU. I'm totally forgiving on those grounds, because they've never pretended that it was anything else. The lack of substance doesn't make sense, given that it's the culmination of 5+ years of storylines in the MU. We're almost half-way through, and here's what has progressed and what we've learned:

****************SPOILAZ***************************

-Hank Pym is a Skrull.
-Jarvis is a Skrull.
-Spider-Woman is a Skrull.
-The Captain America that got killed was a Skrull, and the real one has been alive in outer space. Maybe.
-Iron Man is a Sleeper Skrull. Maybe.
-Ka-Zar is a Skrull. Maybe.
-Nick Fury is no longer in hiding.

And that's about it. The Skrulls are apparently no longer Silent and it looks like they're maybe unleashing all kinds of devastation on the planet, but you wouldn't know it because Bendis is still way too caught up in "Who's who?!?". Yeah, that's the way to tell the tale of an epic invasion of earth: focus extensively on whether Hawkeye and Mockingbird are really who they say they are.

Hey, these heads don't talk themselves!

I kind of prefer the way that DC has a year of "here's some new ideas" leading into "Oh shit everything is on fire!" every summer. I just wish that the ideas weren't always terrible.

I'd say that the ideas in Final Crisis are all pretty terrific, and it all seems to be moving in a very interesting direction, which is to say, far away from the dumbed-down paranoid punchathons the audience seems to want these days.

The thing is, Secret Invasion #3 is absolutely unreadable without reading New and Might Avengers, and incomprehensible unless you're really up on contemporary Marvel in general. Final Crisis #1, on the other hand, was written as a police procedural on a cosmic scale. What's so confusing? This really comes down to the audience generally reading more Marvel comics, and thus feeling more at home in their brand of arcana.

The thing is, while I might read more Marvel comics than DC (I'm currently reading Action Comics, Detective + Batman, Wonder Woman), I find Secret Invasion MUCH MUCH more comprehensible than I found Final Crisis. And I don't think it's just about continuity. I think that it's about narrative. I think a story is being told in Secret Invasion, and Final Crisis #1 was more a series of loosely connected vignettes. (Guy wakes up. Man steals fire. Badguys join together.) In other words, it's harder to get caught up with something like Final Crisis. Also, the major players in Secret Invasion are fairly well-known Marvel characters (Nick Fury, Iron Man, Fantastic Four). And Final Crisis players (Monitors, New Gods) are totally off the radar for most readers.

Well, yes, it is much easier to follow a plot that boils down to:

"You're not who you say you are?"
"Yes I am!"
"No, you're not!"
"Maybe you're not who you say you are, you ever think of that, smart guy?"
"NO! I AM WHO I SAY I AM!"
"Ahhh, at least we can agree that THIS PERSON isn't who they say they are!"

OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER

That said, Final Crisis has unfortunately been totally poisoned by the good will pissed away by Countdown and Death of the New Gods. No wonder so many people are like "eh, I'll pass." That, combined with the anti-intellectual reactionary bullshit rank-and-file fanboys pin on Grant Morrison...

Brian Bendis has his moments, and can be brilliant, but he's never done anything in his entire career that requires the reader to think just a little bit.

Final Crisis is only incomprehensible insofar as it requires more of the reader's attention than most funnybooks these days do. I still maintain that everything you need to know in order to understand the first issue of Final Crisis is contained within the first issue of Final Crisis. Well, that and one reading comprehension.

Whereas Secret Invasion doesn't really seem like it would be comprehensible if you haven't really kept up on Marvel U current events. I've read the vast majority of the stuff from the last five or so years which is tied in to SI, and I still didn't know who probably half the people on the title page roll call were.

xxx-post!

Well, I'll reread Final Crisis. But I'm pretty sure that I have no idea what's going on in most of it.

Mordy, please post what you don't understand from it, and I'll try to clarify it... using only internal evidence from that issue, rather than references to zillions of back issues! (You can do that here or in the Final Crisis thread, whichever you'd rather, if you'd like.)

Yes, sorry, Final Crisis exempt, I was mostly talking about the "shaking things up over winter" ideas.

I like how on Earth-Bendis even Skrulls talk like Mamet characters.

The artwork in Secret Invasion #3 was very sharp. This Lenil Yu's style is like a modern take on Gil Kane, especially in how he draws faces. I like it. I don't think the story moved that much this issue, they could have easily edited the past two down into one issue.

I do think like Civil War (or for that matter Infinite Crisis), you are pretty much screwed on this one unless you are reading some of the crossovers about what Nick Fury has been up to putting together his new 'Howling Commandos'.

Is it just me, or is Bendis doing a really shitty job at trying to shoehorn Decimation into this?

To take it a step further: do a lot of these revelations feel more like retcons than what had been intended all along? I don't really care if they actually are retcons, I just wish Bendis put a little more effort into making it seem like this was all set up years ago. Illuminati showed that he has the talent for that type of sleight-of-hand.

With Illuminati, tho:

1) he was working w/ stories that happened 10+ years ago (Kree-Skrull War; Secret War; Infinity Gauntlet)
2) he had a co-writer

Is it, er, possible he's been too subtle about this? I mean, fanboys love to go back and find Easter eggs, but Bendis has written so much stuff that actually finding them seems like too much hard work. (For me, anyway.)

Yeah, the Decimation angle was one step over the line IMO. Everything else I've been able to buy - Spider-Woman, for example, makes perfect sense, why not have the shadowy evil organization that "transformed her body" and "gave her back her powers" actually be kidnapping her and replacing her with a Skrull?

I also love the Hank Pym backstory, playing off his reputation as Marvel's biggest douchebag superhero. (It played a LOT like Ultimate Hank Pym but since I haven't got anything invested in the character I don't really care...)

and btw, check out how i called the inclusion of LYJA!!!! oh man this is going to be great

This highwire-walk of Bendis's (the backing and filling of Skrull infiltration stories and Fury defense preparations) reminds me of the dude who walked the tightrope between the Twin Towers. And all the non-Bendis writers who are doing SI tie-ins are little gusts of wind.

In that case, the gust that is second issue of the FF SI mini-series came off a rank garbage scow.

Yeah, this is a case where the back-and-fill convinces me 100% - Mighty and New Avengers have been consistently great - while the mainline story has sort of stalled. It's not an original observation, but, we are now through several issues of "misdirection fight in Savage Land" and having to take "Skrulls are conquering the whole planet" almost completely on faith. Get it together, BMB!

Motherfcker my bi-weekly fix is LOST IN SPACE somewhere so I'm woefully behind (3 weeks!) on this nonsense! I need to know what I shouldn't give a shit about, damn it!

Okay, I know I'm on record as having drunk the SI kool-aid, but New Avengers #44 was REALLY FUCKING GOOD. Seriously coldblooded thinking on Bendis' part. Mighty Avengers #17 wasn't as good overall, but the main idea of the story was creepy and coldblooded as well.

Could a mod please change the title of this thread so that folks searching for "SECRET invasion" find it kthx ^_^

Can't believe Bendis actually sorta tied every dingdonging Marvel event of the past 4-5 years together (including OH WHAT ATWIST Annihilation) (god I hope I spelled that right) to justify the INVASION, tho the "behind the scenes" stories could have been a) condensced (yeah, there's a shocker) and b) stuck in the back of Secret Invasion issues proper (a la Trinity) to c) justify the $1 markup and d) make it look like Marvel's not trying to bankrupt today's elder youths.

Though in a turn of events that will surprise no one, it's the x-over issues that have been the real gem of this thing (even though I'm enjoying the glacially-paced SI mini just fine, and haven't doubled over from reading all the spin-off minis). Incredible Hercules (no shocker there), Guardians of the Galaxy (tho they seem to be using the same flea-bitten twist that IH used), Nova, Avengers: The Initiative (MUCH better since SI began, and not just because they went dumpster diving for the Skrull Kill Krew and Devil Slayer and Jocasta), even the first part of the War Machine arc where Rhodey merges with a satellite thing that forms like Voltron! Probably missing one or two things, too, but all of these books are, for my money, easily lapping the main story.

Title fixed. I keep forgetting about some of my awesome mod powers!

I must have missed where Annihilation tied in to SI. That's in the Guardians book?

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Nono -- the latest issue of New Avengers uses the destruction of the Skrull homeworld in Annihilation (which, really, aside from World War Hulk, has been the best Marvel event of the past whatever years) to not-so-subtley intimate that the Skrulls are invading Earth to use Earth as their homeworld. And by that clipart'd promo campaign (EMBRACE CHANGE y'all oh wait NOT OBAMA) where Skrulls are eating ice cream and doctoring baseball, I'm guessing some sort of compromise is reached to allow the Skrulls to stick around?

Now, of course:

1) this might've been made clear in one of the other 92 parts of this event
2) I thought Skrullworld was kebabed a while back (or was that the Kree home)
3) I could be missing some other salient plot point that got caught between Bendis balloons

But hey if I'm right as they said in The Blair Witch Project THERE'S YOUR MOTIVATION and of course it's not in the pages of the main book because GOD FORBID.

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I'm of two minds about this, after finally reading it. One - it actually was a lot of fun to read in one sitting and the Yu artwork was SUPERCOOL. Two - shit seemed to be happening until about halfway through, where it suddenly became a multi-issue extended battle sequence with various people coming out of NOWHERE with no real explanation - it just got really ridiculous with the extended side plots and characters. I understand the scope of this turns out to be pretty immense, but damn! Still, overall I liked it.

Tracking down the NA/MA stories, any other SI sides worth reading?

Black Panther #39-41 was pretty badass. The SI related miniseries were ok, but forgettable a day later.

I read an interview with Bendis where he said that the next thing Marvel has coming up, The Siege, is the last monster MU-wide thing they have planned for the foreseeable future. I kind of have a hard time believing it, but I hope it's true.

Comments above about the tie-in stuff being great were SO otm, especially in New and Mighty Avengers. They had all the stuff I thought was so strangely ignored in the main series. I also loved when they brought in Gaydos and Cheung to do issues set in the past when they were working on the books - that's actually a fantastic gimmick.