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New / Mighty Avengers

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01:38 / 03.04.08

No comments yet on SECRET INVASION #1?? I'm surprised.

Ok, so......

BIG BIG

MASSIVE

SPOILERS AHEAD:

xxxx.........

ok, no more spoiler space.

So: Let's sum up, shall we?

Jarvis has been a Skrull for a while.
Ditto: Hank Pym, Sue Storm, Dum Dum Dugan (ha!) at the very least.

What was up with the ship landing and tons of Marvel heroes pouring out? It can't possibly be that ALL OF THOSE CHARACTERS have been wandering space for a while and that EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM have been Skrulls for years.... can it? That would seem to be a bit too much for me to swallow, Mr. Bendis. I can deal with Jarvis, Dugan, Hank, even Sue Storm. But not every character listed in that double-page spread. I'm sure this is a cliffhanger 'what was that exactly supposed to mean?' moment that will be resolved next issue.

Overall, I found this very entertaining - big improvement over Bendis' prior crossover, House of M.

02:12 / 03.04.08

oh, I just realized that the Sue Storm was likely just a Skrull showing up that day posing as her (since the scene states she is out of town on that day)...

04:33 / 03.04.08

It was really fun. One scene was a bit unclear to me though - the one where Captain Marvel smashes into the Thunderbolts' headquarters. What was the point of that? Is he meant to be a Skrull?

Marvel Boy is back! That was a nice surprise. Can the Skrull Kill Krew be far behind? Then again, after the way Bendis handled Xorn in New Avengers, maybe he should keep as clear away from GM's creations as possible.

And for those who want to see how Dum Dum Duggan got replaced, check out this Secret Invasion prologue on the marvel comics web site.

The big question now is are we going to see a Secret Invasion Movie by Jack Denfeld?

14:08 / 03.04.08

Jack Denfeld! It's gotta happen!!

>> Captain Marvel smashes into the Thunderbolts' headquarters. What was the point of that? Is he meant to be a Skrull?

I think this is part of an ongoing tease/attempted psyche-out on the part of the writers of the CAPT. MARVEL miniseries by Brian Reed (frequent Bendis cohort and co-writer), where some of Capt. Mar-Vell's entourage has been revealed to be Skrulls, thereby sending fans into a frenzy of whether the 'conveniently pulled out of time before his cancer death' Captain is a Skrull or not. I think it's a double-psyche out; the readers are meant to think Capt. M. is a Skrull, but he's actually not. That's my vote anyway.

14:09 / 03.04.08

as for Bendis' handling of Marvel Boy, I'm sort of torn about the whole thing. On one hand, Bendis has sort of reduced Marvel Boy to a rampaging teenager throwing a selfish tantrum who needs to learn How To Be A Good Guy.

On the other hand, despite GM's wonderful miniseries, how far can one really take the "I'm declaring war on the earth, F*** those humans" and have mass property damage in this post 9/11 world before Marvel Boy really just comes off as exactly what Bendis has portrayed him as -- a kid throwing a tantrum?

14:22 / 03.04.08

Pleasantly surprised with the pacing and that accelerated feeling of dread you get up until the spaceship reveal. "He loves you." Wonderfully creepy.

And the back pages, where Joe Q. tells you that Bendis has been secretly writing this story for years behind everyone's backs...interesting.

14:25 / 03.04.08

thanks for that Dum-Dum Dugan Marvel website link - hadn't heard about that mini-story yet. (which will certainly be bonus pages in the paperback of Secret Invasion)

Yeah, "He Loves You" was creepy - this is Bendis 'the Skrulls are fueled by religious fanaticism and they feel that they are doing this for not only the good of their society, but for humanity's own good'... i.e. we don't know how to manage the earth, they will run the planet better, more efficiently, etc. than us.

14:33 / 03.04.08

also, some of us are old enough to remember DC's ill-fated MILLENIUM crossover - when many of the key figures in the DCU were replaced by Manhunters - Lana Lang, etc. etc. It was a similar idea to Secret Invasion - except SI looks to be pretty well-done and Millenium simply sucked.

23:22 / 06.04.08

Just read it. Enjoyed it much (much) more then House of M etc.

I guess that Pym being a skrull, probably means that Tigra is one too (hence their unlikely attempted shag a few months ago)?

I think that Sue Storm was meant to have been just replaced for that day (well, not even replaced - just that she's out of town) I wonder if anyone on will turn out to have been shagging a skrull? other than poor old Aunt May of course.

They'll never ever kill Jarvis, so that means that the kidnapped folks are alive and well and will be returning.

He loves you.

19:06 / 07.04.08

according to what I took from Bendis' commentary at CBR, not all of the heroes from the ship are Skrulls and which are will be revealed along the way.

knowing that it has been planned for years and clues have been spread inside many books gave me hope, but not much. it might turn out as a possible CLONE SAGA for the whole of Marvel Universe, in terms of 'reset buttons'.

it had been a while since i've followed Marvel U books, and it looks like a strange place now. not compelled to follow how Bendis has shaped the most central part of it. I can't believe it got to the point when he is the best superhero writer Marvel can afford.

and the dialogue in SI #1 had all his ticks i simply can't stand. they ruin the fun for me. I still have to read his DAREDEVIL, but I guess Ellis would have done a better job here, although he's more of a niche book writer inside of MU these days. well, get me Brubaker!

not an overall bad plot for the issue, but so badly executed. the felling of impending doom was only mildly strong and Yu is not the best artist for a major crossover. there were some pretty ugly shots in there.

sorry, Joe Q, not this time.

19:24 / 07.04.08

I'd imagine it's not to do with what they can afford, but rather to do with the results he gets.

21:19 / 07.04.08

yeah, sorry. i expressed myself badly, blinded by hategasm bukkake. please excuse the vitriol, but BMB's tick turn me into a Newsarama board troll.

Bendis' results are usually unmatched in today mainstream Comics, i'll give him that - and it's not peanuts.

i just don't like the tools used to accomplish that, at all: the scene padding [the epitome of "writing for the trade" and stretching an usually short story for months], the repetitive dialogue [that informs nothing] and a lot of his narrative choices [the Crazy Woman factor].

my arguments sound like cliché, but that's because i really thought SECRET INVASION would be an improvement.

22:30 / 07.04.08

On the other hand, despite GM's wonderful miniseries, how far can one really take the "I'm declaring war on the earth, F*** those humans" and have mass property damage in this post 9/11 world before Marvel Boy really just comes off as exactly what Bendis has portrayed him as -- a kid throwing a tantrum?

Well, everyone he cared about was killed in the crash, I suppose.

I take your point about Marvel Boy's behaviour being analagous to the US government's response to 9/11, but, to be fair, he seems like a relatively sympathetic figure, under the circumstances. Being effectively a US jet fighter pilot shot down behind enemy lines, without his friends, who is forced to deal with an apparently homicidal local culture which, to the extent that he understands it, he despairs of. So he wants to make some changes.

This is surely more interesting to write, and read, about than the further antics of Green Lantern?

Although I can't help feeling Brian's going to make a mess of the character; he largely favours the 'ordinary guy' in his work, I fear. His nebbish Ultimate Spider-Man, his Daredevil who spends a lot of time in court doing his job.

I imagine he hates people like Noh-Varr, and, by extension, Grant Mitchell.

01:45 / 08.04.08

I see what you mean -- it basically seems like Bendis is going to get rid of the 'my friends & family were all killed by the US Gov't and man, am I pissed, stranger in a strange land' kind of approach, in favor of 'ok, I've calmed down now and realized that declaring war on humanity isn't a very constructive approach, so I'll be a superhero instead and fight to save people's lives and such.' Excessively simplistic, perhaps. But that's where he seems to be going. In Bendis' arc, Noh-varr will 'redeem' himself by deciding to stop destroying humanity and start helping it.

Janean Patience

17:01 / 08.04.08

Alex's Grandma: I feel bad about asking this, JP, but I have to anyway; you're not John Byrne, are you?

I am not John Byrne. But if I were, I'd been extremely proud of the cover of Mighty Avengers #9.

That, my friends, is a classic Byrne chokehold. And if ever you're worrying about what to put on the cover of your comic, perhaps because the overworked writer hasn't composed that issue on the fly yet, take a leaf out of the Byrne book. Take the most sexualised member of the team and have a supervillain hold her up by the neck. Make her limp, compliant and twisted to such a degree that her boobs and butt are proudly on show. You've got yourself fanboy gold.

Secret Invasion I quite liked. So Jarvis, Spider-Woman, Dum Dum, Hank Pym are all Skrulls. Jessica Jones too, I fear. That trip to Canada was the ideal opportunity for the old switcheroo. A decent opening issue, though I wonder if there'll ever be time enough to explore the return of the 70s heroes, which is a nice enough idea. And, as of that big fleet arriving, the invasion isn't so secret any more, uh?

17:03 / 08.04.08

Yeah, interesting that the secret bit mainly took place before the series proper. Invasion Revealed isn't quite so catchy, however.

18:17 / 08.04.08

Well it must be very hard to do the "secret" bit when all your characters might as well be Skrulls since you can't recognize any of them or tell them apart, or why a person not invested in Marvel for the last years should be following them at all in those scenes (I guess it'd be a pain for someone not familiar with that world, but I got really confused I think because I knew some of that world from 20 years ago -- for instance, Osborn is a Charles Xavier from some other team etc...).

20:26 / 08.04.08

I picked this up 'cause I haven't been following any super books and I thought it would be fun, but am I really going to have to pick up all/most of the books in the checklist at the back to follow the story? This is a genuine question, by the way. I thought I was just getting part one of an eight part story.

Essential Dazzler

20:40 / 08.04.08

The intention is that only The New/Mighty Avengers books are essential.

00:26 / 09.04.08

In Bendis' arc, Noh-varr will 'redeem' himself by deciding to stop destroying humanity and start helping it.

Was Marvel Boy actively misanthropic in his series though? His schtick, if memory serves, was that he was going to make the Earth a better place, whether the population liked it or not.

Accordingly, in terms of taking the character and going foward, it's hard to think of a less appropriate writer than Bendis. He can take his 'working stiff' values and shove them up his arse as far as I'm concerned, but that aside, would anyone have suggested that Grant M was the go-to guy after BMB's iconic run on Daredevil? They seem like artistes who should have nothing to do with each other's work.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

00:47 / 09.04.08

Accordingly, in terms of taking the character and going foward, it's hard to think of a less appropriate writer than Bendis.

Bendis seemed to completely forget that Noh-Varr was a soldier for a Kree Empire in another dimension altogether when he used him in Illuminati, so I'm skeptical.

Alternate timelines are often pointlessly confusing, but I always thought it integral to the character; a Kree Empire that was never, apparently, beaten down by the Avengers and who knows what the status of their Kree-Skrull War was. Which is perhaps needless fanwank, but he's one of those cases that I think is genuinely aided by the crosstime hijinx.

Honestly, I sort of wonder if Noh-Varr isn't a bit past his sell-by date -- something about him, screaming widescreen Authority trickle-down... not that it matters, I suppose, when Marvel Comics is zombifying their Seventies characters. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is a thing.

06:36 / 09.04.08

Illuminati was great for me for it's wrongness - or, more reasonably, oddity - of characterization. I loved Namor, but am relatively sure it wasn't actually the Submariner I'd read anywhere else. I got the same blank-slate with a picture attached to it Dr. Strange I've seen in New Avengers since, and Noh-Varr was nolonger the Submariner I'd read before, either. He had no strange alien society that might arguably be better than how we do things. He had no fancy sideways attack plans. He did have several scenes of being punched by the heroes while he was a prisoner because they were, as superheroes do, beating some sense into him with actual beatings and little sense.

The hope that Noh-Varr represented, the potential that he was right(er) as well as being young and pissy and frustrated in his confusion and unnecessary brutal punishment and torture under Midas (and arguably the world) was all bled out and replaced with a foregrounded fear of the new. It's a bunch of adults, at least two of them older than normative adults, even, kicking the snot out of a kid who's virtually alone, had a rough time, and trying to do something right and good in the same fashion some of those very adults had taken before.

Really, if Reed Richards and yelled "Fatbeard Power!" I don't know that I would have blinked. If the be like Captain Marvel ploy had failed due to Noh-Varr coming from an entirely different Kree culture and reality, I would have blinked, but in a good way. If he'd used the secret supertights chiefs of the world to escape and begin his mission of conversion and reconstruction, I'd have applauded. Applauded at a comic book. As though somehow the paper would transmit the claps.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

15:02 / 09.04.08

I'm still really weirded out by that comic book - Doctor Strange acting a jilted Romance Comic lead, "She didn't want me...*sob*...She wanted to fight evil! But what about my needs?" I flashed back and forth between laughing at it like a coked-up Joker and grousing like Doctor Doom after someone had taken away his blankie. Goddamn Richards. Goddamn him--

I mean, ah, Secret Invasion, I may flip through it today when I'm in the store, just to see if it captures that cheap hideous wrongness of Doctor Strange, Underappreciated Romeo. Or I'll read that back issue Millennium crossover issue of Legion of Super-Heroes where they reveal that Laurel Kent was a Manhunter all along, as bizarrely written and drawn as it was.

23:24 / 09.04.08

will the Skrull infiltration be used to justify bad characterization in previous books? who do you trust?

00:49 / 10.04.08

Thank the gods someone else here remembers 'Millenium.' (the DC crossover, not the TV show)

Janean Patience

20:48 / 10.04.08

I remember Millenium. I was dumb enough and young enough to buy the whole thing - well, the main series and the comics I bought already that tied in. Each Manhunter reveal felt editorially forced, like the writer had been told two months previous that a cast member had to be an evil robot and had reluctantly sacrificed someone they'd spent a while building up. Either that or it was someone entirely new, or a longtime minor player who was later found to be alive and tucked away somewhere while their Manhunter duplicate got on with some purposeless infiltration. Some of the revealed Skrulls, Dum Dum and Jarivs particularly, fit the Millenium template. It can't be as bad, though. It just can't be. Anyone who remembers the flamboyant gay Spanish guardian will agree.

Hallo, Paper Spaceboy

15:08 / 11.04.08

Extrano! Secret Invasion totally needs an Extrano, but never worry. Crossover events always produce characters no one cares about who will fade into relative obscurity. Crossref: Forerunner.

17:52 / 11.04.08

Cases in point:

Layla Miller
Access
Onslaught
Clor
The Bulleteer

Phex: Dorset Doom

18:59 / 11.04.08

(It's off topic, but Layla Miller was written pretty damn well by Peter David in X-Factor and actually succeeded in breaking out of the cross-over ghetto)

20:30 / 11.04.08

Completely and utterly agree. In fact it really irritates me to see her in Quimper's list.

Janean Patience

22:18 / 11.04.08

Let's not forget though that Millenium gave us G'nort. Greatest of the Green Lantern Corps! G'nort!

21:41 / 24.04.08

I bought whichever Avengers just came out since I liked Secret Invasion, but I really can't imagine a comic that would make me, as a new reader, less interested in following the story or the title. For a start, it's all stuff that already happened! How about moving the story forward? The art is ugly, the writing is banal, and the story is glancingly slight. I don't know why this surprises me in a crossover issue, but gee, I really did like that crazy high concept stuff in SI1.

Essential Dazzler

21:43 / 24.04.08

dude just stop throwing cash at bendis comics please

04:04 / 25.04.08

B-but, Wolverine is a skrull, it seems. Nick Fury seems to think so*

How long has he been a skrull for? Was it when he decided to start killing his enemies, instead of just cutting them up horribly?

These are questions, questions that there may not be answers to.

* That I'm concerned about this betrays a juvenile mindset for sure, but I don't know if following the antics of Gordon Brown, as I avidly do (the feral beast to Tony Blair's Cyclops) is any worse.

14:39 / 25.04.08

Hmm why do i suddenly suspect all secondary mutations will be retro-con as Skrulls !!

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