Secret Invasion Reading Order via Chad Nevett

You've been clamoring for it, so Chad Nevett has gone and done it: Bendis Secret Invasion Reading Order.

The question is: Is it WORTH reading again, now that its corpse has grown cold?

What say you?

Splash Page Exclusive: Secret Invasion #8

A few technical problems prevented this week's "Splash Page" column from appearing at Sequart.org, so Chad and I decided to run it as a MAJOR, EARTH-SHATTERING, CROSS-BLOGGING EVENT! We discuss the finale of Secret Invasion. Part I is below, and Chad has posted Part II on his blog, which I link to at the bottom of our chat here. Enjoy!

Chad Nevett: The event years in the making has finally ended and I kind of dug the ending to the Skrull invasion, which, when you think about it, was a pretty awful invasion. My god, they were taken down rather quickly, weren't they? For a race of shapeshifters who can blend in and take over completely in secret, they were very out in the open and obvious. Probably why they lost. Silly aliens, don't you know not to mess with Norman Osborn, director of H.A.M.M.E.R.? Tony Stark does... and didn't the end of this issue seem like a purposeful throwback to the end of Civil War? There's plenty there, but what I really want to know is what you thought of this issue, Tim, so please share.

Tim Callahan: I was woefully disappointed, actually. The big conclusion was to describe what happened between issues? "So, yeah, after the Wasp went all spazzy, the fight got really good, and then Norman Osborn blasted the Skrull Queen, and boy, that was a good time, wasn't it?" I don't understand that narrative decision at all. The whole series built up to be the last stand of humanity (and mutantdom) against the Skrull army (which has COMPLETELY infiltrated the world's mass-media -- even Oprah!), and the last stand happens between issues and is then talked about at the beginning of this issue?

It's a baffling decision to me. (And I know there was a big fight last issue, but it was just guys showing up and punching eachother -- there was nothing special about it.)

But I guess Bendis finds people talking about epic battles to be more interesting than the epic battles themselves. That fits his modus operandi, but it doesn't make it any less weak of a climax/resolution.

And I still don't understand the in-story explanation for how the Skrulls were so quickly dispatched, either. They had spent years and years infiltrating every level of world government and media and superhero teams and secret agencies, and then that was somehow all resolved by shooting the Spider-Woman/Skrull Queen and then blowing up a few ships?

CN: Honestly, the Skrull defeat bothers me, too, and has me thinking that we'll see random Skrull sleeper agents show up in the future. Although, I will point out that just because Skrulls on TV looked like famous people, it doesn't mean they replaced those people... they are shapeshifters and one of the people in that two-page sequence was Tony Stark who we all know wasn't replaced by a Skrull. But, yeah, they were defeated rather easily, especially those fancy Super-Skrulls that combined the powers of various Marvel characters.

And, you know what, part of me really wished that the ending would be the Kree showing up in response to the messages Noh-Varr sent out, and they take over with Noh-Varr finally making good on his promise to remake Earth in the image of his home. But, then I'd be bitching about how Noh-Varr comes from an alternate reality where the Kree are millenia beyond where they are now and why would he want anything to do with any of these primative peoples who think crudely and only know small words...

To be fair, there are still Skrulls out there. JarviSkrull still has little Danielle Cage and who knows how many more are in hiding, waiting for their moment to strike?

What do you think of the rise of Norman Osborn and the fall of Tony Stark?

TC: Before I get to your last question, I want to talk a bit more about Skrulls, because, really, we haven't had enough of them lately. Yeah, I realize that the mass Skrull broadcast doesn't imply that those people were actually replaced by Skrulls, but it does imply that Skrulls have infiltrated the media ranks at least to some extent, I think. I mean they could have just transmitted the signal from their Skrull ship, but the whole "Embrace Change" campaign (which even flooded into our world!) had to have been the work of some Skrull agents working from within. My point is that all the Skrulls weren't in Central Park or on board the space ships. So what about the rest of them? It's like declaring "Mission Accomplished" years and years before the battles stopped.

And since the Kree didn't show up at the end, what was the point of all the Noh-Varr stuff, then? Why even bother to use him as part of the series, I wonder.

So, getting back to your question, I think the rise of Norman Osborn and the fall of Tony Stark happened way too fast. I don't think it sets up Dark Reign all that well. I mean, it does it efficiently, true, but the whole very sudden "Stark's out. Osborn's in" approach just seemed unearned. It needed to be explored a bit more. Once again, if it was shown and not told about, it would have been more effective I think.

I'm still just really baffled by the way this final issue felt like a synopsis of some longer story that was never told, yet the previous issue of this series felt like they were just treading water. Why not pace the series to actually show the story Bendis wanted to tell, instead of a whole lot of nothing and then, quickly, "yeah, all this other stuff happened really fast, so we're just going to recap it with narration"? I think it's a terrible narrative choice for an event book and a terrible choice for any kind of story at all.

And what about Mockingbird showing up alive? How is that earned either? She just randomly happens to be alive?

CONTINUED AT GraphiContent!

Secret Invasion: Inhumans #4 Review

Recently reviewed by me at CBR: Secret Invasion: Inhumans #4 about which I write the following sentences: "Removing Black Bolt from the story, and having him strapped up to a Skrull contraption for most of the four issues, is kind of a genius way to explore the family dynamic within the Inhumans. I think one of the problems with the Inhumans, as a concept, is that Black Bolt's presence in any Inhumans story tends to be a life-sucking void. Black Bolt is a great character -- a great visual presence -- but since he cannot speak, we usually get scenes where the rest of the Inhumans defer to Black Bolt, and then…silence. By removing Black Bolt from the center of attention, the Inhumans all become more inherently interesting, and Pokaski gives Medusa some amazingly powerful scenes in this issue."

Read the entire review HERE.

Final Crisis #4 and Secret Invasion #7 Hit THE SPLASH PAGE

Last Wednesday brought us two Morrison-penned Final Crisis comics and two Bendis-penned Secret Invasion comics, so how could Chad Nevett and I not talk about them?

Obviously, we did.

And it's really a great opportunity to contrast Morrison to Bendis, DC to Marvel, Black Lightning to Noh-Varr, and, um, let's say bacon and Canadian bacon. Probably not the bacon so much.

But Chad and I do say some pretty insightful stuff about the structural poetics of both event books, laying out deep and meaningful theories that will probably end up as citations in scholarly papers for generations to come.

Just get over to the Splash Page and read it! You'll see!

Or, as per usual, click HERE.

Okay, So the Skrulls Win And...

By now, it's pretty clear that Secret Invasion will end with the Skrulls firmly established as overlords within the Marvel Universe. Between the "Embrace Change" television ads (which some people have criticized as not looking professional enough but those people are missing the point: they're designed to be cheesy), and the new Hickman-penned Secret Warriors series and the Dark Avengers, and the fact that Bendis says he'll have to go into hiding after the final issue of Secret Invasion hits, yeah, it's pretty clear that the Marvel status quo will look something like this:

The Marvel heroes will be reduced to various rag-tag groupings of underground resistance fighters, which will serve to make them all underdogs once again (even Tony Stark) and will provide a lengthy lead-in to whatever next summer's event is, probably something called "The Uprising" or whatever. Apparently "Dark Reign" will be plastered all over the comics this winter, much the way "The Initiative" was exploited in the simpler, pre-invasive days.

So when all of this happens, what will become of Brubaker's Captain America, which has avoided cross-over contamination? Or his Daredevil, which is a street-level book anyway?

What happens to The Amazing Spider-Man? Will he stop fighting also-ran revisions of his 1970s rogues gallery to turn his attention to the Skrulls? Will the Skrulls be the villains of every single book for the rest of our comic reading lives?

What about Ghost Rider? Will he join the Dark Avengers and find out that the host of heaven is actually a Skrull plot?

I could be completely wrong about all of this, but I could be completely right, don't you think?

(Also, I like Bendis's work, but he isn't known for nailing his landings. Usually his stories don't end as well as they start. If Secret Invasion does end with, "yeah, the Skrulls won after all. Not much we can do," then that would probably take the prize as the worst ending of a crossover event ever, right? And if the Skrulls don't win, what the hell could possibly fill the void so quickly that it would be a "Dark Reign"?)

Secret Invasion #6 Review

Recently reviewed by me at CBR: Secret Invasion #6, about which I write the following sentences: "Yet even here, up until the final few pages, Bendis lingers on some of the less obviously spectacular moments. It's not all punching and zapping and superheroic maneuvers in this series, and I think that's an interesting choice for an event book. Interesting and worthwhile. Because what we end up with are the tense moments between the battles. Whether it was the Ka-Zar and Shanna bits from previous issues or the Noh-Varr and Mar-Vell moment in this one, we spend much of the series on the outskirts of the conflict, dealing with the human (or Kree) anxiety. Bendis adds those moments together to provide a tapestry upon which the Skrull invasion plays out. It's a more successful approach than the one taken in 'Civil War,' for example, because that series seemed to be missing a lot of the transitional sections. It seemed more like a cool highlight reel than an escalating narrative. Here, Bendis weaves the highlights together, and except for a few pages here and there, most of the highlights focus on character and emotion, rather than on visceral thrills."

Read the entire review HERE.

Closing Universes -- a guest post from Katherine

With a new school year to prepare for, I'm looking for a bit of help keeping my daily schedule with this blog, so if you're interested in doing a guest post on something comic book or pop-culture related, send me an e-mail (TCallah AT hotmail.com), and we'll see if we can get you on the Geniusboy Firemelon train-to-fame-and-fortune.

Today, I have a guest post from Katherine of Superheroes Space, a virtual community of comic book fans that features forums and a blog. Katherine's a 30-year-old superhero aficionado who's been reading comics since she was a child. Right now, she's really enjoying Secret Invasion but says that she remains loyal to Wonder Woman "if only for the fact that there are almost no female heroes in the comics world that can sustain their own comics." Here's what she has to say about Marvel and what she calls "Closing Universes":

Secret Invasion ends in November and at that time the Marvel Universe will change dramatically. We will be informed who was a Skrull and who wasn’t, and there will probably be empty places in the Marvel Universe that we know and at least partially love.

The new story of Ultimatum starts in the first week of November when the upcoming five-issues run instead of Ultimate X-Men and Ultimate Fantastic Four.

Ultimates 3, Ultimate Power, and Ultimate Origins all lead to it so it probably won't build the story from scratch. In a sense, Ultimatum will do to the Ultimate Universe what Secret Invasion does to the Marvel Universe. David Finch said that it would close the Ultimate Universe, meaning some of the titles would cease to exist after the fifth issue of Ultimatum.

I have a very good feeling about the what Marvel is doing, both in Secret Invasion and in the planned Ultimatum issues. In fact I would recommend that DC watch and learn. It is a good opportunity to discuss the branching of the stories and side stories that became such a big part of the comics culture. I like the interaction between the superheroes and the creation of the universes, but, at least for me, it becomes spread too thin.

Too many side stories, too much to read just to follow the superheroes that I really want to follow, and the stories of the universes became too divided in themselves. Maybe others won't agree with me on this one, but I am happy that the branching process is being reversed at least partially. Marvel is in the process of creating more cohesion in their stories and opening space for new developments and creativity.

In a sense it is a risky move as they terminate many stories that work at least partially, but I like the new order that is being created and the opportunities for entirely new stories and directions. I have the feeling that by 2009 we'll have very different Marvel comics than the one we know today, and a change can be a very good thing.

--Katherine

[Note: I don't have any sense that the conclusion of Secret Invasion will have that much impact on the Marvel mainstream -- not nearly as much as Civil War had, but maybe Katherine's right. Maybe Marvel in 2009 will bear little resemblance to the Marvel of the past couple of years. The Ultimate Universe will certainly look a lot different. What say you?]

Secret Invasion: Inhumans #1 Review

Recently reviewed by me at CBR: Secret Invasion: Inhumans #1, about which I write the following sentences: "Halfway through 'Secret Invasion,' do we really need another tie-in series to launch? Well, we're getting a bunch of them this week whether we need them or not, and while I haven't read the others yet, I can say that 'Secret Invasion: Inhumans' is worth your time. It's a great start, and an excellent Marvel debut for 'Heroes' writer Joe Pokaski."

"Like the more effective and interesting 'Secret Invasion' tie-ins -- 'Captain Britain and MI: 13' and 'Black Panther' come to mind -- this one takes place away from the center of the action. I suppose you could say that the entire Earth is the center of the action, but with the focus of the main series on New York and the Savage Land, and with most tie-ins filling in back story, it's nice to see how some of the lesser illuminated corners of the Marvel Universe are dealing with the invasion in their own way. And what makes 'Secret Invasion: Inhumans' so good is that it operates as an excellent Inhumans story as much as it's a story about Skrull hijinx.

Read the entire review HERE.

Secret Invasion #3 Review

Recently reviewed by me at CBR: Secret Invasion #3, about which I write the following sentences: "The final page of this issue is perfect -- it encapsulates everything that Bendis has been building toward since he began thinking about this series. I won't give it away, but it's what we've been waiting for, and just like the Hawkeye-being-Hawkeye again scene from issue #1, it's a great geek moment. Of course, if you haven't been reading all of the other Bendis comics, you might be confused about who all those other characters are. But I'm sure Bendis will explain everything, or direct you to the three dozen spin-off titles that will."

Read the entire review HERE.

Secret Invasion #1 Hits THE SPLASH PAGE

Sometimes a comic book about Skrull sleeper agents makes you think about Vladimir Nabokov and George Bernard Shaw. Sometimes it doesn't.

Join Chad Nevett and I as we discuss what's so great about Secret Invasion #1, what's so bad about it, and why we think that it just may or may not be the greatest first issue of a Skrull-related Marvel crossover this Spring!

Even if you've read thirty-five reviews of this issue already, that shouldn't stop you from seeing what Chad and I have to say. I guarantee you'll find more than one sentence that has NEVER APPEARED ON THE INTERNET BEFORE.

Read the newest installment of The Splash Page HERE!

Marvel Teases Us with the Digital Love

Have you guys all read the Secret Invasion prologue? It's a pretty sneaky way to try to trick us into subscribing to Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited, which, by the way, is totally limited, so I don't know how they get off using Unlimited anywhere in the title. I'm pretty sure that, within the next five or six years, all the major companies will have substantial online archives that we can access for a monthly fee (it might take longer than that, since these major companies move very, very, very slowly). Marvel DCU is a step in that direction, but the lack of complete runs and the crappy interface make it less than appealing right now.

HOWEVER, subscribers get a free 7-page preview of Secret Invasion this week, although I don't know how that works, since I'm not a subscriber and I just read it. Anyway, the prologue is pretty cool, and when I started reading it, I was excited because it's all about S.H.I.E.L.D. and I thought, "wait, is Bendis ballsy enough to tell Secret Invasion from the POV of S.H.I.E.L.D.? Is it a full-on S.H.I.E.L.D. comic?" The prologue is, but when you get to the end, you'll find out that the series probably won't be.

And, thus, I'm going to throw out a major SPOILER right now, although I don't even know if it qualifies as a spoiler since it's in a free preview AND marvel_b0y already leaked it a week ago.

Dum Dum Dugan is a Skrull, and he has been since the day Captain America died. That's right true believers, check your Marvel comics from the past year, and look for all the Dum Dum appearances. That dude has been a Skrull the whole time.

Man, I can't wait until they reveal that Aunt May is one of those sneaky Manhunters.