Jimmy Olsen’s Blues

Shhh… it’s a Secret Invasion! All Some of your questions will be answered.

Allen: My big complaint with this issue: nothing happened. Really. How did this issue advance the plot at all? There were entire pages and scenes which did nothing but remind us that characters and situations were still dangling out there unresolved and did nothing to un-dangle them. The scene with Jarvis and Maria Hill on the (mysteriously crashed in the Bermuda Triangle rather than New York) Helicarrier, for instance? Did nothing. This series is only eight issues long, and having an entire issue which only served to prove two suspected Skrulls actually yes indeedy were Skrulls was a bit disappointing.

Tim: I guess Bendis has had enough, and now he’s going to show the whiners what decompression really looks like. That Helicarrier scene advanced that particular plot point about 5 seconds, still without answering the “how’d they end up in the Atlantic Ocean” head-scratcher. I’m starting to think he just forgot what he wrote in issue 1, or that Leinil Yu drew the wrong thing there.

(Totally unrelated Bendis note. He’s had more than one line featuring a request to “hold steady”… I’m wondering if he likes my current favorite band The Hold Steady. I hope so–that would almost make up for his storytelling glitches in Secret Invasion.)

The main title in the company-spanning crossover is becoming the highlight reel, the clip show, of the event (“This Skrull’s having the Best Invasion Ever!”). That doesn’t fill me with delight as a reader on a budget. Final Crisis, for its much worse critical beating online, is at least a coherent flow of complete scenes, not swatches of plot more fully presented in several other comics.

A: Didn’t we already have the big ending-page Thor reveal in Civil War? Did we need to do that again already? It kind of loses a bit of it’s “Oh shit!” oomph when it’s a rerun.

T: We didn’t need to, but I’m not ready to retire that kind of cheesy comic book thrill quite yet. I liked it a lot. And how dare you refer to that Civil War monstrosity as Thor (even though for all intents and purposes, it was Thor on that page)?

A: How do we know this Thor isn’t a Skrull coming down to sow more discord in our already-paranoid heroes? Maybe Bendis is now just lifting whole scenes from Millar… (OK, yes, I do realize that seems more than a bit unlikely.)

Anyway, we did get some fairly sweet Black Widow action in this issue, dispatching two 70s Skrulls who were already pretty damn high on the “Of Course They’re Skrulls” list. But I maintain that this Black Widow is a Skrull – even putting aside the visual hint of the closeup on her green eyes (likely a misdirection at this point), the Widow’s appearance and personality haven’t been all that consistent over the last couple of years. Hell, they’re not consistent now between the Avengers books and Captain America.

T: I think that’s an intentional misdirection with the ‘green eyes’ thing. I believe we’re seeing the actual Natasha Romanov, a product of inconsistent writing, not Skrull perfidy.

But, playing along, what if there’s more than one Black Widow running around? We’ve already seen^[1] the Skrulls impersonate someone while that someone is still running around free and clear – remember, the Skrulls have always been able to impersonate humans, and only a select few have been able to roam undetected.

A: I agree with you there – if this is indeed a Skrull Widow, then the Natasha running around in Captain America is not. And she’d be a perfect character to fill that particular multiple-places, multiple-looks, multiple-personalities role – she’s a superspy, that’s pretty much what she does. She’s able to be anybody, so really, she could be anybody.

Anyway, we’re now to the point where Bendis is pretty much admitting you can’t just read Secret Invasion itself if you want anything approaching the whole story. In an interview with Comic Book Resources, he said:

Sometimes when new characters come from out of nowhere and do a little dance it can be a little jarring. “Who’s this?” But we’ve already introduced these characters in “Mighty Avengers” and I was really proud of that. But now some people are going, “I wish I didn’t know anything about them.” I just can’t win.

So, Brian, you introduced these characters in a separate series, one which supposedly will provide optional backstory and not required material, so you don’t have to do anything whatsoever to introduce these brand-new characters, or tell us anything about their powers or even their names? Having their pictures on the first page with their names attached wasn’t really enough. It was bad enough throwing the out-of-costume Young Avengers in to previous issues without any effort at explaining who they are, but for characters who’ve been seen in exactly one other book before this, it’s almost unforgivable.

T: My nit-pick about the appearance of these new characters – the “Secret Commandos,” not that you’d know their team name from reading any of Secret Invasion – is the timing (so I guess I’m in the “I wish I didn’t know anything about them” camp). It would’ve been cooler, not to mention would’ve added some badly needed dramatic oomph to this main series, to see Fury show up out of nowhere with them at the end of SI #3, show ‘em in action in SI #4, then “introduce” them in the same month’s New Avengers. The previous tie-in issues could still have kept the “present-day” SI related pages with different flashback material; it would’ve hurt nothing. Marvel and Secret Invasion could have benefited, gathered some dramatic coin, from those readers wondering “Who the hell are these guys with Nick Fury?” and demanding more details. The way it was presented here, I’m feeling cheated by being told (again) that you only have to read the main series and that everything else is optional, when that’s clearly not the case.

And speaking of the Young Avengers: Does cover artist Gabrielle Dell’Otto only speak Italian? Couldn’t anyone at Marvel emailed him (in Italian) the plot to SI #4, so maybe he could’ve painted Nick Fury with the Secret Commandos and not the Young Avengers?

A: The thing that bothered me most about the Secret Commandos’ appearance here was that we have no idea why they were able to come in, spend two or three minutes mopping up Skrulls while the rest of the assembled heroes couldn’t. It really served to make the Young Avengers look pathetic. Yes, these new guys were “off the radar” and so the Skrulls didn’t know anything about them, but it still seemed a bit too easy for them, especially compared to what happened with the Young Avengers. I guess having Nick Fury on your team will do that for you, huh?

T: While Secret Invasion #4 suffered a little in comparison to the first three parts, it’s not awful for its defects. I do think the series will markedly improve beginning with next month’s edition, based on the good things we saw in #4:

• Through the novel idea of moving Agent Brand’s plot forward, we see where Reed Richards is and we have a good guy behind enemy lines – let the suspenseful rescue attempt begin!
• The Hood/Merry Marvel Marching Secret Society of Super-Villains bit was as “hell yeah” as Patton Oswalt hinted it would be back in March.
• Fury shooting Ms. Marvel and leaving her for dead makes me want to find out what was behind his decision and what’s next for her; that’s good funnybooking – make us fretful about a hero.

A: Agreed on all counts, and plus, we also have Thor and the new Captain America coming in, and it looks like we’re on the verge of having Iron Man back in action. I think you’re right that the mid-series lull will be coming to an end next month.

T: I’m pretty sure all of the players are on the field now (even if we’re still not sure which team they’re suiting up for), so that creates a lot more space for invading, resisting, and avenging in the second half of Secret Invasion itself. Patience, kids! You’re already waiting 30 days for each part; let’s give Bendis the full 8 months to show us something this big.

Who knows? We may even get the answer to our Helicarrier question.

[1] Well, we’ve seen this if we’ve read any Ms. Marvel lately…see what we mean?

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 9:00 am and is filed under Marvel Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.