OK. First let me say Happy New year to all. Then Let me tell you I decided to write at least a blog a week. I did this like most do resolutions but I am hoping by calling it a promise I am more likely to keep it.
With that out of the way a warning, if you don’t read comics, what follows is going to probably bore you. Yes I do have some witty political thoughts and some interesting spiritual ideas to share this year, but I thought I would start light. Besides I have always meant for my blogs to talk more about comics.
Over the Holidays, I had a chance to read Marvel’s mega cross over “Secret Invasion”(SI), having been low on cash for the last year I missed it as it was coming out, so I relished the chance.
Before I go on a bit of personal history, I (unlike many who read comics it seems) am a fan or the cross over events. I don’t care if it’s two heroes or teams meeting to solve a mutual problem, or a company wide event, I love them. My love for comics was born with the JLA/JSA/LSH crossover and a Marvel two-in-one in 1976 so that might have shaped my tastes. I like the idea that what happens in one part of a company’s universe can affect other parts. So yeah, nothing brings out the comic geek in me like a crossover.
Another thing I really like in the Marvel U is the warring alien races of the Kree and The Skrull. I don’t know why, I didn’t read the classic Kree / Skrull war until January of last year so that wasn’t it. There was just something about two different alien races (who really have each other) fighting over earth while our heroes kept both at bay, that I found incredibly appealing.
A year or so prior to SI, Marvel’s previous cross over event Civil War (CW) had made me very happy. I know some didn’t care for it, mostly because they felt, insert favorite character, had been misrepresented. I however liked it a lot. One of the things I liked, (and I know those who didn’t) was that there were two titles, that told the story, Civil War, had the main action, and Civil War Front Line, had the mystery behind it. In a cross over it is sometimes hard to fit both in the pages at once (the end of DC’s Infinite Crisis suffered from a bit of that), and it would be cheating to put the information in a solo or team title, so Marvel split the action. It worked IF you knew what they were doing, but I know a lot of people who missed what was going on.
So just before the New Year I got my hands on the entire run of SU and sat down to read it. If you read the above, Oh reader and thought “With this much explanation he must be preparing to give a negative report” then you win a “null-prize”*.
It started out great, shape shifting Skrull spies everywhere, new cool Super-Skrull variants, and OMG level teasers about who might be a shape shifting alien. Then Nick Furry showed up. After that it is a huge fight and rescue story which might be ok IF they answered a single question they brought up. They don’t. The story starts with HUGE mystery about how and who, and then doesn’t answer ANY of the questions it asks. It would be an OK comic, if it gave us those answers but it doesn’t. It is the comic equivalent of a cock- tease. I HATED it, and I am a guy who even likes bad comics.
Then I realized there was a comic called “Secret Invasion Frontline” and breathed a sigh of relief, “Marvel has done the same thing twice, all will be reviled”, so I got my hands On SIFL and it reveled NOTHING about SI. It was a great “normal guy in the Marvel U” story and I enjoyed reading it. However, it told me NOTHING about the questions raised in SI**.
SI sucked!!! It started good then went nowhere. They used it to kill the Wasp in a crappy way that I don’t even think makes sense, and I defended Hawkeye’s death in Avengers Disassembled to people. I was left still wondering how and why the bad guys did what they did. If you haven’t answered that question you have failed to finish your story, and if you failed in telling your story. What we got in the final issue was a “And here is the way the Universe will be”, with out a single explanation as to why.
That by the way is the really sad part of this. I liked CW, but was less then fond of the incurably forced aftermath it left behind. SI makes all of that even worse and gives us NO explanation as to how we got to this point.
I really wanted to like SI, but I just can’t. It fails to even be a story, as stories, even in comic books, have an end. It is an insult to comic fans and Marvel should (but won’t be) ashamed of it’s self.
Bradleyman
* My personal equivalent of the No-Prize derived from my surname
** I would like to reiterate that this series is a good read any way.
No comments:
Post a Comment