Leinil Francis YuCritiques

Access a version of the below that discusses the series in full and includes illustrations on my blog.

This opening miniseries is particularly tedious, with umpteen different superteams (the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, &c.) fighting monsters again and again and again. Too many characters, too many artists, no interesting character work or plotting.

Elsa Bloodstone: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »

Secret Invasion is action packed with some big events, but my still limited superhero knowledge meant I was a little confused and lost in places! I spent a lot of time on Wikipedia and quizzing my Boyfriend to work out who was who.. and I still couldn't tell you them all!

The Skrulls have a clever plan to invade Earth. Over many years they have replaced heroes with identical Skrull agents, and now the superheroes have no idea who they can trust. Tony Stark, having positioned himself as the most powerful man on the planet (and head of SHIELD) is poisoned, Starktech is compromised and the Earth's defense is wide open. They're so busy fighting themselves the battle is almost over before the Skrull even attack, and then all the different powered people of earth must band together.

Like I said.. being somewhat of a Marvel newbie I only knew about 50% of the characters in this (and still only grasp about 70%)! It was fun to learn who they are though. The main headliners take the lead but this was also my first introduction to Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, The Wasp, Mar-vell and Spider-Woman. I had no clue who Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman was and she a pretty big role in this book! It was cool to see the comic book versions of Maria Hill, Mockingbird and Daisy Jones.

It's heavy on the action, which while being cool, involves about 20 characters (on each side) at a time so it's very busy and can be hard to work out exactly what the heck is going on! It all came to a bit of an abrupt end too.. but with some important events that will shake up the universe. Norman Osborne as head of SHIELD, WHAT?!

I believe Dark Reign follow on from this, so maybe I'll go there next.. I did enjoy reading this, it's made me more excited to read more! I've got such a long list of characters I want to check out.

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2021 Backlog;

Marking as completed series.
Reviews in the Dawn of X Compilations.

2020 Backlog;

Marking as completed series. Reviews in the Dawn of X Compilations.

Another one of Mark Millar's young, dumb and full of comeuppance-for-the-bad-guy comics written for the movie option. Action, humor, and plot twists top any need for the story to actually make any sense or the characters to have more than one or two personality traits. And this tale is told fast enough with enough violence to please me and the rest of the popcorn crowd.

This series is the one bright spot of this whole Civil War/House of M debacle

I love "cosmic threats" and this definitely fit the bill. The art was good and the sense of dread was palpable. Good stuff.

Another terrific Superman iteration, though I am beginning to wonder how many origin stories I can handle. I guess as long as they're entertaining...

Art style is a bit messy here, but works for the most part. I did feel a bit uncomfortable with depictions of black/African people, however.

Luthor has never been this threatening, I really dug his and Clark's backstory in Smallville. Some other nice details about how Clark starts as a worldwide investigative journalist before coming to Metropolis, discussions with his parents and his justification for an alter-ego. Nice.½

One of the main titles in the infinity crossover.

This comic has a very fun and exciting premise -- what if an aging supervillain (in name only, he used a ray gun) gets in an unpayable gambling debt, and all the crooks he's mentored over the years rally around him for one last job to earn enough to save his neck? And the execution is ... it's good. It's got a little bit of the Mark Millar "brutal equals exciting" thing I've never cared for, but it's also got a fair bit of his humour and solid story crafting. But despite the splendid premise, it just never quite became something memorable, in my opinion. The logic is more than a bit dubious ("let's go to Spain where there are no super heroes to interfere. Once in Spain, let's target the only possible victim that actually has super powers and a former super hero on staff!"). The "she says no but she doesn't really mean it" romance with the ex-girlfriend (the story's only female character for no apparent reason) you've seen 1000 times before doesn't do anything new. The heist's compulsory twists are fine. It's not so straightforward as to be dull, but nothing earth-shattering happens, nothing that blew my mind. And this had no characters I'll remember a month from now. Excepting, perhaps, the Gladiator, the story's only super hero. It's odd how most regular super hero books leave me with finding the villain the most interesting character, while this story, full of villains, made the sole law-abiding character stand out similarly.

All in all, it was an entertaining read that captivated me enough to read the entire miniseries in a single sitting, but still a let down considering my proclivity for heist stories, the fantastic premise and the book's high reputation.½

Actually read this out of order since I have already read the next 2 Marvel events, but I had the comics laying around so I figured I'd fill in the gap and I'm glad I did. Some of the witty banter was great and the whole Skrull thing with everyone worrying about everyone else being a Skrull really ramped up the tension.

See also: my last New Avengers review. I'm really enjoying how crazy this has become, and the frantic, kinda sketchy art style that this series has had is back in full force and matches perfectly for the story.

I was skeptical of Hickman doing an alien invasion story after the last two mediocre volumes, and there are definitely parts of it that just kind of drag on and on, but the excitement builds nicely in this and staging it in the midst of the "universe coming apart at the seams" stuff from Avengers/New Avengers makes the outcome actually seem like it could turn dark at any moment. Probably better than it has any right to be.

Dark stuff going on here, and Tony Stark talking to the 'empty' room while Dr. Strange had them all hidden was pretty emotional. And then of course LOTS of ninjas was great too as well as the reveal of the beginning of the Secret Invasion.

The reboot of the reboot of the reboot Grandaddy begins. After House of X/Powers of X, the X-Men are back and I mean, they are all back, you name them, they're back and they're getting their butts handed to them by The Golden Girls.

It's good to be back in the world of the X-Men and good to see some of my favourites back and this main title focuses on the heavy hitters but was good to see Armor and Darwin getting a bit of page time.

Will continue to enjoy this world, but they have to be able to kick Rose, Blanche, Sophia and Dorothy butts!

This was probably a pretty great event at the time, but it doesn't really stand well in isolation. The art is so male-gazey too.

I enjoyed Hickman's House of X/Powers of X, but the new ongoing just rubs me the wrong way. None of the characters feel like themselves, and maybe that's intentional, though more and more I doubt that to be the case. Either way, it's incredibly off-putting. I'll also don't like how the Hickman era has no real connection to anything that came before, like it's try to be a complete reboot without being honest about it. Granted, that's not really a fault of this particular volume, but the longer Hickman goes without explaining how we got to where we are from where we were, the more it's going to bug me.

I enjoyed this series, although it does seem to be another heroes vs heroes series. I am starting to miss the series of one big bad guy vs a bunch of different heroes. I'm probably reading the wrong series then since these major event series seem to just want to cram every character they can think of into these books. I swear one panel even had Howard the Duck in it.

Anyway, the story was interesting with the reveal of who was and was not a skrull (A shape shifting alien). The thing I wanted to know was how they gave these imposters the super powers of the people they are impersonating. Maybe that was discussed in one of the side issues for each individual character.

Next up is the Event Series "War of Kings".

This was cool and interesting especially how the writing of it played out in real life. Still seems unrealistic that 100's of super skrulls couldn't beat up Earth's superheroes, considering they had the same super powers but there were more of them (powers and skrulls). Also I didn't understand what happened with the Wasp at the end. It seemed like she was going to release a contagion that was going to kill everyone, but then nothing happened.½

Reading this four years after the fact underscores how chaotic and upturned Marvel has gotten with their characters and properties. Yes, this was an interesting read, but having read snippets of things that came from this and other plotlines just shows me how much marketing is valued over story and such.

This book made sense and was gripping if you were already a Bendis-Avengers fan; if you were coming to this cold (as I always was taught--"treat every issue like someone's first issue"), you'd be totally confounded and likely to never pick up a comic book again.

A good story. The who-can-you-trust/who's-really-a-Skrull dynamic is compelling, especially until a fantastic weapon gets created. The tie-ins back to earlier stories seemed well done. And all the important people make an appearance in one form or another, with the return of off-screen or dead heroes.

The motivations for the Skrull invasion could have been better stated in this volume (rather than just the other tie-ins), but I didn't mind the excess of fight scenes that left room for.