Secret Invasion: Hammer Time

by Liana

How does the old song go? If I had a hammer, I’d @#%* up Skrulls in the morning, I’d @#%* up Skrulls in the evening....Man, if only someone in the Marvel Universe had a hammer, all our heroes’ troubles would be solved.


Oh @#%* yeah! Who loves you now!


New Avengers #44
Brian Michael Bendis, Billy Tan

The Internet told me this was an important issue of NA that would explain everything to me. And since I believe EVERYTHING the Internet tells me, I brought it home and read it first. Well, it does tell you how the Skrulls infiltrated Earth. That is, it tells you how the Skrulls stole from Reed Richards’ mind the method by which they could shapeshift even their DNA so as to be undetectable by any of Earth’s heroes or technologies. So, you ready for this? When the Illuminati went to the Skrull Throneworld, Skrullerdome, to tell the Skrulls that they would not tolerate any more attempted Earth invasions, they were captured for a short time. Obviously, they escaped, but the Skrulls managed to clone them all with super sophisticated Skrull technology (I wonder who has the superior technology, the Skrulls or the Shi’ar?) that allowed the Skrulls to create scenarios where the cloned heroes would discuss what they should do to prepare against another Skrull invasion. That’s right. Skrull cloning technology included the ability to transfer all intelligence, thoughts and ability to apply existing thoughts to new thoughts....yeah, it’s a little farfetched, but we’ll accept it. Through these experiments, the Skrulls learned that Reed Richards has in his mind--and therefore in his clone’s mind--the knowledge the Skrulls seek. Unfortunately, their mindreader isn’t smart enough to understand what Reed’s thinking, so they have to try something tricky. The set up a scenario with the clone and SkrullSue and SkrullFranklin that tricks SkrullCloneReed into writing it all down. And there you have it. This is how the Skrulls snuck their dirty butts onto our planet. And it’s why Reed Richard is SkrullEnemy Numero Uno and our only hope. Grade: B


Secret Invasion #6
Brian Michael Bendis, Leinil Francis Yu

Why are so many people bored with this event? Aside from issue #4, which was a steaming pile of Nothing Happened, I think it’s been terrific fun. This issue sees Mar-Skrull finding Marvel Boy, the Skrull Empress reuniting with her Skrull forces at the Inititative’s headquarters, delusional civilians welcoming the Skrulls as saviors, Earth’s heroes flying from the Savage Land to the now-destroyed New York City, and the return of everybody’s favorite Norse god, walking tall and carrying a BIG hammer. Look out, Skrullscum! There is the odd coloring on the plane from the Savage Land (Punisher is blonde), and the art is the typical muddied affair for this series....that is until the last two-page spread. You know, where our heroes--Avengers, Young Avengers, Thunderbolts, those D-listers the Hood collected, Nick Fury’s strangers, Wolverine (now that I think about it, was he not fighting Skrulls in San Francisco?)--and the Skrulls finally face off against each other. It’s real purty. Dan stared at it for several minutes. I think he drooled too, but I didn’t point it out for fear of embarrassing him. Clearly, Yu has been rushing through every single panel so that he could put all his efforts into that battle. Grade: B+


Secret invasion: Inhumans #2
Joe Pokaski, Tom Raney

What's the next best thing to a big hammer for @#%*ing up Skrulls? Crazy long kickass hair. This mini-series isn’t only the best SI tie-in, it’s better than Secret Invasion itself. In fact, I don’t know if I’m enjoying any Marvel comic as much as I am this one. I used to think that I wanted Sean McKeever to come back to Marvel just to write a new Inhumans series, but now, I don’t know who Joe Pokaski is, but if he doesn’t get an ongoing Inhumans series after this, then I’m going to have to believe that Joe Quesada is on crack or he hates me. Or both. I mean, come on, who could hate me? Crack addicts, that’s who. Although, with Emma Frost’s ever-growing prominence in the MU, I suppose I already could be running with the crack addict theory. But I think this it was they call a digression. Karnak, Gorgon and Crystal kick all kinds of dirty Skrullbutt while Medusa gets extra nasty with her husband’s impersonator, subjecting him to repeated doses of terrigen mists to torture Black Bolt’s location out of him. Then Medusa takes a small, elite team to rescue her husband. I think she leaves Lockjaw in charge. Sure, Maximus is king, but I think he’s busy cowering somewhere. I was surprised to learn that Medusa and Black Bolt have a son. How did I miss that? I was even more surprised when the Skrulls stole Black Bolt’s voice. Holy *. This book is so cool. Grade: A
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Secret Invasion #4: Skrullduggery

by Liana

Trite. Hackneyed. Stereotypical. That’s my overall review of Bendis and Yu’s Secret Invasion #4. Why? Because after a fun start, we’ve reached Bendis’ favorite destination, Cliché Point, where nothing happens. I hate to sound so unoriginal, but there you go. Let’s see if we can figure out why the events of this issue couldn’t happen over the course of four pages in the next and justify the handing over of $4.

The issue opens with the second best page of the book. The best is the last, but we’ll get to that later. We’re treated to a boring voiceover explaining that humans are greedy and stupid and they’ve already lost the war. This voiceover goes on for ten pages. And as you’re reading it, it comes across as just repeating the same thing over and over. Going through it a second time for examples, I can’t actually pinpoint anything specific. I guess that’s just one of those Bendisms that can’t be proven but are none-the-less true, like how ten minutes after you wash your car, a bird will crap on it.

But I said this was the second best page of the issue. That’s because the images we open with are of Reed Richard being tortured by the Skrulls by being stretched to capacity. It’s heartbreaking and awesome. Even Agent Brand, who has managed to float through space and onto a Skrull ship, is moved to tears, though it’s hard to tell whether those tears are for Reed or for all the monitor images of Earth under attack. Agent Brand, really? Okay. At least I also finally read Secret Invasion: Who Do You Trust? last night, so her presence isn’t totally out of nowhere anymore. But it’s still pretty random, no? Well, what I think I mean is that it seems pretty random to suddenly have the events of Astonishing X-Men more tied to current continuity than the other X-titles.

Oh, here’s a question: when Nick Fury puts together a team, is it always called the Howling Commandos? Just wondering. Also wondering why I’m supposed to care about this group of yahoos no one’s ever heard about before. Is it just because Fury found them? Because that isn’t working for me.

Is Tony Stark a Skrull or not? This seems to be the big question that isn’t going to be answered until the end. I can’t wait for three more issues of whining and wondering about that. I really like Jessiskrull’s attempts to convince him he is. It makes me want him to be one. But the Black Widow, who is being drawn to look like a man in some of these panels, doesn’t buy it for a second. She kills Ship Beast and Ship Jean Grey, who were Skrulls, incidentally. Dan was pretty disappointed about that, because he wanted Ship Beast to be Real Beast and thereby “undo stupid CatBeast and everything from Morrison’s stupid run.” Oh, Dan. Hey, something I liked! The codeword Wolverine has to use to prove he isn’t a Skrull is hysterical because it’s totally something you’d never expect him to say.

Black Widow says that Tony Stark is one of “five people on the planet who can stop this.” Who are the other four? Reed Richards, obviously. Nick Fury? That will only annoy me slightly, though I still don’t think it will make me care about his team. Agent Brand? I guess her history is mysterious enough that it could work, though that would still be kind of out of nowhere.

What about the Hood? Was I talking about random before? Because I had to do a wikipedia search on The Hood. I never heard of his 2002 Max series, I didn’t read Beyond! and I don’t read New Avengers or Daredevil. He's assembling his crime syndicate to fight the Skrulls, because the Skrulls winning is “bad for business.” If it’s the Hood, I’ll be really annoyed.

Maybe it’s these two guys? Which two guys? The two guys on the last page. You know who I mean. Mr. Krakaboom and Mr. Binoculars. I have to admit to getting pretty excited when I saw Thor coming down from the sky. Like, now we’re getting somewhere. And then to end on Cap, well, let’s just say that for the second I thought it was RealCap, I was super happy. Then I realized it could easily be BuckyCap and I let out a resigned sigh.

So Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Thor, Captain America and….Agent Brand? Is that who I’m going with? That just doesn’t seem quite right. OH! Especially since, as I said, I just read Who Do You Trust? and now know that Marvel Boy will randomly be a big player in all of this. And what about the Agents of Atlas? I think I need to spend more time at wikipedia today, because how are all these random people going to fit into things if, as Black Widow says, there are only five people who can stop this?

I love this storyline. It’s awesome. Seriously. But this issue, aside from the first and last pages, was really just an exercise in treading water. I have to give it a C+ and cross my fingers that next issue is action-packed Skrully goodness. Was it worth the $4? Meh. Read more!

Raiders of the Last Shipment: War! Huh!

by Liana

“New this week!” Man, I don’t even know the last time I picked up a comic the day it came out. But after picking up the first two Secret Invasion issues over the weekend, I was all skrulled out and couldn’t wait for #3. Plus Dan’s monthly shipment arrived yesterday. I raided his pile (which was not nearly as hot as it sounds) and found a couple wars (Giant-Size X-Men and Fables #73) plus something altogether different (House of Mystery #1) and before I knew it, a batch of reviews started baking in my brain. Wild. Well you know what they say, nothing cures skrullanoia like cookies. What? They totally say that! Hey, anyone wanna guess how many parenthetical phrases I work into this post? Hint: it’s a lot. Let’s see what it’s all good for, y’all.


Secret Invasion 1-3 by Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Yu is all very interesting, as are most of Bendis' ideas. But, like most of his ideas, it's kind of confusing at this point and the dialogue is pretty annoying. Plus, I don't think the art is doing the book (or readers) any favors. I mean, who can tell what’s happening in the fight with the giant skrulls? And why doesn’t anyone have eyeballs? The guy at the comic shop didn’t answer those questions for me (maybe because I didn’t ask?) but he did ask me who I thought was a skrull. I said it better be Cyclops. He said they (the people at the comic shop) decided it's Emma Frost. I said whichever, as long as that whole business gets undone. Maybe they're BOTH skrulls! But then no, that would suck, because it means the real Scott and Emma were on the skrull ship together and maybe they fell in love there and then I’m still subjected to that drive-me-nuts storyline. God. When’s Phoenix going to come back and burn Emma out of our memories and then dump Scott’s jerk ass for good? Not soon enough, I say.

Anyway, he (guy at the comic shop) also said they (people at the comic shop) had a big discussion over whether what happened in the book really happened. Obviously I had no idea what he was talking about then. Now that I've read it, if it's what I think they were talking about, I'd say yeah and that it explains a lot. It’s the whole Tony thing, right? I believe it. And more, I like it. I don’t read any Avengers books, so I haven’t been privy to a lot of developments (like I didn’t know Spider-Woman was already revealed as the Skrull Queen until I read Comic By Comic’s review yesterday morning). And I don’t have to make every little look-who’s-a-skrull-now reveal work for whatever each character has been up to the last few years (until we start talking X-Men, that is). Which is great because I think a lot of it is going to be really hard to swallow. But Tony Stark as a brainwashed skrull hero works for me. It explains Civil War much more nicely than Tony just being an overzealous dumbass and maybe it means that DeadCap is also a skrull and I can stop treading water with BuckyCap in his title. Geez, this skrull business sure makes your brain work. I need some cookies. I give it a B, but I’m grading on a curve right now. Bendis has a lot of work to do if this isn’t going to be a total disaster.


House of Mystery #1 by Matthew Sturges and Luca Rossi is a tantalizing introduction to what looks to be a series filled with juicy tales of intrigue and creepiness. This issue is pretty much set-up, letting us know that Cain’s house has disappeared from The Dreaming, strange travelers hang out at a pub and don’t generally get to leave and a girl with a recurring dream is on the run from a weird couple. Make sense? Yeah, not to me either. But there’s a cool and gross little story from Bill Willingham and Ross Campbell (will these stories always appear and will these two always write them?) from one of the patrons. It’s all very intriguing and just the mood you expect from a Sandman spin-off. I give this a B+ because I’ll definitely be getting more of these, though it may work better for me in trade.


Giant-Size Astonishing X-Men by Joss Whedon and John Cassaday (swoon) was really....odd. If we didn't already know (because of ridiculous delays) that something happened to Kitty, I think the ending would have been very moving. But that was all spoiled, so there was no "oh noes!" factor. The inclusion of every hero in New York was pretty dumb and pointless (unless total self-indulgence suddenly became a valid point), though I will say that Whedon wrote the FF's part very well. I liked that everything that happened brought it back around to the first story arc, but it sure made the twelve issues between the first arc and the last super pointless and even more irritating than they were when I read them (a hundred years ago). I mean, what did we get out of those? A stupid new character and some confusing Hellfire nonsense? Gee, thanks, Mr. Buffy. Now, I’ve seen at least one person online refer to this as the “best ever X-Men run” and maybe there are others who feel the same way. I haven’t looked at other reviews yet, but I have a hard time believing that many people think this tops Grant Morrison, the Chris Claremont/John Byrne stuff, Chuck Austen (just making sure you’re paying attention) and others I’m not thinking of at the moment. This issue was mostly solid and if not for the problems listed above may have bordered on excellent. Now we can all enjoy the non-phasing X-Men knowing that someday Kitty’s bullet will cross Havok’s path in Shi’ar space and everyone will come home safe and sound to a (hopefully) skrull-free world. A B+ finale to a C+ series.


War. Yeah. You want to know what it’s all good for? Fables #73 by Bill Willingham and Mark Buckingham has your answers. This series is rarely less than awesome and this issue, well, I read it last night and my girl parts are still tingling this morning (and that one is as hot as it sounds). The Fabletown army, led by Sinbad and Prince Charming, has invaded the Homelands and they mean business. What kind of business? They’re bringing guns to a swordfight. Oh hell yeah! Plus, they’ve got big ass bombs to blow up all the doorways out of the Homelands. And Bigby’s got his own tough ass army guarding the army’s escape route, which happens to be the last beanstalk to the Cloud Kingdom. And Blue’s traveling his ass all over the place, messengering news, supplies and bombs (and snake cakes) where needed. And Briar Rose is hiding her ass out in the Empire’s capital, waiting to prick her finger when the time is right. And Snow! Snow’s ass is commanding the whole thing from behind the scenes. Yay! Snow is so friggin’ awesome. What else? Oh, there is a slight dragon problem, but I have faith we’ll be able to handle those asses. I don’t like to think about this series too much because I don’t want to accidentally guess what’s coming up, but let me just say I don’t think naming this initiative “Operation Jack Ketch” is a coincidence. Total A+ and that A does NOT stand for “ass.”
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