Marvel’s Secret Invasion has started this week and naturally everyone has a lot to say about it. Please be warned that these links contain spoilers.
Matt Singer is impressed by certain motifs:
The idea of an enemy hiding among us, and the dangerous effects of the fear of such an enemy, is obviously one that has a lot of cultural weight nowadays (The title of the series, Secret Invasion, seems an obvious nod to the famous invasion of a certain race of interstellar body snatchers). And from the very start, Leinil Yu’s art reinforces the idea of masks and hidden identities: Iron Man’s full-page introduction on page 3 is a series of images that show his armor’s faceplate lifting up to reveal his human face underneath. It’s a beautiful and subtle encapsulation of a lot of Secret Invasion’s motifs, one I hope is repeated with each issue.
The sense that you can’t trust anyone on the page, even beloved, decades-old characters, is heightened by the fact that Bendis’ comics, like most nowadays, do not employ thought balloons. Once a standard device used to allow readers inside a character’s head, thought balloons have almost completely vanished from American comics. Now when a character wants to bring us inside the protagonist’s head, he’s much more likely to use some much less invasive captions. Thought balloons may strike some as a simplistic device, but there’s also something quite intimate about them. And if you’re hearing a character’s thoughts, it’s difficult for them to shield duplicitous intentions. But the hidden villains of Secret Invasion don’t have to worry about such things anymore.
Chad Nevitt and Tim Callahan discuss, among other topics, the use of the comic story as an allegory:
I think there’s a connection, but how strong will be determined by the rest of the story. It’s not a big stretch to see the concept of sleeper agents destroying the government from the inside as relating to the threat of Islamic terrorism and sleeper cells. I have a feeling that, like Civil War, that connection will be there throughout, but become less and less evident as the story focuses more and more on the Marvel Universe. Right now, the actual plot and motivation of the Skrulls is thin enough that their actions provide the only meaning, but, once the story continues, we’ll get more explanations and justifications, and that’s where the story will depart from its reality-based allegory. If it stuck to that allegory, I think it would actually be a weaker story–placing the message and subtext above the primary plot is almost always a mistake. I do think that it adds to the overall tapestry of art reflecting the times, which is interesting, but only when also looking at other works of art that reflect the same concerns. But, I’ve always had a problem with primarily allegorical stories (just as I’ve always had problems with overly didactic stories) since there’s usually little to them beyond the allegory and that always raises the question, “Why not just write directly about the subject in question?” If Secret Invasion turns out to be very allegorical in comparing the Skrull invasion to the threat of Islamic terrorists, then I’d just wonder why Bendis didn’t write a story somewhere about Islamic terrorists. To maintain any real entertainment value and stand on its own, it has to stray from that jumping off point, I think.
Steve Chaput didn’t find it very new-reader-friendly:
Tony Isabella always reminds us that the old writers used to write as if the reader had never picked up a book before. The story may contain characters with which we were not familiar, but the writer would give us enough information so we didn’t feel completely lost. That is not how comics are written nowadays, unless of course it is the first issue and meant to introduce the cast. It’s the same with SI as it was with COUNTDOWN. If you aren’t already familiar with the comic universe you won’t have much explained and you really aren’t welcome.
SI begins on the day the Skrulls decide to publicly stage their invasion. While a Skull ship spotted landing in the Savage Land (where?), explosions take place at The Raft and The Cube, which are maximum-security installations. (for whom?) Apparently there are at least two groups who call themselves the Avengers, one of them hiding for some reason. Since the Avengers led by Tony Stark are not hiding out they must be the good guys, right? Of course, I always thought Spider-Man was a good guy, but I haven’t been reading Marvel for a while so maybe the movies mislead me.
So what did you think?
April 6th, 2008 at 3:41 am
“While a Skull ship spotted landing in the Savage Land (where?)”
The Savage Land. It’s a land. It’s savage.
Does anyone actually need more explanation than that?
April 6th, 2008 at 4:14 am
“Does anyone actually need more explanation than that? ”
Yes? Tropical land in the middle of the Arctic where dinosaurs live would be good…
But then I picked up the book with VERY low expectations. Which weren’t met. I hated and figure the rest to be just as terrible. Also that it will be the best selling book for whatever 8 months it comes out in…
April 6th, 2008 at 9:09 am
Anyone who choose Secret Invasion #1 as their first Marvel comic in quite awhile, is going to be greatly behind on what’s going on.
It’s like beginning to watch a football game at the fourth quarter. The home team is down, the star quarterback is missing and somehow players have been traded midgame. You’re left scratching your head going “WTF?!?”
April 6th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Except with a football game you can figure out whats going on with a very quick recap. Team A: X points, Team B:Y points. Z amount of time left.
April 6th, 2008 at 9:25 am
It feels like a Michael Bay movie
April 6th, 2008 at 10:40 am
Well, Marvel did publish the Secret Invasion Saga comic, which was intended to help new readers get up to speed on all things Skrull. They also have collections available of all the most recent New and Might Avengers issues that are relevant to Secret Invasion, and all the individual issues have been labeled with The Infiltration banner. So I think Marvel has done everything they can possibly do to get new readers up to speed.
When it comes down to it, however, I just don’t think every single story should have to cater to new readers in order to have value, because for some stories that would ruin the whole point of the story. I’ve been reading New and Mighty Avengers all along and I still don’t know some things that are going on…which is kind of the point with Secret Invastion. It revolves around suspense, and if I had everything figured out then it wouldn’t be nearly as enjoyable to read. SI is not a world-building exercise; it begins with questions that we’re not supposed to have the answers to.
April 6th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
“Yes? Tropical land in the middle of the Arctic where dinosaurs live would be good…”
But they showed you that it was a tropical land. They had panels with the guys running around in dense jungle.
It’s like saying that if the ship had landed in North Dakota, they would have had to describe North Dakota before they went there. I’ve never been to North Dakota and I have no idea what it looks like, but I’m pretty sure I’ll get the basic idea once the jet lands and I see it. Heck, if it’s location isn’t relevant to the story, then it doesn’ even matter if anyone can point to it on a map.
Not *everything* has to be explained. If a new reader doesn’t notice that the Savage Land is in the middle of the Arctic, then it probably isn’t a big enough point that he *needs* to know it.
April 6th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I’ll agree that the comic would have benefitted from a recap page, but I’d hardly call it unfriendly to new readers. We get as much explanation of the people, places, and situations as we need to understand the story. There’s no old-style paragraph of one character woodenly explaining the current status quo of the Marvel Universe, but the book is filled with expository captions and dialogue.
Luke Cage describes his Avengers team as “A bunch of renegade heroes running from the law.” Which pretty much covers what you need to know on that front. Likewise, Wolverine describes the Savage Land as “A hidden land that time forgot snuggled away in the deep depths of the Antarctic.” I really can’t imagine needing to know more than that to follow the Savage Land’s role in this comic.
Ditto the prisons. They run down a list of super-villains being held there, so you know what you’re dealing with. Marvel Boy’s succinctly described, as are the mission statements for both SWORD and the Thunderbolts. All right there on the page.
The only things I could see new readers not understanding are exactly what SHIELD is, and why Captain Marvel’s attack on Thunder Mountain warrants a full-page splash. Otherwise, I think this first issue is as new reader friendly as any major universe-spanning crossover comic could be.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
I doubt that there is going to be any point to the storyline, aside from the potential retconning of heroes’ identities. The people looking for political allegories or social commentary are guilty of over-interpretation.
The computer virus plot element was mishandled, since an “alien” virus that’s incompatible with the target computer’s OS would have no more effect than and be no different from a domestically produced virus.
Bendis’s attempt to make the impersonations “undetectable” was clumsy, and had Stark making false statements about “technologies” and magic, following Strange’s misstatement about magic in ILLUMINATI #5. Detecting impersonators is trivial: Take a live tissue sample from a suspect, and see if it reverts, immediately upon being removed from the body or after the cells in the sample die. There’s no plausible way for a Skrull to retain control over the sample, especially after cell death.
The ease of detection makes the Skrull invasion little different from invasions by little green men from any other planet, although the Skrulls wouldn‘t be hungering for the women, presumably–aside from wanting to eat them (?). If the greatest threats the individual Skrulls can pose consist of Skrulls sporting the powers of various X-Men, FF, and Illuminati members–Zzzzzzz…
IMO, impersonation is best used in a story when the reader is fully aware of the impersonation, and the suspense factor concerns whether the impersonation will be discovered before the malicious goal is reached.
SRS
April 6th, 2008 at 2:19 pm
I don’t understand the complaint about the Savage Land. Bendis establishes it perfectly clearly simply by showing it. You can see it’s a hidden jungle full of dinosaurs. He has a newbie hero say that he always thought the place was made-up, and he has a scene reminding us that the first arc in NEW AVENGERS ended there (presumably because that’s going to be significant later on). What more do you want?
I’ll grant a couple of points, though. It doesn’t really establish WHY the Avengers are feuding, even though that’s essential context to understand why Luke Cage thinks Iron Man’s a Skrull.
And Marvel Boy is a relatively obscure character even to a lot of regular readers. His scene didn’t really explain (a) who he is, or (b) why he’s running the Cube. (The answer to that was in CIVIL WAR: RUNAWAYS/YOUNG AVENGERS, as I recall, and I don’t think you can fairly assume that everyone’s read THAT.) But it’s only a page, and perhaps Bendis will explain him more clearly when he does something more significant.
April 6th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
Bucky Sinister makes some really good points about what was actually said in the comics.
I think the reason old readers think the comic will be problematic for new readers is that good writing is kinda seamless. In the old days of comics there were text boxes that said things like, “Yes! The Avengers, that rag tag team of outlaw heroes!” and “What’s the Savage Land you ask, mighty Marvel reader? Why, it’s a wildly dangerous jungle hidden in the Arctic, full of creatures beyond imagination!” Those old captions laid out everything in an obvious manner for everyone.
They were also very intrusive. It’s much better when this stuff is slipped into the dialogue in a way that makes sense. New readers soak up the info while old readers barely notice it. But because the old readers barely notice it, they forget it later and then wonder, “How are new readers supposed to know what the Savage Land is?” despite “A hidden land that time forgot snuggled away in the deep depths of the Antarctic” being right in the comic.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Sorry to be a stickler about this, but, according to Secret Invasion #1 and Wikipedia, the Savage Land is in the Antarctic (South Pole), but several commenters here have said it’s in the Arctic (North Pole). Just wanted to clarify that for readers unfamiliar with the Savage Land.
As for Secret Invasion #1, it was a decent start to the mini-series, thankfully light on Bendis-style dialogue (but still full of repetitive phrases and occasionally clunky, “as you know” exposition).
Yu handled art chores well. It’s amazing what an inker can do to improve the readability of Yu’s pencils (which were too murky for my taste on New Avengers).
As for the end scene revelation, I’m sure other readers shared the WTF reaction, as I expect, Bendis and Quesada wanted. Good enough for me to want to read it through the conclusion (tie-ins and mini-series, not so much).
April 6th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
As I said in my conversation with Chad, my 7-year-old son loved the issue, even though he knows absolutely nothing about Marvel continuity outside the costumes he’s seen in the Ultimate Alliance video game.
It’s not reader UNfriendly.
April 6th, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Plus, issue #7 of Crisis on Infinite Earths was one of the first comics I ever read, and I couldn’t wait to find out who the hell all the characters were and what was going on. My confusion made me want to read more.
I had Who’s Who in the DC Universe back in those days to help me out. Now, it’s called the internet.
April 7th, 2008 at 1:39 am
it feels like everyone is complaining about the wrong points…it was reader friendly, etc…the biggest problem in it, from my POV was that to new or old reader, it..just..wasn’t..all that.. compelling. It could definetly get better.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Bucky Sinister and Jason Bryant said it best. This book wasn’t new reader friendly. My Marvel reading of late is sparse at best, and I wasn’t lost at all. Sometimes good writers can build everything you need to know into the dialog.
Some fans think that if a story doesn’t spell out each and every continuity point (even if only tangentially related to the plot), then it’s not reader friendly. I’ve got friends who feel that way about certain Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings elements left out of the movies; surely viewer’s who didn’t read the books won’t understand if they leave ‘x’ out. Surely!
But newbies often don’t want the full weight of continuity all at once; they just want enough info so they can understand the story. I think Secret Invasion #1 did that.
April 7th, 2008 at 10:18 am
Not to be missed:
Brian Disco Snell’s complete fisking of the “Dead Elektra” scenes from New Avengers: Illuminati #5 and Secret Invasion #1.
Some astonishingly sloppy editing on Marvel’s part.
April 7th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Fie on new readers! I don’t care about new readers, and nobody else should. New readers aren’t going to save the industry; better stories will. This is not a better story. It’s pablum.
April 8th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
I can see why the old-time readers believe that explanatory dialogue is needed if they can’t even locate the Savage Land within the correct hemisphere.
On the allegory point, surely the Skrulls aren’t the Islamist terrorists; they’re the invading Americans, and Reed, Tony & co are the terrorists.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
Matt Singer has put more thought into this comic than Marvel.