snap judgments

Last year, I was lucky enough to be on a movie set for a particular project I’ll eventually be free to speak about.  Let’s just put it this way;  I am legally obligated not to say a thing about what I did, who I saw and what I heard and if that doesn’t make you want to know what it is, you have no idea how much I want to tell you all.

Enough about me.

So, on set, one of the extras next to me is this absolutely fascinating guy I can’t remember the name of.  What he does and did is far more important.  He trains military soldiers to go to Iraq and protect themselves and others in a hostile urban environment.  Everything from procedures on how to handle a suicide bomber, how to clear a road efficiently and quickly as possible, enduring interrogations from the enemy, even how to survive in the sweltering desert and get to safety.  He told it all casually, as if his preparation wasn’t saving lives and making stronger people.  His shoulders were huge, his jaw square and he was funny as hell.

And he wanted to be a Green Lantern.

The moment comics came up in casual conversation, he just lit up like he recited the Oath.  He’d been reading Green Lantern comics since he was a kid and adored John Stewart.  He could tell you anything about the character and we talked over recent story lines with great enthusiasm.  At that time, he talked about the movie possibility and while he didn’t know the particulars, he knew he’d be first in the casting call line the moment he got word one.  You know, if he wasn’t off training in the middle of the desert.

Comics are great, people.  Anyone and everyone can be a fan of smoe odd facet or another for a million and one reasons.  The guy on set was amazing, in both his acting career and in his day job and when I heard news that the Green Lantern movie seems to be set to film next Spring, I thought back to that guy.  Sure, hal Jordan seems to be the main named dropped, but if there’s room for a John Stewart, you’ll have a very brave and awesome guy front and center.

Dear Sirs,

When you first took over writing chores on the Incredible Hercules, I was rather upset and might have said some rather harsh words regarding your ‘hijacking’ of one of my favorite titles.  I didn’t think it was fair the the title character of the book formerly known as Incredible Hulk got kicked off his own main book and a bit player from World War Hulk was getting his place.  I was upset, World War Hulk had kind of bummed me out and again, I took this out on your book, vowing never to read it until Hulk and/or Banner once graced the interiors.

I would like to apologize for this knee-jerk fandignant reaction because Incredible Hercules FREAKIN’ RULES.

WOW.  On a whim, I started reading it for Secret Invasion tie-in and my jaw has dropped with the amount of action you deliver, the amount of depth of character you create and how wonderfully told these tales are.  It’s a rare sight indeed these days to see both bodacious battles, humor and a little life lesson thrown in for good measure in comics in just the right way and you both have knocked it out of the park in every issue I’ve had the pleasure of reading.  These feel like old stories from Marvel’s finest age, wherein mortals could mix with gods, go on an adventure and come back better people for it.  From the use of mythology to the casual heroism of Our Hero and how much that all reflects on the cast.  These are serious stories told in a non-serious fashion that leave excited for the next issue while satisfied with the results of what we’ve just read.  While he wasn’t a character I thought I would have believed in and quite frankly was frustratingly annoyed by at the start, slowly and surely, I’m coming around towards Amadeus Cho, a truly exceptional feat.

In penance, I have purchased the first trade (while it was in hardcover, no less!) and I am proud to say you guys write the best Ares since Oeming gave the character some weight in the God of War mini-series.  The epic battle to go defeat the Skrull Gods (an incredible mythology in and of itself!) is hands down the finest story to come out of Secret invasion yet and I only wish that the other books would take a moment to acknowledge the great job that was done there.  You both have really made a huge impact on the big event at large and, as a retailer, I’ve been telling everyone who comes to the counter where the real action is.

So thank you, sorry for not trusting your book at the start and I look forward to what you have in store for the future.

Signed,

~Carla

Hey, did you read House of M?

It was an 8 issue comic series back in 2005 that led to the Decimation of the oodles of random mutants that had cropped up over the years in the Marvel Universe.  A population control problem, it cut down all the X-Men to all the ones everyone liked (which… yeah, that’s not true because as long as they appeared in a comic, all mutants are someone’s favorite) and … pretty much took care of the X-Universe exclusively.  The more important thing was that it was Bendis’s first shot at the Big Event Book and, almost as an anniversary gift, Bendis gives us it AGAIN after three years.

HOORAH!

This is, of course, a retelling of that fateful mini through the eyes of Spider-Woman Skrull and Hank Pym Skrull (making me really want to go back and read the HoM: Iron Man mini to see if this all really does fit in or Bendis is just name-checking his own books).  These two were totally going to go kill the Scarlet Witch, but they didn’t.

And that’s $2.99 and 28 pages, folks!  G’NIGHT!

A customer came in with a handy little heft of Marvel books and he wasn’t sure on New Avengers.  Issues had been hit and miss with him and I properly bit my tongue and tried to sell the book as the Secret History of the Secret Invasion.  The customer perked up as Secret Invasion was awesome in his eyes especially the part where they “shot the hell out of Reed Richards”.

I proudly sold him a copy of New Avengers #44, knowing he would be satisfied.

In this issue, the Skrulls are working on a project in which (and I’m nto joking) they are CLONING various Marvel heroes in order to learn their secrets.  That’s right: clones.  The first part is a big long talk with the Illuminati as they catch on ahead of time about the ways the Skrulls would backlash against them.  In fact they catch on so quick that Black Bolt makes a run for the door only to get shot up by the Skrulls who’d been watching their puppets dance for the intel.  This intel being that one final clue that will help the Skrulls go undetected amongst… well, who are we kidding?  Amongst the Fantastic Four and the incredible genius of Reed Richards.

So, their plan is to CLONE REED RICHARDS and keep putting the clone in situations where he’d willingly give up that information.  They put him in league with his Illuminati buddies, they torture him and his wife and kid, it’s… it’s actually kind of gruesome.  Personally, I find it just as distateful as the whole Tigra getting the crap kicked out of her in her underwear thing because, storywise, it isn’t necessary and is brutality for brutality’s sake and shock value.

Out of all the ways that the Skrulls could have learned how to hide themselves from the genius of Reed Richards, this is the way they go about it?  Repeatedly cloning a copy until it did naturally what they wanted it to?  Doesn’t that seem a little wasteful?  Couldn’t they have figured it out on their own, out of sheer desperation?  Why not have religious aspect factor in, something about believe in His Love or an ancient writ come to the fore with secret knowledge?  Hell, they just got through an Annihilation wave, who’s to say they couldn’t have scavenged the tech out of some other destroyed culture.  In fact, that’d have been kind of cool:  bit space battle showing the Skrulls triumphant and raiding weaker races for their information and technology, absorbing it into their own.  They could have even shown a successful ‘mini Invasion’ of some other schmoe race to give us even the barest hint of a chance that this Secret Invasion could have been a success.

So they torture and they test a variety of Clone Reeds until they finally get the math problem that will allow them the key to Invading.  They get it by having his son ask precocious little questions in bed with the wife on some lazy morning until the idea strikes him.  Then they shoot him in the head and declare war.

All you really need to know out of this issue is that the key to the Invasion and being undetected was discovered through Reed’s brain and so the Real Reed could probably reverse-engineer it.

Oh, and Skrulls got clones.

The new issue of Wizard that comes out today promises on the cover to have Bendis reveal all about the Avengers, or at least what sounds like yet another iteration of the team that seems to have at least Cap, Iron Man and Thor in it that’s going to come out of Secret Invasion.  Dear Readers, I may just pick that up, but only in the name of investigation.

Really, he can only go up from here; both Mighty and New Avengers teams haven’t exactly inspired any confidence in me.  it took them just three issues to Disassemble and here we are in issue #5 of Secret Invasion and with all these heroes around only now are we swearing REVENGE and Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are gearing up to jump into the same fight in New York City we;ve seen from several different angles by now.

Annnnyhoo….  Mighty Avengers.  Remember Hank Pym’s a Skrull, right?  Here, we get to see a little bit of his more ‘human’ side to speak as he’s getting cold feet on this whole Invasion business.  Dum Dum Dugan (also a Skrull) sits down with him in a diner in apparently the Middle of Nowhere Forest and tries to talk sense into him.  Pym thinks it’s too dangerous and the variables too big to really launch the Invasion right without some serious resistance, Dugan reminds him who he’s supposed to be playing here, a wife-slapping loser.  Stop breaking character to be smart.

Oh Bendis.  Why won’t you let the slapping thing go?  Why can’t you find another part of Pym’s personality to poke at, perhaps one of the other terrible things you’ve had him do since taking up the character?

Anyhow, Pym ain’t buying it, there’s a really odd sort of face off between he and Dugan and then they decide to take out the defective Pym.  A big fight ensues, starting in the diner and ending in the trees, Pym nearly begging for them to just listen when they shoot him in his big giant head.  He then reverts back to Skrull form and then normal sized, making me unfortunately remember Black Goliath’s funeral.  Thanks, guys.

Dugan orders SHIELD (or at least his trusted men amongst them) to lay down a good cover up, people in the area being upset that the diner’s gone and the nice guy who ran it crushed in the ensuing battle.  Dugan calls up the mothership and orders up another Skrull Pym.  I’m going to say that this Skrull Pym is the one we have currently running around in Avengers: the Initiative.

All you need to know?  Pym can’t even get being an insurgent right.  They can replace people at will.

AND THEY HAVE A PLAN.

Sorry, All You Need to Know: Battlestar Galactica is another post.

So, as Secret Invasion rolls along, revealing that yes, some people are Skrulls, some people are not Skrulls and hey, they’re doing whole Invasion under a religeous fervor!  For their troubles, the Marvel heroes have banded together to face this army and rip their stinkin’ heads off.

Some might say there’s a lot of out-and-out killing going on for ‘respectable’ heroes.  Some might say that this wholesale violence should be addressed.  Some might even look back to the arguements leveled at one Bruce Banner just a year ago and wonder how hypocritical can one get?

After all, they exiled him off the planet for killing people, right?  He was a danger to innocent people, property and prosperity.  And I’m sure he probably ate all the donuts before the Illuminati got a single one.  His exile was justified.

Now, the heroes are pushed to the brink of rage.  Did you see the last page of Secret Invasion #5?  Hawkeye is ready to KILL KILL KILL with a white hot rage that they brought back his wife only to kill her again.  Where one he admonished Mockingbird for letting a man who forced her to love him fall to his death, now he’s ready to start and damn well finish this war, preferably with many damn dirty Skrulls deceased.  Ms. Marvel, when tearing into a Skrull front, had a problem when the Skrulls ran into a crowd of innocent people and hid among them.  At this point, she acted tactically as a soldier and FIRED IN TO THE CROWD OF PEOPLE.  Mind you, she figured out which ones were Skrulls by which humans had the squiggly green word bubbles, but still.

I’m not saying their actions aren’t justified.  It’s clear that this is clear and unadulterated war, where hard choices have to be made and strong actions have to be taken to ensure the survival of the human race.  It’s big stuff, people.  But when not but a YEAR ago, the smartest of these heroes banned a man who was suffering under a tremendous burden, a man who had been hailed as a hero before, a guy they stood next to from time to time, it really makes you wonder if anyone’s going to take a good hard look at one another when all this is over.  Or if their war crimes are going to swept under the rug to go back to the way things were.

All in all, someone should find Bruce Banner and maybe buy him a beer.  Sorry, guy.  We never knew what it was like to be that angry.