The Great Gap
Okay, the quick quick version: Yours Truly’s been out of the comic loop for a few months.
And I swear, no matter how much I read, the more I have to wonder what I’m missing.
Sure, there’s the problem of a large fire making the 25 long boxes I had nothing more than dust in the wind (and hoo boy, I’ll get to that later) and the issue of having Marvel crescendo their Big Event while I was coming out of a medical coma, but there’s this … hole. This hole where I think there should be an ending, some sort of cookie or just an answer for a plotline that’s been running since Avengers Disassembled.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the great finale to Secret Invasion was ‘Skrulls are defeated’ and that Norman Osborn is in charge of SHIELD? Oh and he has a League of Evil. Just like that?
Like it or not, Civil War spoiled me. The issue was straight-forward (Registration Act, y/n), resolution was clear (Registration Act wins) and the results far reaching (those who don’t sign up are illegal). Easy? Yeah. Followed through to a ‘t’? Not really, but you can sell that story idea and explain it to new readers and old readers can complain but have some clear things to complain about.
Secret Invasion has a clear motive: alien invasion. This sells itself. Clear bad guy, clear good guy plus a little moral philosophy about why they’re invading. This can end one of two ways: alien rule or aliens go home. But really, reading the last issue… it wasn’t about that. It was a great big narrative leading to Norman Osborn shooting the Skrull Queen and that’s where the story ends. That’s the ‘Cap Gives Up’ moment and you can’t even call it a victory, can you? Hey, not like I’m saying Cap Takes Ball, Goes Home was all that great a victory, but at least it had something to do with the story it was trying to tell.
It’s the Initiative with an actual real Bad Guy in charge rather than Iron Man paraded as one depending on who’s writing. It feels like we’ve done this before. The situation remains the same. It happened with World War Hulk, but I always get the feeling that Marvel’s sort of ‘over’ the Incredible Hulk. The Green Goliath can come to New York City, threaten to throw it into the ocean and the ramifications are sort of swept under the rug. No one speaks of what the Illuminati did (well, at least the Pet Avengers seem to be on the case of the Infinity Gems), despite a five-issue miniseries highlighting it.
Here, people are still a little shaken up by the Invasion, but the battle in New York is something that tied up traffic. The big message of ‘He Loves You’ has its fifteen moments of fame and Norman Osborn is the new guy that’s totally threatening . Maybe when they finally bring him down, we’ll be distracted by another shiny object and maybe the Watchers will have been playing out our heroes like chess pieces for yet another story arc and banner title. Your guess is as good as mine.
