snap judgments

Okay, so it’s one thing to overhype your stuff to the tried and true fans; by this point, we should expect every issue of every comic that rolls off the Marvel assembly lines to fundamentally change our lives and bring peace to the Middle East.  No, let’s not get into whether or not the issues actually deliver, let’s stick with where our expectations should be.   Marvel should make it sound like every character will be the axis of their universe because somewhere, out there, that character is to that loyal fan.   All their books should crack the internet in half and cause a mad rush to the stores to but every copy and then some.  We’re fans.  We already love your product.  Marvel’s job is to make us love them more.

The common media needs to be reminded that comics still exist and that they’re pretty nifty and cheap entertainment.  Honestly, that’s it.

Anything more is either going to get confusing and be a waste of time, yours and theirs.  I remember watching Joe Quesada on the Colbert Report when Secret Invasion was coming out and asking myself, “Why is he finishing a rather fantastic interview having to explain what Skrulls are?”  Seriously, watch ’till about the 4min mark and then imagine the viewer’s brain just start translating Quesada’s voice into a Charlie Brown schoolteacher.  Not even the easy visual gag of seeing Obama or McCain morph into Skrull heads doesn’t save the obvious and uninteresting plug.  It starts out great, don’t get me wrong: using Colbert to tell people who the new Cap was going to be and when the issue came out made it easy to understand and relatable.  Telling him that he was still in the Presidential running in the Marvel Universe had the right effect:  I remember people coming into the shop to ask if that was true and to pick up at least a Spidey issue to check it out.  None of those guys asked for Secret Invasion.

So when Marvel promised ‘Civil War-like’ promotion of Captain America #600, some of us were already sitting down.  Mind you, it could have been mind-blowing: new Cap could have shook hands with President Obama and indeed, the internet might have cracked, just a little.  No advance idea of what the book was going to be about or why we should start hyperventilating now, retailers were once again caught with the Lady or the Tiger.  Order a bunch and be left with stacks of comics that don’t move or order too few and miss that frensied fevor when it turns out to be something huge.  We make the orders, hold our breath and…

… wait, that’s it?  Steve Rogers’ return is ‘Civil War like’?  NO!  It’s the first thing we all thought and I mean all, fans and non-fans.  Yeah, the rubes fell for Superman’s death, but fool me once, shame on you.  Everyone and their mom knew Rogers was coming back, it’s a freakin’ comic book trope!  You’ve got to be kidding me that this is what all of that was for! Not only that, it’s promotion for the start of a story.  Not the result.  Not the first appearance.  The beginning of a comitment to read this sucker until you get the payoff you expected before the issue came out.

Don’t get me wrong, Ed Brubaker has been writing the most consistantly amazing Captain America stories I have ever read.  The sun will rise and set and Captain America will entertain and delight you, even if it’s just Bucky having a birthday.  When I got a chance to breathe the same air as Mr. Brubaker last February at WonderCon, he was as giddy as a schoolgirl when he mentioned that July was going to be huge for Cap.  A schoolgirl, people.  Don’t try and get the image of Ed Brubaker in pigtails out of your head, just know that I’m deadly serious about trusting him with this very obvious story.

But that’s me.  I’m a fan.  I’m already sold and this is just trying to be the cherry on top of my awesome Cap sundae.  For the average man on the street, hearing that the start of a story will be coming out on a Monday (“You mean they still make comics?”) bringing back a character from the dead becomes a joke on NPR.

Lemme show you how it’s done:  this Saturday, June 20th, at 10am, I am returning from the dead.

I’m serious.  Go to Metro Entertainment this Saturday and see Yours Truly sell you a goddamned comic again because I’ve finally got the Doctor’s OK to go back to work.

That, my friends, is a payoff.

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.

And God granted us Dan Slott.

The Baltimore Comic-Con revealed to us the way and the light by announcing DAN SLOTT was going to be taking over writing chores on the Mighty Avengers, the finest Avengers news I’ve heard in a great long while.  Let me explain:

Originally, Mighty Avengers was supposed to be the ‘real’ Avengers book.  Widescreen action with Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, as opposed to Earth’s Most Popular Heroes over in New Avengers.  There was supposed to be a difference in action and adventure in the two books and from it’s first yelling-screaming cover, I had a front row seat for action action ACTION!!!

And then they fought girl Ultron, a Venom Bomb, and Doctor Doom.  Then Secret Invasion hit.

I know I’m not the only one who wasn’t really ‘feelin’ it’.  Despite throwing three rather unique looks at three very popular Marvel villains, Doom being quite possibly the Mother of All Villainy and Awesomeness in the MU at the moment, I still don’t feel like these Avengers have really accomplished anything.  The girl Ultron story took far too long with a threat they’ve faced time and time again (and honestly, was better used in Annhilation: Conquest), the Venom Bomb was strangely handled too quickly when you think about it (I mean, Venom’s still plagued by his symbiote after how many years and they all clear up a city-wide infection in a few issues) and then the rather bland Doctor Doom appearance… I’m not feelin’ it.  I’ve seen the characters done better in other books.  I’ve seen balls-to-the-wall action done better in other books.  The real Avengers story wasn’t brought to the table.

Over in Avengers: the Initiative, we’ve gotten a great look at a very clear cast with a very clear objective: train to be superheroes.  There is a tremedous cast of characters here, all of whom have gotten some measure of time in the spotlight.  The action is there, there’s been some mystery given to us in small doses and the overall theme of the book has been pretty solid and fun to follow.  They had one of the best tie-ins to World War Hulk thanks to how easy it was to fold in the overarching plot with the book’s own purpose.  The had the added benefit of being ‘B-Listers’ so to speak and could go out, fight evil, get affected by it and create a good story as opposed to that one issue of Iron Man during World War Hulk that had Tony Stark on the ropes and in a dire situation and then promptly put him back to normal the issue after.

Dan Slott has done such a remarkable job with Avengers: the Initiative that it only makes sense that they would give him the big boys to play with.  From the interview given above it seems as if his stylings on the book won’t differ that much from how well he was doing on Avengers: the Initiative, except to make it more awesome.

My hopes are high.

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.

This last issue of X-Factor ends their Secret Invasion tie-in and their She-Hulk tie-in and, I’ll be honest here, I can’t say it really thrilled me as much as an X-Factor/She-Hulk tie-in should have.  To be fair, I’ll admit my share of fandignance here and say that my expectations were probably really high and what I want to read in a She-Hulk book isn’t what Peter David wants to write, so hats off to the man anyway for putting some of my favorite characters in one big story plus throwing Skrulls in for good measure.

Anyways, I get ot the last page of the most recent issue with our heroes victorious and whatnot when I had to do a double take and re-read a word balloon for clarification:

last page of X-Factor #34

So here we are (in a very badly scanned picture, my apologies), bidding our guest-stars adieu when Madrox brings up the terrible idea that Tony Stark (the guy they’d normally turn in a Skrull villain into, seeing how he’s the director of SHIELD and whatnot) could very well be a Skrull himself.  After all, this is an invasion (says right there on the cover!), so what better a guy to invade through than possibly one of the highest laws in the land right now?  It certainly would explain a lot of his behavior, see Madrox’s laundry list below:

Yeah, that sounds to me like a nefarious plot to-

Wait.  What was that?  “Exiling your BROTHER”?  An easy mistake, sure, but at the same time… from Peter David?  He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to make a snafu on something like this, let alone a Hulk-related relation.  You can’t blame in-character knowledge as the idea that Madrox would know that Bruce Banner is She-Hulk’s cousin is a fair assumption.  Considering just how many Madroxes there are out there, I think one of them could have picked up that particular note of information.  It’s one line in a toss off word ballooon, but it shouldn’t exactly be written off.  Besides, no one’s really talked about Tony being a Skrull all along but…

Oh yeah, the Skrull Empress in the guise of Spider-Woman!  In fact, a Skrull disguising himself as a Madrox duplicate would be a pretty good cover, considering just how many of him there are and that they’re no longer as really ‘telepathically linked’ as they used to be.

So, editorial gaff or very clever ruse?  U DECIDE!