Retro Review

That was the only thought I had while reading the final, anti-climactic issue of Marvel’s Secret Invasion limited series, the backbone to the sprawling cross-over event that’s taken up most of 2008. This issue should have been a fast-paced, dramatic climax to the story. Instead, it was flat and rather dry, and the blame must land squarely on the shoulders of the writer, Brian Michael Bendis, and the editor, Tom Brevoort. Both have delivered great work at other times and even on other issues of this title, but they faltered on this the crucial issue of the company’s event of the year.

Did neither of them think that having the action narrated as past events would weaken the impact of what we were reading? Every page of the climactic scenes of the story has caption boxes with dialog between two characters who are discussing the events as having happened some time ago. The first dialog caption, which is on a double-page spread of heroes, villains and Skrulls trapped in a vortex, reads “The battle in New York was fierce”, and right there, it distances us from what’s going on. It also breaks a cardinal rule of comic story-telling: don’t tell the readers in words what you are already showing them in images. 

Beyond distancing the reader from what is happening and being somewhat unnecessary, the captions with this dialog get in the way of the art in places, making it difficult to enjoy the action. 

The climax of the story itself is sadly predictable: who wins, who loses, who dies, and how some of those characters will probably be resurrected later is no surprise to any long-time comic reader. There are a couple of surprises in store, but since these are mainly to set up the next big cross-over event, they are not necessarily welcome. Too much time is spent setting Dark Reign up, and not enough time on giving Secret Invasion the action-packed and emotional ending it should have had. Overall, a very disappointing finish to a series that started out promisingly, and another lesson to me that I should just not bother with the big crossovers any more.

The new comic Top 10 Season 2 isn’t the first sequel to Alan Moore and Gene Ha’s 12-issue super-human cop series, but it certainly seems like a far more worthy successor than 2005’s pedestrian Top 10: Beyond the Farthest Precinct. It wasn’t a bad comic book, and I was more than glad of it when it looked like there would be no more Top 10, but looking back at it now, it was a poor substitute.

Paul Di Filippo and Jerry Ordway did a fair job on continuing the story of the Top 10 precinct and its officers, but missed the mark in a few places. Continue Reading »

With Marvel currently in the middle of their Skrulls-invade-Earth Secret Invasion cross-over event, the timing is perfect to go back and revisit DC’s 1989 alien invasion cross-over, appropriately titled Invasion!, and see how they handled super-heroes facing seemingly impossible odds defending the planet. DC also seems to think that this is the right time to bring the main limited series into the spotlight: they have finally released it as a trade paperback, amusingly with the new tagline, Secret No More. What rascals to trade on their competition’s big event! It is high time Invasion! was reprinted, as it is one of the better limited series connected to a cross-over event to come from either company.

Alien invasions are a common storyline in science-fiction, and the Earths of the Marvel and DC Universes get invaded on a regularity rivaled only by the Earth of the Doctor Who Universe. Despite the idea being nothing new, Invasion! is worth hunting down either in the back-issue bins or in the new trade. Continue Reading »

Emma Frost could have been a great comic. With a female lead who was not just a copy of a more successful male super-hero, but a popular, complex and interesting character in her own right, it could have been a rival for DC’s success with Birds of Prey and Catwoman, but it lasted only 18 months and has been largely forgotten. The main problem with it is that it seems to have been edited by two different people, one working on the covers and marketing, the other on the interiors, neither knowing what the other was trying to achieve. It is a real shame, because it isn’t a bad comic: it just looks like one.

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