Dec 19 2008
What were they thinking?
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.
