SECRET INVASION #7Written by Brian Bendis
Art by Leinil Yu
Boom. Blam. Kapow. Noh-Var shows up for one panel, never appears again. Hawkeye shoots some Skrulls in the face. Wasp prepares to blow up due to the Skrull Hank Pym's growing formula, which he gave to her in the opening arc of Mighty Avengers. The end.
That's the entire issue's story in a nutshell and it's about as boring and predictable to read (if you can call looking at pictures of generic, non-descript 'big action scenes' reading) as the description I just gave.
If this wasn't enough to make it abundantly clear that Secret Invasion is, and will be, a complete dud when it's all said and done, several other books this week, most notably Captain America, spoil the big 'shock ending' of Wasp possibly killing everyone by telling us everyone survived and things are fine on Earth post-SI.
On the plus side for this issue, Yu's art is quite good and he does a great job rendering the huge cast of heroes and villains. He makes this the popcorn action flick of a comic book that many people are enjoying about with this series and I'm surprised at how much I'm enjoying his artwork on this type of project. However, he does get a little lazy with the Skrulls and many turn into non-descript blobs, but when there's literally dozens of them filling up the backgrounds, I can cut him some slack on that.
The only other positive I can think of was the amount of useage Stature, of Young Avengers fame, received. She took down both the Galactus Skrull and the Hank Pym one in two splashpages. I assume Bendis is priming her or a spot on the new Mighty team post-SI.
This type of generic action filling up an entire issue (well, entire event in SI's case) doesn't agree with me and if you've been enjoying this series up until now, you'll continue to love it with this issue.
For me, I just can't get into it. We never receive any resolution to any of the fights the heroes are having with any of the Skrulls. It's just one generic, "Here's character X's powers in action!", followed by, "and here's character Y doing something cool!", ad nauseum for 25 pages or more. We spent months prepping a "secret invasion", marking one of the most covert and insidious take overs by an alien force in all of Marvel's history and the big conclusion is a frat party brawl in downtown New York. What the hell kind of planning did these Skrulls do? This is just pandering to fans looking for the next big fight or looking for their favourite character to "do something cool".
The thing that bothered me the most was the whole Noh-Var joining the battle scene. Bendis has everyone stop and look at this incoming and unidentified super-powered character and we get an awesome reveal of Noh-Var claiming to represent Captain Marvel and the Kree Empire and making it known the Skrulls are finished here and we never see him again. It's like every other appearance by him or Captain Marvel since this event started - it's a waste of time and a complete throwaway on Bendis' part. There's no follow up nor even any other mention of who he is or why the scene should be important and it's forgotten by the reader, and Bendis, as quickly as it happened.
The story telling of this event is like that of a child telling his parent his idea for a cool story. Bendis fails to follow up on any of his plots and just goes from one big idea to the next with no follow through, let alone a follow up. It's just one big explosion or reveal after another for the entire event and that is its biggest failing in my eyes.
Verdict - Avoid It. Go back and read my opening summary. That's all that happens. If you want to look at some big explosions and pin-up style fight scenes with no real story telling or flow to them, feel free to get this then.
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