Secret Invasion

I must confess I like the big crossovers. It's a guilty pleasure I indulge only occasionally, because I'd much rather curl up with a handful of trade paperbacks than wait the months and years it takes the major comics industry to shamble through a story arc. I realize it's the folks who buy the weeklies who keep the whole thing going, but I'm not going to bend over backwards to support the medium while those who are actually creating the stuff act like it's still the golden age.

Maybe it all made sense way back in the day when it was just Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, and a Gutenberg, but this is the post Al Gore era, and we've got some fairly sophisticated technology that is not really being utilized by Marvel and the others.

Come on, guys. Haven't you heard of webcomics? It's embarrassing to watch your multi-million dollar operations struggle to match the output of one dude in a basement with Adobe Creative Suite and a stolen wireless signal.

I didn't grow up with a favorite series or publisher. It was later in life, reading DC's Kingdom Come and its fat, inbred cousins on the Marvel side -- Earth X, Paradise X, and Universe X -- that I was introduced to the world of the ludicrously complicated serialized comic book universe. While the former sparked very little interest, for some reason Marvel's complex milieu was weirdly compelling, and I set out to explore further. I think one should be awarded a master's degree in the Marvel Universe if you manage to complete the X Series and have any idea what the hell happened. I didn't want to see all that research go to waste.

Obviously I didn't read everything, but I ended up taking in all the crossovers and most of the major stories involving the X-Men between Grant Morrison's New X-Men (which began in 2001) and the more recent Secret Invasion (which ended January of this year). After mentioning that last one, I feel I have to revise the statement I made earlier.

I like the idea of big crossovers.

The reason I prefer Marvel is that DC's characters are almost all loners. Most of them acquired their powers through accident or determination, and most of them are just different versions of the tired old superhero double life meme. Now, I wasn't around when X-Men began, so it could have been different before, but Marvel's characters are more likely to be part of a community of some kind. They don't observe the world from orbit, thinking important thoughts and punching monsters, they're part of the world. They influence society and society influences them.

In theory, the Marvel universe is well-suited for crossover stories. Indeed, some very entertaining titles were spawned in this current crossover-heavy era. House of M was good, but I feel obligated to state that I probably enjoy alternate universe stories and the X-Men series more than average. Brian Michael Bendis even went so far as to retcon crossovers into Marvel's history with New Avengers Illuminati. In this limited series, it is revealed that the leaders of various superhuman communities had been meeting in secret for decades, pulling the strings behind the scenes. I recommend it highly.

It's clear that Bendis has quite an affinity for crime, conspiracy, and mystery storytelling because he's been setting up -- or at least has convinced everyone that he has -- the Secret Invasion plot since 2004's Secret War at least. He sends Nick Fury underground and hints that something is rotten, at any rate.

I enjoyed Civil War for the most part. I especially admired the willingness it showed to introduce a world-shattering event and not simply reset everything after it was over. However, you can start to see problems with the crossover-reliant system. While the big-budget limited series is typically put together by a talented writer with above-average art and they're given authority to play with the entire setting, it starts to strain under the weight of Marvel's bloated continuity.

Not only is the central storyline burdened with at least nodding to each and every title and character, but all those other little stories get steamrolled at the same time. I've read a few of the sideline titles that were released during Civil War and you can almost hear the conversation between Joe Quesada and the less important writers in which they're instructed to change the backdrop of their comics for six months.

Don't get me started on World War Hulk.

One shining beacon of awesome in this mess takes place directly prior to the events of Secret Invasion, and that is the New Avengers series written by Bendis and penciled by Leinil Francis Yu. This one is still ongoing, but I'm talking specifically about the period between the two crossovers. After the civil war ends, a secret Avengers group is formed by the few remaining heroes who are still willing to resist registration. Led by Luke Cage, they are all traditionally loners. They don't trust each other, but they have no one left to rely upon. Bendis expertly captures the tension and isolation they experience, and Yu's pencils are unique -- gritty and stylized without descending into Chris Bachalo-esque undecipherable madness.

Last year all the drama, the conspiracies, the role-reversals, and mysteries culminated in Secret Invasion -- an infuriating cop-out that not only sucked as a stand-alone, but went back in time to inject stupid into the good stuff that happened before.

As it turns out, the interesting conflicts and power dynamics of the last decade or se were not the result of Marvel trying to add some depth to their world and characters, but were engineered by the shape-shifting Skrulls, now re-worked as religious space zealots.

What gives, Marvel? Did you go back on your stupid pills? I was interested for a while there. I thought maybe you wanted to, I don't know, actually explore the consequences of a world full of super-beings rather than just invent monsters and punch them while destroying a few blocks of Manhattan month after month after month?

I'll try to be brief. After the events of Civil War, Tony Stark is made director of S.H.I.E.L.D. He also helps to establish a nationwide superhero police force with a team in every state and a brand new all-registered Avengers in charge. While Luke Cage's Secret Avengers are in Japan fighting The Hand, they kill Electra. To their surprise, she was a Skrull agent. It turns out they had been operating in secret for some time to destabilize Earth's defenses -- especially the super-powered variety-- by infiltrating and compromising S.H.I.E.L.D., the Fifty State Initiative and basically everything else.

Over the course of the series, half the major characters are revealed as Skrulls and betray the others. Both Avengers teams are sidelined in the Savage Land when the invasion begins, and the second-stringers are easily overrun by armies of Skrulls outfitted with the stolen powers of Earth's heroes. (un)Fortunately, the Avengers get back into the game and save the day with the help of a new Captain Marvel, a new Captain America, a resurfaced Nick Fury, and a resurrected Thor.

Sadly, it was all a big, flashy reset button. This is exactly why I was hesitant to read the long-running, big name comics for so long. The stakes are set so low, it's impossible to take anything seriously. It's the same old bait-and-switch routine of the old Batman TV series. At the end of every other episode, Batman would be in some kind of deadly trap from which he would easily escape the following week. Bendis was just working the long con.

Look at the House of M series. The Scarlet Witch, completely insane and fresh from murdering her husband and half of her teammates, changes the entire world into one created by the hopes and dreams of her family and friends. Magneto rules a rather peaceful and progressive world in which mutants are dominant and humans are dying out. It was a fresh take on the old eyepatch-wearing, obviously terrible alternate universe theme which I enjoyed immensely.

Civil War was good because it put the characters into a moral quandary the likes of which is seldom seen in mainstream comics. The conflict over registration forced the characters to reflect upon their perceived roles in the power structure. We got to see which characters would stick to their convictions even if it meant sacrificing friends, family, and reputation.

Aside from a rather half-hearted attempt to discuss religious extremism, Secret Invasion does not go farther than "aliens bad, humans good" in the philosophy department. The previous crossovers were interesting because they subverted my expectations, but by Secret Invasion the Marvel universe got scared and ran back into the warm, comforting embrace of its half-century-old conventions.

It's possible I've set the bar too high. I let a few outliers adjust my expectations for a medium that is renowned for pulling this kind of crap year after boring, unimaginative year. I guess the real issue is whether it was worth all the effort. I read through a lot of garbage to discover the titles I actually liked. In the end I suppose it was worthwhile, but for the next ten years' worth of material, I think I'll let someone else do the heavy lifting. Any takers?