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A review by dozmuttz
Secret Invasion by Brian Michael Bendis Omnibus by
3.0
I’ve had this omnibus for about 2 years and was waiting for the perfect moment to crack it open. So, with the hyped upcoming tv series based on this storyline, I thought what better time than to finally check it out. ‘Secret Invasion’ is the Marvel event lead by writer Brian Michael Bendis in which he writes the story of Earth being filled with Skrulls and our mightiest heroes being none the wiser. It starts in the pages of ‘New Avengers’ when the team finds themselves battling Elektra, who is the new leader of ‘The Hand’ (a deadly ninja clan). They’re also there to save Echo who is under some sort of control. After they snap her out of it, she rushes Elektra and kills her. The team is shocked when they see the corpse of who they thought was Elektra, is actually a Skrull. How long has this Skrull been leading ‘The Hand’? Why couldn’t Wolverine smell her out, or Spider-Man get a spider sense about it? Most importantly though, who else is a Skrull and who can be trusted. The team is split on what to do with the corpse but Jessica Drew (Spider-Woman) decides to go against the team's wishes and take it to Tony Stark. Stark calls in the Illuminati (A secret team compiled of; Iron man, Charles Xavier, Doctor Strange, Black Bolt, Namor, and Mr. Fantastic) to get their thoughts as they have experience with the Skrull empire. They all come to the conclusion that this means war and everyone should be looking over their shoulder cause there’s no way of knowing who’s a Skrull and who’s not.
As mentioned the main creator spearheading this project was Brian Michael Bendis and as much I like Bendis as a writer, this didn’t hit as hard as I thought it would. I think the premise is super intriguing and the start of it all was real “edge of your seat” kinda storytelling, but as the story went on I just felt meh about it. The twists and turns were cool and shocking, but there’s too much you need to already know for this storyline to be at its most enjoyable. That’s the problem with this era Marvel, and unfortunately no matter how great of a writer you get, if you can’t execute a great story on its own cause you want so many ties involved then you shouldn’t market it like it can be a starting point. There are some exceptions to this era of Marvel, where almost every season there was a blockbuster event, but alas ‘Secret Invasion’ is not one of them. It also doesn’t help that this omnibus in particular isn’t mapped for the best reading order. You get a chunk of ‘New Avenger’ and ‘Mighty Avengers’ in here, but the order in which they tell the story is sorta whack. It doesn’t necessarily make the reading worse but an improved mapping of the omnibus would probably have made it more enjoyable.
One for sure win for this read however is the great talent of artists on this series with Leinil Francis Yu being the main artist for the main event series. You get some awesome stuff though from; Mark Bagley, Jim Cheung, Billy Tan, Alex Maleev, David Mack, John Romita Jr, and many many more.
Overall; I didn’t hate this read but I was hoping for a bit more. I’d say the main series is alright with the additional Avenger issues making it a bit more fleshed out, but it suffers from the era of Marvel where if you weren’t reading every event and every tie in, somethings get lost and the overall enjoyment gets tainted. This omnibus is also not the best mapped and it might be better to read this even digitally with a suggested reading order from online.
As mentioned the main creator spearheading this project was Brian Michael Bendis and as much I like Bendis as a writer, this didn’t hit as hard as I thought it would. I think the premise is super intriguing and the start of it all was real “edge of your seat” kinda storytelling, but as the story went on I just felt meh about it. The twists and turns were cool and shocking, but there’s too much you need to already know for this storyline to be at its most enjoyable. That’s the problem with this era Marvel, and unfortunately no matter how great of a writer you get, if you can’t execute a great story on its own cause you want so many ties involved then you shouldn’t market it like it can be a starting point. There are some exceptions to this era of Marvel, where almost every season there was a blockbuster event, but alas ‘Secret Invasion’ is not one of them. It also doesn’t help that this omnibus in particular isn’t mapped for the best reading order. You get a chunk of ‘New Avenger’ and ‘Mighty Avengers’ in here, but the order in which they tell the story is sorta whack. It doesn’t necessarily make the reading worse but an improved mapping of the omnibus would probably have made it more enjoyable.
One for sure win for this read however is the great talent of artists on this series with Leinil Francis Yu being the main artist for the main event series. You get some awesome stuff though from; Mark Bagley, Jim Cheung, Billy Tan, Alex Maleev, David Mack, John Romita Jr, and many many more.
Overall; I didn’t hate this read but I was hoping for a bit more. I’d say the main series is alright with the additional Avenger issues making it a bit more fleshed out, but it suffers from the era of Marvel where if you weren’t reading every event and every tie in, somethings get lost and the overall enjoyment gets tainted. This omnibus is also not the best mapped and it might be better to read this even digitally with a suggested reading order from online.