Brandon Borzelli's Geek Goggle Reviews

Secret Invasion #1 of 8
Marvel Comics
Bendis, Yu, Morales & Martin

My disclosure for this issue is that I purchased this because the hype led me to seek out some preview reviews and they all said this catered more towards the lowest common denominator. I feel that I fall into this category because I follow some X titles, the Hulk and a few others, but I don’t read Iron Man, Avengers, New Avengers, Thunderbolts, Fantastic Four or any other team book. It seemed like a harmless purchase and I did read through the freebie preview from a few weeks ago and I was intrigued. I like the idea behind movies like The Thing or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. So I dipped my big toe into this pool and I loved it.

I don’t know what a skrull is. I don’t know what happens to those whom they replace. I don’t know who has been acting strange recently. I don’t know where this falls into the overall continuity. I don’t even know much about half of the characters in this issue. All that, and yet, I loved the issue. How is this possible?

This comic moves the plot along in a fast pace. It introduces characters. It spells out the overall problem of trust with every decision and action. It shows how a skrull is among the universe already and it gives a nice (and confusing) cliffhanger.

Are there some down sides? Sure. For one, the dialogue feels very interchangeable. For example, Spider-Man could easily say Wolverine’s lines. However, this is all dismissed because we don’t know who is a skrull and who isn’t. Another problem is the consistency of the art. Page to page, characters don’t always look the same. In fact, they have a wide array of variants in how they are depicted. This can be chalked up to the fact that skrulls are shape shifters and if these characters are skrulls then they might not look the same all the time. See how all the problems with an issue can melt away with the inclusion of skrulls?

The composition of the issue basically has a skrull ship crash on Earth. Two super hero factions (who don’t trust each other) race to the ship. When they finally get there, Iron Man begins to convulse. Instead of an alien popping out of his chest as you might think, his seizure could mean he is a skrull or it could mean someone is sabotaging his suit. In the end, the two super hero sides are welcomed by a third set of super heroes who happen to walk out of the skrull ship. It’s a simple story. It answer no questions, but opens up a whole can of new ones.

You get 40 pages of fast moving plot and a wide range of characters. You get some fringe players revealed to be skrulls. You don’t get a ton of character development, but there is time for that in subsequent issues. Plus, do we really want character development for those that are really skrulls?

I know this event has like 75 tie-in issues and I say I won’t be buying any of them now but you never know what I’ll end up impulse buying. For now, issue one of the eight issue core series I liked. I have no reason to think I need to purchase anything more than the core series to get the full story. So I’ll be here for the second installment of this mini series for sure. This issue was an excellent start.

5 out of 5 geek goggles.


Secret Invasion #1 (of 8)