No Secrets
March 25, 2008 by The Fortress Keeper
When the big Skrull-ektra reveal broke several months back, your humble host welcomed the prospect of a “Secret Invasion” because it ripped off old Avengers and X-Men comics instead of overstuffed Jerry Bruckheimer “epics.”
At the very least, we figured writer Brian Bendis and artist Leinil Yu could top the similarly themed Marvel: The Lost Generation.
(Not exactly a huge obstacle to surmount, true, but as we’ve said before the Keeper will take what he can get … )
Months passed and various blogs and Web sites dutifully published portraits of various Marvel heroes as Skrulls. The Keeper watched with vague interest and figured the event could provide some decent material for another evil-twin theme week.
Then, comedian Patton Oswalt - a friend of Brian Bendis - issued the following plug for Secret Invasion:
Brian’s already let me read the first three issues of SECRET INVASION, which is Marvel Comics’ big summer dust-up. After COUNTDOWN and CIVIL WAR, I was going to take a break from these big summer crossover thingies. But this SECRET INVASION … holy sh**.
This is not a big, disposable, multi-issue donnybrook. This is a blitzkrieg from page one. Bendis basically worked out a remorseless, nothing-but-business tearing down of the Marvel Universe. And it’s clear the story has been set up … for … years. And the deaths are treated so off-handedly, with no appeal or remorse — and this is three issues in.
So far, each issue has also ended with a sh**-your-pants, ’Wait, what in the F***?!” moment … after, of course, about three or four what-the-f*** moments tossed off during the course of each story.
The Keeper doesn’t know Patton Oswalt from Adam - we kind of lost interest in stand-up comedy after Bill Hicks passed away - but the guy didn’t do any favors for Marvel in this neck of the woods.
Frankly, just about every cross-over the Big Two released the last few years has amounted to “three or four what-the-f*** moments tossed off during the course of each story.” If anything, those “what-the-f*** moments” were the reasons the friggin’ stories were published in the first place.
What do readers really take from Civil War? A frank discussion of civil rights in post-9/11 America or Captain America’s tearful surrender and Spider-Man unmasking?
Does Infinite Crisis really have a legacy beyond the Rolling Head of Pantha™?
Events like Secret Invasion are nothing more than thinly veiled excuses to off semi-popular characters and garner a little fan controversy for “changing the status quo forever.”
(Or at least until the next event comes along. Did we really think Spidey’s secret ID would remain public forever?)
Really, if Bendis didn’t tear down the Marvel Universe and off-handedly kill off longstanding characters people would probably be disappointed. Remember how some complained that World War Hulk - which aspired to nothing more than rock ‘em -sock ‘em smash-ups - wasn’t “significant” enough?
So, thanks but no thanks. Whatever shocks Secret Invasion - and Final Crisis, for that matter - have in store won’t hold up beyond a year or so and we’d rather spend our time and energy elsewhere.
FWIW, I usually think very highly of Patton Oswalt. Apart from his standup career, he was the force behind a documentary film and television series called The Comedians of Comedy which provide a realistic and touching look at the daily life of working comedians. As an essayist and blogger, he’s very astute on the topic of writing itself and the creative process. He and Brian Posehn between them represent hardcore comics geeks in mainstream standup, doing more insider material than you’d ever think the non-fan audience would accept. And he wrote a DC comic called “Welcome To The Working Week” which is one of the finest modern JLA tales you’ll ever see. So, yeah, a lot of good stuff. But his taste in comics writing friends? Not so much.
The numbers don’t lie, Marvel and DC have to sell more comics to a dwindling weekly buying audience, their solution, more crossover events and more short money thinking.
If I was in charge I’d put more time and creativity into growing the pie so to speak, but everyone seems stuck on a treadmill at this point.
Maybe it’s because I’m a King of Queens fan, but I just cannot imagine Oswalt actually saying that post. :-p
I tend to sulk and moan about never having enough money for comics, but it dawned on me… Reading issues here and there, and getting the info online, is probably not such a bad way to go. Having missed out on the Civil War conclusion, Cap’s defeat is just a factual abstraction, devoid of any baggage of a ham-fisted wrap-up.
I kinda like the idea of Secret Invasion. Even though it’s a little rote, it feels like an opportunity to take the Skrulls to the widespread logical conclusion they’ve never quite met.
On the same token; Bendis is probably the last guy I’d look to for the execution of a “high concept” Marvel crossover, boredom with modern crossover tropes, withstanding.
Got my fingers crossed for Final Crisis.
Yeah, the Bendis/Millar style of hype has really become self-parody now, huh? The other day I read a Newsarama interview with Bendis about Ultimate Conspiracy, and it was just full of the same stuff — you won’t believe it, this has been in the works for a long time, when the sh** comes down it’ll be the LAST thing you expect, this whole time I was cackling to myself about how people were going to react when they finally found out what all the connections were…
Not that it was so convincing before anyway, but wow has whatever bloom there was gone off whatever kind of rose that is. Comments like that Patton Oswalt guy’s have turned into such a red flag for me — not that I was exactly dying to read Secret Invasion in the first place, but now I wouldn’t touch it with gloves on. It’s just not the sort of thing I enjoy; apparently nothing that comes with that sort of hyping attached to it is. I read what he says up there and I think: “So…what you’re saying is, it’s crap. Well, thanks for the heads-up.”
“Welcome to the Working Week” is a good book, tieing in nicely with the Grant Morrison era of JLA. And he’s generally a pretty funny stand-up comic. That said, all I can hope for in “Secret Invasion” is that it doesn’t screw with the few Earth based books I still buy. Not really much hope of that…
At least I’ve got my space Marvel, where Skrull appearances actually make sense…
Frankly, I’m getting more than a little tired of “what the F***” moments. It seems as though the latest BIG EVENTS exist only for those same moments, as you said, but I prefer to have an actual plot connecting those moments. And killing off characters for the heck of it is cliched and tiresome.
I really doubt that I’ll be reading this.
I’ve often said it: reading and writing are different (though related, and sometimes dependent) competencies. So don’t blame Mr. Oswalt — maybe he’s looking at SI with the eyes of writing, instead of the eyes of reading.
Ah, why’m I defending the guy, I don’t even know who he is…