Now this is more like it.

Its a good week for people picking up Secret Invasion. Admittedly there was about 8 million tie-ins this week, but I avoided most of them (Captain Britain being a must-buy). However, after the last 3 issues picking up increasing complaints about padding, issue 5 pulled out all the stops.

The green-haired woman who’s the Director of SWORD (apparently) manages to free Reed Richards in a great scene. From there everything starts to change, as Reed manages to build a Skrull revealing ray and promptly zaps everyone in the Savage Land, revealing everyone from the ship was a Skrull (including Mockingbird - needless to say, Clint doesn’t take it well). This could also mean that the popular “Luke Cage is a Skrull” rumour has just been debunked.

There’s a real feeling in this issue that the turning point’s just been reached. Infact, if I was going to have only one complaint about the book, its that after being the cliffhanger of last month’s issue, neither Captain America or Thor actually turn up, which kind’ve reinforces the idea that issues 2-4 could’ve really been told in 2 issues rather than 3.

Bendis does a much better job of balancing the feel that this is a big war than in previous issues. We get snippets of the Young Avengers at Nick Fury’s hideout, Captain Marvel at Thunderbolt mountain is finally addressed, and there’s a cracking resolution to Maria Hill’s predicament (if Marvel are smart, they’ll release those T-shirts). Secret Invasion has finally found its footing again, and this was a cracking read.

Meanwhile, on our side of the pond, things are going even better for the Brits. With Captain Britain restored to life by Merlin, he wastes no time in taking the fight to the magical Super Skrull. Meanwhile the rest of MI13 have been captured, and it sadly doesn’t end well for John the Skrull, who eventually antogonises the Skrulls so much that he’s killed (sorry to see him go. I was loving his character).

Paul Cornell does a great job in wrapping up this arc here. With Brian fighting the Super Skrull, Wisdom’s releasing of the evil magic has an unexpected payoff. With all the complaints regarding the padding in Secret Invasion, its refreshing to see a writer tell a big storyarc in only 4 issues.

By the end of the issue, the scene is firmly set for the rest of the series, as the team comes together with a new purpose. And the bit with Excalibur at the end was yet another unexpected twist from Cornell.

With so many of the big name comics being US-focused, this book has done a great job of not just being set in Britain with British characters, but of having a great British feel to it. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Paul Cornell does in the next arc.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 14th, 2008 at 13:42 and is filed under Comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.