Its event week this week, with Final Crisis #4 from DC and the penultimate part of Secret Invasion from Marvel.
Following on from last month’s issue, this part is effectively one giant fight scene between the humans and the Skrulls. There’s some great moments though, best of which is probably Hawkeye’s revenge for the fake Mockingbird (seriously, when are Marvel going be just get him back in his proper ID, this is the second time this mini that a big deal’s been made of him picking up a bow and arrow again).
Once again I can’t help but feel the issue’s cliffhanger is pretty weak. The improved growth formula Skrulljacket gave to the Wasp back in New Avengers (or was it Mighty?) comes into play, but to be honest its left incredibly unclear what’s actually happening to her.
Issue 7 was always going to be a big fight scene, so this manages it well. Overall, I still feel this series never quite managed to top issue 1, but this was fun. I’m increasingly concerned that issue 8 isn’t really going to resolve much however (with all the Dark Reign stuff being pushed). I hope I’m wrong as I can’t see myself picking up another event (as I’m trying to cut down my pull list), and I’ll be quite annoyed if I don’t get some kind of resolution.
This week also gave us the latest issue of New Avengers. Whereas last week’s Mighty Avengers was probably the worst tie-in yet (there wasn’t really anything that hadn’t happened in a few panels in SI itself and as a result the story was fantastically absent), I really enjoyed this week’s New Avengers tie-in. Switching from the usual view of what the heroes have been up to, Bendis switches events to the villain’s perspective as we find Madame Masque captured by SHIELD and The Hood coming to her rescue. Only one killing the SHIELD agents holding her, they’re revealed as Skrulls and they both realise they were going to substitute Masque with one of their own, and that something big is going on.
While some of these tie-ins haven’t really worked for me, there’s always fun to be had seeing the various parties figure out what’s going on, be it the Avengers discovering the Skrull Elektra, Fury finding the Skrulls infiltrating SHIELD, or in this case, the villains realising the Skrulls are trying to infiltrate their own. I’ve not really seen the Hood before this, but I was aware that Marvel were pushing him as the new Kingpin. He seems like an interesting character, barely able to hold his alliance of villains together in the face of the Skrull threat, but its interesting that, like the 3D-Man, his hood allows him to spot the Skrulls. I’m looking forward to the next part of things from the villain’s perspective.
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