Unusual comics post from me this week, since its been largely Marvel stuff that’s been catching my eye over the last couple of weeks. However with GL and GLC due later in the month, not to mention Final Crisis kicking back in at the end of the month, I don’t imagine it’ll be long until normal service is resumed

Captain America #42 wraps up Brubaker’s The Man Who Stole America arc, as well as many of the plots he began at the start of his run. With Bucky just having publicly launched himself into the limelight as Captain America to stop the Red Skull’s daughter assassinating the presidential candidates, he has to ensure she’s stopped, while The Falcon and Black Widow attempt to save Sharon Carter from the Red Skull’s stronghold.

Its a nice tie-up to many of the plots Brubaker’s been running. It was nice to see Bucky and Black Widow hook up at the end, and it’ll be interesting to see how Sharon’s memory loss is dealt with in later issues. I also liked the Red Skull’s fate: that scene really captured his horror at being trapped as he is. There’s still a few outstanding questions however, the exact plan that the Red Skull had involving Doom’s time machine for example. It seemed to be key to transferring the Skull to a new body, but what exactly they were trying to do remained a bit vague. We’ve also still got the 50s Captain America out there. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where this series goes, now that Bucky’s establishing himself as Captain America.

One of my other favourite series to rave about is, of course, Avengers: The Initiative. Following up on last month’s issue, the Skrulls have arrived at Camp Hammond in force, and with most of the recruits out fighting in New York, only a few trainers, and Ant Man remain. Its yet another great issue from Dan Slott, and I just loved Ant Man. I missed his solo series from a couple of years back, but I’m definitely going to have to check out the trades. I loved his reluctance to play hero, and how his first reaction to trouble was to hide. I especially loved how that proved to give him an advantage against the Skrulls as he remains undiscovered while they took down the other heroes. It’ll be interesting to see what he’s discovered about their plans.

Last week brought us issue 6 of Secret Invasion. I’ll say this for Secret Invasion, they seem to be doing a good job of keeping the momentum going with releases.

To be honest, I found issue 6 a bit disposable. Whereas issue 5 felt like everything was back on track again finally, this issue seemed to largely serve to setup yet more big splash scenes. I don’t mind that for this issue, but if issue 7 doesn’t have a lot going on (and as the penultimate issue, I’d be surprised if it didn’t), then we’ll find ourselves back in the same situation as in earlier issues in this series, where one or two small things happening, doesn’t really seem enough to justify a whole issue.

We also finally get pay off for the Cap/Thor tease a couple of issues ago. Except that its basically a couple of panels with Thor commenting that Bucky isn’t Cap, and Bucky retorting that Thor’s supposed to be dead.

There’s also another reference to the Wasp, hinting back to the Hank Pym issue of Mighty (?) Avengers, and you get the feeling that whatever they’ve done to poor Janet, its going to be pretty nasty.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying Secret Invasion:The Event, but in many ways, the main mini-series seems to be in place largely for all the spin-offs to jump off from. Unlike Final Crisis, in which the story seems to be pretty well contained in the mini-series, Secret Invasion seems to require the tie-ins more to get more enjoyment from the larger storyline.

The fact that I enjoyed Secret Invasion #5 has obviously given this series a shot in the arm for me, as while I doubt I’d have enjoyed these tie-ins a couple of weeks ago, I definitely did enjoy the background this week.

New Avengers revisits the Skrull Throneworld after the Illuminati’s disasterous retaliation. Here we get to see the Skrulls attempting to discover a way to infiltrate Earth undetected, and the throwaway comment from SI #5, where Reed Richards hints that its all his fault is addressed, as we get to see the role he (unwittingly) played in the Skrull’s infiltration. Its all still background that anyone just wanting to read the main series could cheerfully read though, but its interesting none-the-less. In retrospect, I think the best way (for me at least) to read this series would’ve been to get the main series, and then buy the trades of New and Mighty Avengers for the background. There’s been little in them that’s been vital to the main series, but they do provide some interesting looks into what went into the Skrull Invasion.

Mighty Avengers continues looking at Hank Pym’s replacement, and we’re introduced to an interesting idea. That replacing Pym seems to cause some instability in the agents, and there’s the clear indication that the Pym agents have a far higher tendancy to decide the whole thing’s a bad idea, than the other Skrulls. The Skrulls are putting this down to the fact that Hank Pym isn’t as great as he thinks he is, and this instability is bleeding over into their replacement agents, but you can’t help wonder if there’s something else to it. Despite his issues, there’s no doubt that Pym is one of the smartest minds in the Marvel Universe. He’s no Richards or Tony Stark, but then, the Skrulls haven’t replaced them. Maybe we’d see similar behaviour from Skrulls replacing the other big brains, and infact, the Pym Skrulls are onto something?

Avengers Initative continues to be one of the best SI tie-in titles I’m picking up. Here, we revisit 3D-Man, who survives his Quinjet crash only to be rescued by She-Thing, who he promptly recognises as a Skrull. Fortunately the Skrull Kill Krew are on hand.

Once again Dan Slott does a great job of bringing humour to the storyline, but not sacrificing the drama. We’re seeing Skrulljacket’s plan in the Initiative slowly being discovered, with 3D-Man realising the Initiative’s been compromised, then Crusader and now Ant Man has caught Pym in the act of conferring with other Skrulls.

The real fun in this issue is the Kill Krew though. I haven’t read their original appearances, but there’s a great element of dark humour in this group riding around the country killing off Skrulls. Its given me probably my favourite line of the week, when, on finding out there’s a Skrull in every team of the Initiative, one of them replies “I’ll tell you what this means…Road Trip!”

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.

Is it just me, or are the main Avengers titles tie ins to Secret Invasion becoming more missable? Or am I just starting to hit crossover burnout?

After the missable Hank Pym issue of Might Avengers, I decided to just skip the Elektra-focussed issue of Mighty this month, as I’m more interested in the ongoing storyline of Secret Invasion. While the die hard Marvel fans will no doubt appreciate that level of extra background, as someone who’s just come onboard for this event, its not of much interest to me.

Whereas this month I was looking forward to the continuation of the Spider-Woman storyline and seeing how the Skrulls influenced House of M, having really enjoyed the first part of the Spider-Woman story, instead this month’s New Avengers was entirely focused on the Skrull Captain America in the Savage Land. To me, this was even more missable than the Hank Pym issue. At least Hank’s switch was a big part of the story. This was a one-off character. I’m not even sure I followed the logic of the Skrull plot in this instance either. So all these Skrulls are completely brain-washed to believe they are the genuine article? Why are they not similar to the other substitute Skrulls we’ve already seen? The simple fact all these duplicates have turned up together has casted suspicion on them. Captain America’s already dead in the Marvel Universe, and didn’t turn into a Skrull, so they know he was the genuine article. I’m just not sure how this Cap was supposed to successfully infiltrate as some deep cover agent. The invasion was already underway, the heroes were going to be on the lookout for Skrulls, so this Skrull Cap never really had a chance of infiltrating in the same way as Skrull-Jarvis.

I’d have much rather had the second part of the Spider-Woman storyline.

Meanwhile The Initiative continues to rock. This , Captain Britain and Fantastic Four have been the best tie ins so far for me.

In this issue we see the events of Secret Invasion #4 from the point of view of the Initiative, as they’re all rushed to the battle in New York. Poor old 3D-Man doesn’t do well in this issue, but I’m not convinced that his story is quite over yet. Instead this issue focused on Crusader, and his struggle choosing between his adopted homeworld (we see him being sent to Earth, and slowly “going native”), and his people, as he’s forced into the middle of the conflict.

Its a cracking issue, and a nice character piece. And it adds some nice depth to the New York fight we’d seen previously.

Maybe its just the purist in me, but this looks horrible. Teen Tony just brings back long-supressed memories of The Crossing.

Whereas Marvel rules the roost in the movies, DC has tended to clean up in the animated market.  Admittedly this is a snap judgement based on one trailer, but I can’t see this changing things.

Well, this week saw us hit the midway point with Marvel’s Secret Invasion event.

I must admit, despite a strong start, I feel the main series is really starting to struggle.   For the last 3 issues, its really felt like precious little has happened to move the story forward.  This is underlined by last month’s cliffhanger, as Fury and his Secret Commandos entered the fray.

And this month they did pretty much nothing.   We got yet more pages of Skrull fighting, but in terms of moving the plot forward, there was precious little.   In fact this month’s cliffhanger strikes me as the same as last month’s where we’re supposed to think “Oh!  <x> has turned up.  Not its on!”.   (Substitute Nick Fury with Thor as appropriate).

Its a pity, as this is a strong event, but I feel that without my reading the tieins, I’d have probably lost all momentum on this story by now.   I’d be wondering who the heck these people Fury turned up with are, I’d be wondering what the heck happened to the Fantastic 4 (seriously, the disappearance of the Baxter Building is a huge event that’s being completely ignored by the main book).  As it stands, I’m wondering who this woman floating through space onto the Skrull ships is supposed to be.  I’m guessing a SHIELD agent, but am I supposed to have recognised her?

I’ve been enjoying this event up until now, and the tie-ins, and first issue show the potential of this event.  But the main book needs to start picking up the pace I feel.

On the flipside, this month also saw the release of Captain Britain and MI13 #3.  Probably the best Secret Invasion book going at the moment, and as a non-Marvel guy, once Secret Invasion is over this book will probably rank only along with Captain America as the two Marvel books I keep collecting.

Also unlike Secret Invasion, this book has a real feeling of movement in its plotline. Captain Britain’s return to life was brilliantly handled. A really epic, punch-the-air moment. Nice to see Merlin key to Brian’s return (again), and the use of the Fury fragment was a nice touch.

While I’m not really up on a lot of the mythology and characters that are in this title, its a great read, and to my mind is absolutely key at the moment to giving the Skrull invasion a more global feel than its getting in any of the main Secret Invasion books.

Well, its been a busy couple of weeks, with a tonne of Secret Invasion stuff.

First up was Mighty Avengers, which filled in some of the backstory as to how and when Hank Pym was replaced. To be honest, this was the first MA issue I felt was a bit missable, although I can see how knowing when he was replaced was important to the rest of the story. The new serum he gives to Janet at the end of the issue is probably going to be significant later on though.

The issue did play into this week’s Avengers Initiative well though, which further filled in some of the gaps with Hank-Skrull’s backstory. I loved the running gag with the Skrull using his superskrull powers to escape various near-death situations and then having to explain it away with “I shrank really small”. The standout part of the book though was 3-D Man. Formerly Triathalon, I remember him being a character I didn’t care about back in the Busiek run. Although here he came across really well, when he discovers that he has the ability to detect Skrulls and finds an infiltrator on his new team.

This paid off well against the other plot thread, with good-guy Skrull Crusader realising that Hank Pym is a Skrull infiltrator, but then also realising he’s left it too long to reveal he’s a Skrull himself once the Invasion begins. Great title. I really need to pick up the trades of this series.

New Avengers followed suit with filling in the backstory. This time it was Spider-Woman and her replacement by the Skrull Queen. This one definitely ticked the boxes for me. Nice art, and we get a good look at how deeply involved in events in the MU the Skrulls have been. We also have them specifically single out the mutant population as a significant threat, which leads into House of M. I’m not going to be too surprised if we find out the Skrulls managed to influence Wanda into her “No more mutants” moment, as we now know that was a big win to the Skrull plans.

Meanwhile Secret Invasion Fantastic 4 #2 continued the story of Ben and Johnny trapped in the Baxter building, which was transported to the Negative Zone by Lyja in Secret Invasion #1 (something I hope is dealt with properly in the main series, as its a big event which has currently been completely ignored in the main narrative). This was a cracking read, largely due to the witty internal dialogue from Johnny. We also see him start to get through to Lyja, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, as Franklin points out that their best bet to get home is via the super-powered prison from Civil War.

Finally I picked up the first issue of Front Line.

Carrying on the succes from the Civil War tie-in, this series aims to give us more of a street-level view of the action. Its a good start, with Ben Urich trapped in a hospital as the invasion hits, and various others trapped in Stark Tower, which goes into lockdown at the first sign of the Skrull virus. Although while I enjoyed the issue, picking up the full run will probably go against my desire to keep the tie-ins to a minimum, since I’m currently picking up 3 big events (although Batman RIP I’m just buying the main Batman book and my usual monthly fix of Tomasi’s Nightwing). Worth checking out though, its just that my budget won’t really stretch to it (I’m only really picking up the F4 tie-in because its only 3 issues long).

Well, I’m struggling to stay awake after a long shift at work, but I thought I’d still chuck up some comments on this week’s comics (at least the ones I’ve read tonight).

While I was saying last month that I was thinking of trade-waiting on JSA, I still ended up getting this month’s issue.  And I’m glad I did.   While the Kingdom Come stuff is stuff not working as well as I might’ve liked, the appearance of Gog, a soul surviving God of the Third World is an interesting idea.  Especially with us witnessing the birth of the Fifth World Gods over in Final Crisis.

Also I found it interesting that Gog seems to have been the mystery “burning man” from DCU #0.  Although I’m sure it was said somewhere else that that was supposed to have been Darkseid, the description also seems to fit Gog, going by what he said in this issue.

Unless its hinting to a parallel between Gog and Darkseid?   Its fairly cliche for these seemingly benign Gods to turn out to be nasty in some way.   It’ll be interesting to see how this arc plays out.

Meanwhile, over at Marvel, this week brought us Secret Invasion #3.  I must admit, this event is doing a cracking job of keeping the issues flowing.  The fact that the two Avengers books are so closely tied in is really helping keep up the momentum on this one.

That being said, I don’t feel either issue 2 or 3 has had the same punch as the first issue.  I’m really enjoying the story, but the main title’s been lacking that really epic feeling an event should have.    Saying that, I am pretty tired at the moment.

I don’t really buy the idea that Iron Man’s a Skrull.  While I thought Civil War was in many ways a badly-handled event, I’ve always felt that registration made a lot of sense, and the whole thing had left the Marvel Universe a more interesting place.   While it’d be nice to chalk some of Tony’s more dubious actions up to “he was a Skrull”, I think it’d be a real cop out.  Especially since the creators have said previously there was no unseen force manipulating the Civil War.   I think Skrull Spider-Woman is just messing with Tony’s head.

Did we really just see Echo getting killed off though?  That was unexpected.

Rann-Thanagar Holy War #2 didn’t grab me as much as the first issue (again, I’m knackered, so I suspect that is colouring my enjoyment of the books a bit tonight).  This felt very much like an issue which was just slowly moving things along, and introducing a main part of the mystery (the anomalies appearing over Rann).

I was really happy to see the Weird turn up though.  Admittedly, in light to the fact this series is a direct sequel to Mystery in Space, this makes a lot of sense.  But still, when he was revealed, I was slightly kicking myself for not realising who the ghost was.

My main interest in this series is still currently the Captain Comet plot.  We’re doubtless going to see him face something that forces him to confront his demons, but I’m interested in seeing where it goes with the subplot of him pretending to be his own nephew.

I’ll also be very interested to see if this series does resolve the Rann-Thanagar War, once and for all.  Its been running since Infinite Crisis, so Final Crisis does seem the logical place for it to draw to a close.  However, I do feel its invigorated DC’s non-GL space titles, and I’d like to see more of a cold war-style conflict replace the out-and-out inter-galactic war we’ve had for the last few years.

It would be good though, to have a series really focusing on the war.  While its been used to spark a few titles, it doesn’t feel like we’ve really delved into it in any way since the original mini.  A mini-series really playing up the fact that this is a huge inter-galactic war could be interesting.  There’s still some untapped story potential here I think, but I do also think it needs to move on soon, before it becomes stale.

Well, as a treat to myself following my IT disaster, and since I was in the shops buying a fresh copy of Oblivion anyway, I picked up the Iron Man movie game.

Ok, so I know. Its a movie tie-in. Possibly the only thing that tends to be worse is a movie tie-in to a video game. However, I found this one to be a lot of fun.

While it borrows from the film plot, the game embellishes it a lot with elements from the comics. Of course, if it had more strictly followed the plot of the movie, there wouldn’t have been as many chances for big fight scenes, but this allows the game to have its own identity.

The action picks up in the caves in Afghanistan. Tony’s already been captured and has just finished building his Mark 1 suit. Level 1 is a tutorial to the basics of moving around as you escape from your captors. Level 2 finds Tony back at Stark Industries. He’s announced (as in the film) that he’s no longer going to manufacture weapons. However at this point we deviate from the film. Angered by the lack of new weapons, one of Tony’s biggest customers, the Maggia stage a raid on his warehouses for any remaining supplies. Fortunately Tony’s in the area conducting flight tests on his new Mark 2 Iron Man suit.

Level 3 introduces the Mark 3 suit from the movie, which remains the default armour for the rest of the game. Further levels explore Tony ridding the Maggia of his weapons (which reminded me a lot of the Armour Wars), meanwhile Obidiah is revealed to be in league with AIM, and is working with them to reverse engineer the remains of Tony’s Mark 1 armour (again, similar to the movie).

The game uses this plot to introduce more armoured enemies. The Titanium Man turns up, as one of AIM’s first attempts to duplicate the armour, and further levels see Tony trying to shut down AIM’s operation, before learning of Obidiah’s involvement and confronting him in his Iron Monger armour.

The graphics are great. The movie suits are well captured, with the flaps in the Mark 2 and 3 suits used for flight captured, and there’s a small element of free roaming as you fly around levels dispatching villains, although this is still fairly linear, with fixed objectives, compared to say, Spider-Man 2, where you could happily ignore the missions and spend all your time web-slinging around New York (heck, that was the best part of the game).

At your command you get a variety of weapons including the trademark repulsors and uni-beam, along with the more regular missles and gattling gun. Through use of these different weapons you can slowly level each up, gaining new varients, or boosting the stats of the existing weapon.

The great thing though, is the unlockable armours. As you complete certain levels, you’ll unlock different armours you can use when replaying missions. There’s 6 available on the PC, with the first 3 being the movie suits. From their they’ve included 3 classic suits from the comics: the original tin can from Iron Man’s first appearance, his classic 70s red-and-gold armour, and, a personal favourite, the silver centurion armour. I’m always a sucker for this kind of thing and its great fun attacking Maggia’s Flying Fortress in the Silver Centurion suit.

The game’s probably not going to win many awards, but I found it a lot of fun. The graphics are great, the story’s had a bit of effort put in, and there’s certainly a kick to be had flying around as Iron Man, laying waste to AIM’s evil beekeepers with your repulsors.

I’ve put together a quick gameplay video showing off the different suits of armour and a couple of the levels in the game. Enjoy