Secret Invasion #8 Review

Okay, this is the final part of the Skrull goodness also known as Secret Invasion. After six issues of filler and fight scenes, we finally get to the conclusion which leads into Dark Reign, apparently a major storyline which will change the Marvel Universe forever! Pfft. I’ll believe it when I see it, and probably not even then.

I will try to avoid all major spoilers, including deaths, resurrections and reunions. That’s if you haven’t seen anything in previews or figured it out because some was blatantly obvious. Fasten your seatbelts, we’re going into crossover territory for the last time, (at least until July).

SECRET INVASION #8
WRITER: Brian Michael Bendis
ARTIST: Leinil Yu
INKER:Mark Morales
COLORS: Laura Martin
LETTERS: Chris Eliopoulos

PLOT:
We pick up where #7 left off, with the heroes struggling against the Janet Pym Bomb, but Thor recovers and saves the heroes, (most of them). The Skrull Queen (still alive after going toe-to-toe with Wolverine and getting shot by Hawkeye) is left and gets attacked by everyone left standing, but the final show goes to…Norman Osborn. Don’t act surprised. He tells his Thunderbolts to leave none of t

hem standing and the battle goes to space with Thor knocking the hell out of Skrull warships. Iron Man gets back and takes control of one of them, the one containing all the lost heroes who were taken over by Skrulls.

One of them is Spider-Woman. Awkward huh?

The Hood’s crew leaves before many get reunited. Jessica Jones sees Jarvis and then immediately flies to Avengers Tower, where the baby has been kidnapped. Nick Fury takes his Secret Warriors and leaves without even acknowledging The Countessa or Dum Dum Dugan. Tony Stark congratulates Thor, but he wants nothing to with Stark and neither does Cap, leaving Stark alone.

The next day, Norman Osborn is promoted to the Director of SHIELD, now known as the Thunderbolts Initiative, instead of the Avengers Initiative. Tony is now an outlaw and his technology had been compromised.

Meanwhile, Norman Osborn meets up with a few shady characters…

LIKES:
-The art is solid, not great though.
-The reaction from Thor and Cap
-I won’t have to write Skrull for a while, I hope.

DISLIKES:
-An incredibly quick read in my opinion and seemed to be resolved pretty quickly.
-Once again, not much seemed to happen, a lot more than other issues, but that isn’t saying much.

THOUGHTS:
Okay, this is starting to get annoying. Many Marvel events have been advertised as big changing events, when in fact, they just lead to other storylines, which I admit do have potential. When will it stop though? We keep getting storylines where nothing happens, but it introduces another event, in this case Dark Reign. Then nothing happens again, but it does lead to another storyline. However, we never get a proper storyline. Civil War led into The Initiative which was supposed to be the new Marvel status, but nothing much happened except lead clues into Secret Invasion, which in turn has given hints to Dark Reign. None of these events ever satisfy. New Ways to Die is another example, set up plenty of future storylines, but there wasn’t much substance apart from that.

That could just be me thinking this, but I doubt it. Let’s finally see a kick-ass storyline Marvel, you owe us.

The art was good, but it started to look more like Leinil Yu’s regular artwork, which isn’t that great. A lot of very weird looking faces and the colours just weren’t as bright as in the rest of the series. Nothing really stood out to me art-wise or story-wise for that matter. A big huge lump of average.

Talk about an anti-climax…

FAVOURITE QUOTE:
NORMAN OSBORN: It’s a new day. So listen carefully. This is how its going to be…

IF THIS SERIES WERE A MOVIE IT WOULD BE:
Secret Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Oh. It would also be expensive

OVERALL:
2.5 webheads out of 5

A lot of potential, but I feel that this mini-series was a waste after such a great start. In my opinion, a Dark Reign had begun long before this…