Well, after all that seriousness and ranting, lets take a moment to talk about really important issues.
It may surprise you to know that we are in fact being invaded by a shape changing race of aliens called Skrulls who believe by prophecy that the earth rightfully belongs to them. Freaky eh? And you know what, I say its a good thing, Skrulls are benevolent and nice and hardly ever kill hundreds of thousands. Lets not dwell on their past attempts at galactic domination and think instead of the good things, like how cool it would be to have a shape shifting girlfriend. Yes, think of that weak minded earthlings.
Ahem
I'm not a Skrull, honest.
I am of course talking about Secret Invasion, Marvels summer event that burst on to our shelves 4 months ago. At the time it was a high octane shocker of an issue, which sadly issues #2-#4 have failed to capitalise on. I am enjoying the event but the story has seriously decompressed where a little compression wouldn't go a miss. Basically these past 3 issues could have been condensed into 2 or 1 issues. All we've had is skrull fights in various locations, I want story progress. We've had scarce few revelations either. Hopefully #5 will pick up the pace a little and start things moving, or at least take us past what still feels like the first act.
However I will credit it with this, for a wide spanning event it has been contained. I read through #1-4 again recently and while they are referenced to varying degrees by the tie ins I'm buying, there is very little you need to know going into the main title. About the only complaint you could level is that the two Avengers titles are telling SI back story, so no adventures of your favorite teams until this event is over.
In some way I am enjoying the few tie-ins more at the moment, specifically Ms Marvel, which has admittedly been pretty much two issues of Ms. Marvel vs Skrulls, but ts been well done and serves as more of a character study and a look at a small battle in the big war. The other enjoyable tie-in has been Avengers: The initiative, with focuses on 3D man, and his Skrull detecting visor, and Crusader, a Skrull who has adopted Earth as his home.
Still hoping for a pickup in pace soon as the main is stalling quite badly at the moment.
:squee:
16 years ago
I know what you mean. Both big companies seem to be targetting events where the tie-ins are far more optional than usual this year, and I'm really appreciating it.
ReplyDeleteFrom the DC side of things, I've mentioned elsewhere that I feel that Infinite Crisis has some story problems if you're sticking to the mini series, whereas Final Crisis is (arguably) completely self contained at the moment (despite lots of complaints online about it being continuity-heavy, I'm not convinced it is).
Similarly Batman RIP is telling a main narrative in the one title, with the other Bat-titles telling stories that enhance the main narrative, without being necessary to understand what's going on.
I like this feeling that I don't have to pick up the tie-ins. In fact, I've actually been dropping some of them as some of the events progress.
Its pretty good, really Civil War was the same only some of the tie-ins worked with teh concept ina better way than the main (Captain America and Ms Marvel for example) and to be honest it is how it should be if you're running an event with a standalone title, none of this "Continued in X-Men #497, Iron Man #20, Logan #4, Wolverine '30 Wolverine, yet more wolverine #5" guff. It makes it look less like a cynical attempt to get people hooked on other titles
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