The following review is excerpted from Comic Book Revolution — click here to read CBR’s full recap & review

Art: 6/10
Story: 3/10
Overall: 4.5/10

The Good

What a fittingly unimpressive finish to an over-hyped, over-blown and unoriginal big event. Having said that, there were several positives to come out of Secret Invasion #8. I am glad that Henry Pym, Dum Dum Dugan, Fontaine and Jarvis are all alive and well. I like each of those characters, in particular Henry Pym, and I was not thrilled when they all turned out to be Skrulls.

I have enjoyed how Bendis has handled Nick Fury’s character throughout Secret Invasion and all of the various tie-in issues. And my enjoyment of Bendis’ handling of Fury continues with Secret Invasion #8. I thought it was a great move by Bendis to have Nick Fury give Dum Dum and Fontaine the cold shoulder and simply teleport away from the scene without a word. It certainly seems that Marvel is making Nick Fury their version of Batman since Nick is the resident trust-nobody dick.

This scene was a great way to establish the fact that Nick Fury is going to assume a position on the fringe and operate independent of every other agency and group in the 616 universe. This scene was a subtle yet proper segue into Nick Fury’s new direction in the Marvel Universe on Secret Warriors where Nick is going to work in the shadows and outside of the law and government in order to combat Norman Osborn’s Thunderbolts and the cabal of villains that we saw at the end of this issue.

Of course, it will come as no surprise to any regular Revolution readers that what I enjoyed the most about Secret Invasion #8 was that Marvel finally removed Tony Stark from overseeing the Initiative and removed him as the Director of SHIELD. Thank God.

I have been not so patiently waiting for this moment since the minute Marvel completely screwed over Tony’s character during Civil War. Hopefully, writers like Bendis can now leave Tony alone and Iron Man fans can get back to enjoying a more entertaining and classic version of Iron Man that is true to his roots and his continuity.

Bendis did a fine job setting Norman Osborn up as the “hero” of the Skrull invasion in the eyes of the media by allowing Osborn to get the dramatic kill shot on the Skrull Queen. I absolutely love that Marvel is sliding everything under the direction of Norman Osborn. It is an excellent decision to place the Avengers, the Fifty-State Initiative and SHIELD’s old jurisdiction and duties under the Thunderbolts Initiative and under Osborn’s singular control.

Osborn is a wonderful classic Marvel villain and is the perfect character to place in charge of an “evil” government agency. And writers can now easily and relentlessly kick around Norman Osborn without having to resort to distorting his character like they have been doing with Tony Stark over the past couple of years.

The ending to Secret Invasion, while anti-climactic, without a doubt serves as a great lead-in to the next big event in Dark Reign. The fact that Norman Osborn has gathered together a cabal of villains is of no surprise at all. However the members were a bit surprising.

Doctor Doom was a predictable choice. The Hood was also painfully predictable since that is one of Bendis’ pet creations. Namor was a bit of a surprise. However, Namor has always straddled that line between hero and villain so I like his insertion into this group. Emma Frost was most definitely a surprise. This cabal of villains is an interesting flipside of the Illuminati.

In the end, the best aspect of Secret Invasion #8 has nothing to do with Secret Invasion itself. Instead, it is the next event in Dark Reign and all the titles that will spin out of the aftermath of Secret Invasion. Dark Reign, while not a terribly novel or surprising concept, most certainly has the potential to be an entertaining event that should spawn plenty of enjoyable stories.

I am certainly excited about several of the titles spinning out of Secret Invasion. I am looking forward to Agents of Atlas. This is an intriguing collection of characters and this title should provide plenty of enjoyable action adventure stories.

I am also looking forward to Secret Warriors covering Nick Fury and his newbie metahuman recruits. I have enjoyed how Bendis has handled Fury’s character up to this point and I have always thought that placing Bendis on a Nick Fury title would be a good idea. And the best part is that Bendis will be co-writing Secret Warriors with Jonathan Hickman. I hope this means that Bendis can help with plotting but leave the actual dialogue to Hickman which should help with Bendis’ obvious weakness with writing team titles.

Bendis will be kicking off a new title called Dark Avengers. While I have little interest in Dark Avengers and I question the need for a third Avengers title, the good news of Dark Avengers is that it means that Bendis will be leaving Mighty Avengers to write Dark Avengers.

And the even better news is that Dan Slott will be taking over Mighty Avengers. I am beyond ecstatic. Finally, we might actually get an Avengers title that focuses on the Avengers. And Slott is a wonderful choice to handle this team title. This title should dramatically improve. Now if we could just get Bendis off of New Avengers then I would be in heaven.

The Bad

Secret Invasion has had a paint-by-numbers feel to it since the beginning and the finale was thin, dull and predictable. It seemed like Bendis had his standard issue checklist that he got from his Big Events 101 class and simply went right down it and checked off each plotline that had to be concluded.

The biggest technical flaw to Secret Invasion #8 was the horrible decision by Bendis to deliver this final “climactic” issue in the past tense via narration from two off panel characters. This passive technique robs the issue of any energy and also removes the reader from the immediacy of the scenes as we know that everything has already been wrapped up and the Skrulls have been defeated. Instead of the reader feeling like they are experiencing the action live and as it is happening, the reader feels like they are watching the events in this issue on television in a documentary done well after the events have concluded.

I was largely unmoved by Janet’s death. It was not particularly interesting, well developed or dramatic. And Janet did not die in a particularly heroic fashion. And the impact of Janet’s threat as a last resort doomsday device was a total failure since Thor was able to dispatch her with relative ease and in short order.

I guess Bendis felt like he had to kill someone in this final issue and that Bendis chose Janet since her death would have “impact” since she is an original Avenger. And also that Janet’s death would not set off a fury of protests from fans since Janet has never been a particularly popular character with your average reader.

The ending to the war with the Skrulls was so rushed and way too easy. And the worst part was that we saw very little fighting at all. Instead, we simply saw the aftermath of the heroes dismantling the Skrull Armada. The vast majority of how the heroes won was simply told to the reader by the two off-panel voices narrating this issue. This was about as unexciting a victory in a war story that I have read.

The revelation that all the heroes and SHIELD agents who had been replaced by Skrulls were alive and well on one of the Skrull ships was another far too convenient ending to that plotline. The excuse that the technology that allowed the Skrulls to perfectly replicate a human required the Skrulls to keep that human alive seemed like a bit of a cheat. Similarly, the resolution to the disaster over at the Baxter Building was also too easy and convenient.

Now, I am a big fan of Hawkeye so I am glad that Mockingbird is not actually dead. I guess that Bendis has felt guilty for mishandling Hawkeye ever since he took over the Avengers that Bendis felt the need to give Clint the gift of having his wife back. But, the fact remains that I could have cared less about Mockingbird coming back to life or not. This had little impact on me. Honestly, has anyone been clamoring for Mockingbird to be brought back to life?

And Mockingbird being brought back makes me wonder just how far back do these Skrull replacements go? Mockingbird died in West Coast Avengers #100 and that was in 1993. So does Marvel now have a get out of death card for any character that died in the Marvel Universe since 1993?

I love how somehow Bendis has Thor blame everything on Tony. Bendis went so overboard with his misrepresentation of Tony Stark’s character and Thor’s condemnation of Tony was so heavy handed that this scene became absolutely laughable and comical.

Tony’s reaction in the scene with Maria Hill during Norman’s press conference was also just silly and out of character. All Tony does is just sit there in the dark in a chair and all he is able to utter is “What?” Please, Tony has never been presented in this fashion. Tony is a ultra-Type A personality with a mind that never stops calculating his next several moves.

(And another problem with this scene is that we have already seen during the Knaufs’ run on Iron Man: Director of SHIELD how much Tony hated running SHIELD and how he often wished that he could leave it all and return to running his own company. Tony also had already been placed under arrest by the government and stripped of his command of SHIELD during the Knaufs run. Tony had been expecting at some point for the government to end up replacing him. So, Tony’s speechless reaction by Bendis simply exposed Bendis for his lack of knowledge of anything going on outside of his own titles and his obvious lack of research before writing this issue.)

In the end, I found Secret Invasion’s ending to be an incredibly small payoff given the amount of hype and the length and scope of this big event. Even though I like the concept of Dark Reign and the possibilities that it presents with the various new titles and the general direction for the Marvel Universe, this was still an incredibly underwhelming payoff for such an overblown and overhyped event like Secret Invasion.

The long and the short of it was that the entire point of Secret Invasion was so Norman Osborne would be put in control of SHIELD’s jurisdiction, the Avengers and the Fifty-State Initiative and then, in turn, Norman would gather his own cabal of villains. Honestly, Marvel did not need to waste time going through all the ridiculously silly machinations of Secret Invasion just to get to this point. It is like using a flamethrower to light your portable barbeque grill.

Dark Reign could have been easily put in place in a much faster and easier fashion. The Knaufs already hinted during their run on Iron Man: Director of SHIELD how tenuous Tony’s position as the Director of SHIELD was. It would have been easy for the President to fire Tony since the Avengers and SHIELD continuously failed and/or refused to bring in unregistered heroes when they clearly had an opportunity to do so.

I would have found Dark Reign much cooler of an idea if it had been brought into place by something not as overly hyped as Secret Invasion. Marvel built up Secret Invasion so much that the pay-off of Osborne being in control of SHIELD’s old jurisdiction and the Initiative and forming a cabal of villains was anti-climactic and nothing particularly surprising in the least bit. Dark Reign is a rather predictable direction that most readers felt Marvel was going to move toward a long time ago.

Lastly, I am simply not a fan of Leinel Yu and Mark Morales style of artwork. All in all, Secret Invasion was not the prettiest looking big event that I have seen. Having said that, many readers love Yu’s style of art and surely they will enjoy the look of Secret Invasion #8 much more than me.

Overall

In the end, Secret Invasion event was shallow, poorly paced, sloppily plotted, often lacked internal logic and at points suffered from poor research. I am sure it will be quickly forgotten.

But, let’s take this opportunity to focus on the positive aspects of this new direction of the Marvel Universe that Dark Reign presents. While not that original or earth-shattering of an idea, it still should provide for some entertaining stories.

I do appreciate that Marvel was able to crank out Secret Invasion without any real delays. The way that Marvel handled the shipping schedule of Secret Invasion and all of the various tie-in issues was impressive. And without a doubt, some of the Secret Invasion tie-in issues were quite compelling reads that overshadowed Secret Invasion itself.

Also, while I might not agree with everything Joey Q does, that Marvel certainly has a clear direction and purpose in mind with each big event and how they lead into the next big event and the way that they impact the Marvel Universe. Marvel carefully plots out their goals and stays focused and committed to their decisions and to the direction that they are headed in. That is something that DC could learn to do.

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