With "Secret Invasion" burning up the monthly sales charts I think it's fair to say those shape-shifting troublemakers The Skrulls have now graduated to the supervillain A list, at least in the Marvel U. Now I didn't see this coming in the slightest up until "New Avengers" #31 put it in everyone's faces. See, Bendis has this tendency to ground his superhero stories in reality and not get too cosmic. That's why I'm surprised he's handled the first 2 issues so gracefully. Gone is all of the cheap death and overly explanatory dialog of "House of M" (which was his and Marvel's first attempt at a huge summer blockbuster in comics form with no pressure to sell anything but the singles and the trades as opposed to backing a toyline). "Secret Invasion" has plenty of threads as did "M", but there are no lulls this time around. Nothing is disjointed and you're foaming at the mouth for those globe-spanning (okay, universe-spanning) scene transitions to see what else there is to know. Bendis has taken everything there was to learn from the pitfalls and successes of "M" and "Civil War" and has created a story that so far looks like it could truly change the entire landscape of the Marvel U that us 21st century readers have come to know. All this could be true, but there's also part of me that thinks maybe I'm nothing more than a victim of this direct market "go-for-broke-with-the-fans-we have" mentality that's been ruling the big 2's superhero houses a for the last few years... Well, I guess it's better than foil covers no matter what the truth is... Anyway, here's a Black & White and Color version of a Skull explosion and the bar coaster sketch that inspired it...
Oh, and here's series artist Leinil Yu one-upping me without even knowing it on the final page of issue #2!
0 comments:
Post a Comment