Don’t get me wrong — I love Brian Michael Bendis’ concept here. There’s a Skrull infiltration of planet Earth and now we have no idea who is a genuine superhero and who isn’t (though it seems pretty obvious that Tony Stark is legit right now).
But I’ll be damned if I didn’t start cursing by the time I got to the end of Secret Invasion #2. I paid $3.99 for 22 pages of story that took place in two and a half settings over the course of what… maybe 10 minutes? I was just getting into the issue when all of a sudden BOOP! it was over.
REALLY? That’s all I get? It’s a well-made comic, please understand that. But it’s no better than the pre-Secret Invasion New Avengers stories and I’m paying a buck more to see Mark Morales and Laura Martin overwork Lenil Yu’s pencils. Martin and Morales are great artists — they just have a tough time blending in well with Yu’s more abstract line work.
If there is one extremely frustrating flaw that I can say I dislike unequivocally, it’s the recap page. The design going on in the background looks like an eight-year-old tried to make a magic eye poster in Photoshop and failed miserably. The design is full of so many saturated colors that I can barely read the text on the page. Marvel really needs to do something about this. I mean, what is wrong with white letters on a black background? Since when was readability uncool?
Overall, this is a good issue. But the value just isn’t here. I appreciate the work of Bendis, Yu, Morales, Martin, and letterer Chris Eliopoulos — I did buy the damn issue after all. But if this thing doesn’t turn itself around by Secret Invasion #3, I can guarantee you that #4 won’t be making it home with me.
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