Steven Bari: 4 Bullets
Erik Norris: 2 Bullets
Christopher Power: 3.5 Bullets

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Steven Bari 4 Bullets

Plot: Captain Marvel has a heart to heart with Norman Osborn. Agent Brand finds Mr. Fantastic. Nick Fury brings the Young Avengers to the hideout from Civil War. Mockingbird is revealed to be….

And the heroes get their act together!

Commentary: After four issues of a slow-building crescendo that was as infuriating as it was tense, the story has finally reached its apex and it's all downhill from here… for the Skrulls, that is. The heroes have finally sorted out who's who and what's what and are ready to get their collective butts to New York to save humanity.

While Bendis has been building this invasion for years, he has also been setting up the Avengers for this moment. The team isn't just a conglomeration of rosters, but a unique cross-section of the Marvel Universe. Iron Man, Ronin/Hawkeye, Wonder Man and Black Widow are characters with a long history with the team; Luke Cage and Iron Fist are two seventies-exploitation-era characters that have come into their own; Aries is a former Thor villain proving he's heroic; Spider-Man is a classic character who redefined the nature of superheroes; and Wolverine simultaneously represents mutant-kind and strong sales. Add in Echo, Agent Brand, Captain Marvel and a certain member of the Fantastic Four, and you have a team of heroes that represent the classic, the nostalgic, the redeemable, and the up and coming of the Marvel Universe.

This is an energizing issue that thematically relies on eucatastrophe, seeming disaster with a positive ending. For example, as the heroes in the Savage Land again begin to question who is a Skrull and who is not, everyone looks to Iron Man or Thor for a plan. The Thunder God raises his mighty hammer and condemns all villainy to death, when suddenly from the sky a bolt of lighting crashes down upon them. But it's not what Odin-Son intended and before anyone can understand what just happened, they know who isn't a Skrull and who is. The scene plays out with dramatic pacing, slowly putting two and two together and then revealing the last bit of the equation with heart-wrenching truth.

Although fans may complain that this series has taken too long to get to this point with such little time and development actually passing, I argue otherwise. Secret Invasion is a standalone series that moves not at a usual "event" pace, but as an epic, slow and with a huge denouement. Consider how many other series feed off of this one title and how many of them rely on it. From Avengers: The Initiative to Captain Britain and MI:13 to Thunderbolts, the Skrull invasion is completely localized to each title and will summarily be resolved in each of those titles. The Secret Invasion main book is about the aforementioned cross-section of the Marvel Universe and their epic battle against the Skrulls.

I don't know it's an American obsession with eventual results (be it literary, monetary, or personal growth) or modern cynicism that has relegated success or failure of a story on its conclusion. But I've enjoyed Secret Invasion, and despite the transparency of the heroes' victory, I'm looking forward to it nonetheless. Even though four bucks is a pricey for such a slow moving narrative, the joy of reading something this big in its serialized form is exciting and a one of a kind experience.

Final Word: "Nick Fury was right."

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Erik Norris: 2 Bullets

I'm going to start this off by saying I'm not the biggest fan of the Marvel Universe. Outside the main players (Cap, Iron Man, Hulk, Spidey, etc.), the universe just isn't very interesting or engaging. So take that into account as I describe Secret Invasion through my eyes.

Firstly, there continues to be no substance to this series. All the weight of Secret Invasion is left to the various tie-ins. And while it's nice to have many of these tie-ins written by the writer of the main series, I shouldn't have to go to them for the meat of the plot. I find a major fault in this approach to Secret Invasion. I understand Secret Invasion is Marvel's summer blockbuster, which has to have all the spectacle of a Michael Bay flick, but that shouldn't mean drama has to completely fall from its pages. Of course, this means that understanding these characters motives and actions are impossible if you only follow the main Secret Invasion mini.

Probably my biggest criticism with Secret Invasion #5 is how the reveal for the Skrull's invasion was handled. What they're doing makes perfect sense, and even Tony Stark or Reed Richards should understand this, being futurists and all. While the Skrulls' preemptive strike might seem like a harsh first step in making their point, what they propose would actually benefit Earth. I mean, let's be honest, human-beings suck. We're all assholes who have torn apart the world by our own hands. If an outside force wants to come in and make the world a better place, why not let them, or at least hear them out? As justification to their hostile takeover, the Skrulls knew humans would react violently to their proposal. And they are completely right, hence the haste with which they beat us to the punch. And even with this reveal to the inhabitants of Earth, it looks like none of the heroes are taking the offer seriously, instead just wanting to kill every Skrull possible. Talk about shallow storytelling. I mean this could be the much needed dynamic subtext to Secret Invasion, but if the past is an indication, look to other books for this plot's exploration.

Then there is the Deus Ex Machina Skrull revealer device. Something Reed Richards whips up in a jiffy and all of a sudden the "who do you trust" tagline is discarded. Reed Richards was trying to crack the Skrulls' cloaking techniques for months prior to Secret Invasion, with no success. Now all of a sudden he can make the device, with alien parts, after being tortured, in a matter of minutes. I truthfully see it as a major slap to the face and an insult to our intelligence as readers. There is no lead in to this thing being created or an explanation as to how it was created. Reed mentions he has an idea, then it's made and shooting purple beams, revealing Skrulls all over the place. If that doesn't seem like a cop-out, I don't know what is.

However, even with Bendis' uneven and lackluster storytelling, the art on Secret Invasion continues to impress. I had been turned off by Yu's work on New Avengers because of the sketchy/non-inked technique he was using. However, here in Secret Invasion Yu only handles the pencils and lets the rest of his team, Mark Morales and Laura Martin, add ink and coloring layers to produce an ultra slick and detailed finished product.

Every month I hope that Secret Invasion kicks its story up a notch and really delivers something deeper than what's displayed on the surface. Besides the fantastic first issue, Secret Invasion has been an absolute bore to read. I would be optimistic if I said "maybe next month" in regards to the story gaining some substance, but I've been burned four months in a row so I'm not even going to hope. Sadly, Secret Invasion has let me down on all fronts now. Secret Invasion has simply become an art showcase in my eyes, not the status quo altering epic I was hoping for.

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Christopher Power: 3.5 Bullets

I recently had a discussion with a buddy of mine about Secret Invasion. I told him the basic story, about how the Skrulls felt that their god had promised the Earth to them and that they had chosen to stage an invasion. I told him about the sleeper agents, and how no one knew how to trust, and so on. He sat thoughtfully for a few minutes, sipped his Mild and then said: "Huh … sounds like Britain in the 80s. Anyone could have been a bomber in the train station."

I sat there stunned. Of course, the majority of people relate the SI storyline to the existing tensions in the Middle East; however, my friend, who was a teenager in the Lake District in the 80s, thought that it was an appropriate allegory for the Irish tensions during the latter part of the 20th century. We had a few more Milds, and talked about it a bit more, and he compared it to his irritation about the pop culture surrounding the Lord of the Rings. He said that lots of people used allegory to simplify the books and subsequent movies so that they could understand it. Tolkien notoriously hated that allegory because he was writing about the human experience, not about a specific time or place.*

Now, I am not comparing Secret Invasion to Lord of the Rings, nor am I saying that Bendis is the next Tolkien. However, I do think that the story that he is telling transcends the simple knee-jerk reaction of the current political climate in the Middle East. He is attempting to tell the story about how most of the world is based on the simple premise that the person beside us is, for the most part, not working contrary to our interests. We "trust"--for lack of a better word--that they are not actively trying to undo our efforts. They may not be working for us either, but fundamentally, society has always worked this way. We "trust" that the chef isn't going to poison us. We "trust" that the barber is not going to slit our throat while giving us a nice close shave. Finally, we "trust" that most people are not going to actively try to kill us.

What happens when that trust is removed? The world goes to hell in a handbasket right quick. The pace of this story has done a lot to underscore it. Even though there have been the odd missteps, for the most part we have been kept off balance long enough that we have not really known who we could trust. Even at the beginning of this issue, I still did not really know who was a Skrull and who was not.

Why have I written about all of this? I do not want to spoil it for you, dear reader. There are way too many fun reveals to risk wrecking it for you. I want you to read this book because I think it was actually a heck of a lot of fun, and as the cards begin to fall where they may for the Skrulls, our heroes begin to emerge again from the rubble. The characterizations of Mr. Fantastic and many of the New Avengers are dead on the money. We even get a Reed Richards' invention for our entertainment. I really believed that these people were ticked off and ready to bring the thunder back to New York. Kudos to Bendis for making me want to read the final issues of this series and see the heroes emerge (hopefully) victorious.

The only major complaint I have for the writing is this story did not really pick up anything from the last issue. The shield and the hammer do not make any further appearances in New York. Indeed, we never see New York. This was a disappointment. We did not see any more of Ms. Marvel, which was more disappointment. What we did get though was a number of scene resolutions as well as hints as to how the final scenes of the invasion will shape up. I consider this to be very important! My biggest problem with Bendis' writing is that he often gets carried away in his own writing and the resolution to stories comes too quick and too abrupt. There is a chance that this series will climax in an appropriate place and segue into a new Marvel Earth status, leading to more interesting stories.

Leinil Yu turns in competent panels, and seems to have become comfortable with drawing a large number of different characters. The odd facial expressions from the first couple of issues of the expanded cast are gone, with really amazingly beautiful people being drawn in some cases, and terrifying enemies in others. Similarly, Mark Morales seems to have really figured out how to ink Yu's pencils. In my review of the first issue, I complained about the inks clouding faces and creating odd shadows, the most notable being Spider-Man. That uncertainty is gone, and the artwork bounces around the pages conveying emotion, action and in particular, grief.

In the end, is this series the in-depth reading that Morrison's Final Crisis is? Is it House of Flying Daggers? No. I suspect no matter how deep I was prepared to go into the story, I would not find much beneath the surface. However, this story is really fun. It is not as vapid as Michael Bay movies, but it only goes as far as a good Die Hard film.

*I’d like to thank my buddy Blythe for that evening in the pub, because he made me appreciate that there might be something deeper to Bendis' story than I originally thought.

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