Who Can You Trust?

First and foremost, the single thing I love the most about Secret Invasion, is that at its heart, the series is nothing more than a large-scope mystery. The story basically comes down to a few basic questions. Who is a Skrull? What are the Skrulls trying to accomplish? How long have the Skrulls been here? This "Who done it?" approach instantly takes the series into a whole new realm of epic storytelling, in which Marvel has not messed with in a long while. Though not nearly as conventional, Secret Invasion is much closer to Identity Crisis than it is House of M. We've been told that Bendis has been plotting this mystery for years now, and this becomes more than evident by issue's end.....and in that regard, it's important to recognize that this legwork is what truly makes Secret Invasion tick.

I bring this up for a very specific reason. Make no qualms about it...what Bendis and the rest of the Marvel crew are doing here is wading out into extremely dangerous waters. The way I see it, this series can go one of two directions. It can become an exciting tale, which holds a couple of huge world-changing revelations, or it can become a disastrous exercise in ret-conning. If there's one thing I hate in the world of comic storytelling, it's the overuse of a bevy of different gimmicks. If you want an increased readership, you simply kill characters off, play with the boundaries of sexual orientations, change a costume, etc. Then you find a way to erase said changes from continuity, and we're all right back where we started (I.E. the “Spidey“ clone saga).

To that end, Secret Invasion places a great deal of power squarely into Bendis' hands. Using the Skrulls, and more specifically their shape-shifting abilities, as a device of alteration, the author can literally change anything that's happened over the last thirty years of Marvel history. The writer himself makes this abundantly clear within the first four pages of the very first issue...as he has Tony Stark sum up the matter in a few simple sentences. "They're here now. Living Among us. Undetectable." The stakes are set very high, very quickly. This means that Captain America could still be alive. Jean Grey could still be alive. Even Iron Man himself might be a Skrull, which would call into question the very validity of the entire Marvel Civil War.

Now, as I stated earlier, after reading Secret Invasion #1, I'm fairly confident Bendis is handling this difficult task admirably. Without divulging any spoilers, there are more than a few clues to prove he wasn't merely grandstanding about having laid the seeds for this story over a long period of time. In fact, I see this issue as a bold statement from Bendis to address this very point, and to ease the worry of those of us doubters who are fearful of scheme and gimmickry. For instance, the single most prominent location in the issue is itself a giant clue about the author's long-winding intentions.

Bendis does more than enough to convince me that Secret Invasion is not simply a continuity fixing tool, Infinite Crisis, but instead the culmination of a story we haven't even realized we've been reading. Having dropped numerous hints over the course of the last four years, Bendis can justify baffling his readership with the basic questions that form the meat of the series. He can take risks, because he's already laid out the logic to defend them.

Not to be outdone, Leinil Yu's artwork is nothing short of outstanding. His characters are cool looking, in a cutting-edge sort of way, but still look decidedly human, as opposed to cartoony. They are stylized, but also fully realized which makes for perfect art.

As far as "events" are concerned, Secret Invasion just feels different. I know that it's way too early to properly judge, as who knows where the story is truly heading, but this first issue felt as rich in character as it did in epic occurrence. The very idea of different personalities debating the proper recourse to handling a faith-busting ordeal, makes for a story centralized not on explosions and cheap thrills, but instead on development of character and human interaction. The situations this could present, the questioning of faith and trust, have the potential to be a thousand times more memorable than any battle, death or costume change could ever hope for.

“Secret Invasion” could be a series fans are talking about for years...for the right reasons.