"New Avengers: Secret Invasion"

 

            The following is a review of the graphic novel “New Avengers: Secret Invasion” as presented in Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection format. It is NOT a review of the Disney+ series “Secret Invasion.”

            The Illuminati is a secret organization comprised of several of the world’s most powerful heroes: Sorcerer Supreme Doctor Strange; Black Bolt, king of the Inhumans; Charles Xavier, founder of the X-Men; Reed Richards, founding member of the Fantastic Four; Namor, the Sub-Mariner, ruler of Atlantis; and Iron Man, founding member of the Avenger. These six men worked together to shape the superhuman world. To keep the trust between the group members, the Illuminati’s existence had been kept secret from everyone, including the members’ teammates and families. Years ago, after the Kree-Skrull War, the group traveled to the Skrull homeworld to let the Skrulls know that Earth would not tolerate any more attempts at Skrull invasion. Things did not go well.

            Years ago, on Skrull World Satriani, Skrull King Dorrek had Princess Veranke exiled for preaching the Skrull prophecy that a devourer of worlds would destroy the Skrull Homeworld and that the Skrulls would find a new homeworld on a blue world. Dorrek had his scientists working on clones of Earth’s heroes based on the samples they were able to acquire when they held the Illuminati prisoner. Years after Veranke’s exile, Galactus, devourer of worlds, did indeed come and consume the Skrull Throneworld. Years after that, Veranke was found and brought out of exile and coronated as Queen. The Skrulls believed in the ancient prophecy Veranke believe, and the Skrulls believed the blue world they were promised was Earth, and so the Skrulls planned an invasion of Earth using Super-Skrulls. Over the years, Skrull technology had grown so advanced that the Skrulls were able to create Super-Skrulls so perfect a Super-Skrull could copy a person’s powers and have if the Super-Skrull remained in the form of the person that the Super-Skrull was copying, the Super-Skrull would be completely undetectable, and anyone would believe the Super-Skrull was indeed the person the Super-Skrull was impersonating. Queen Veranke did not wish to just order the invasion of Earth; she wished to be part of it. And the person she chose to impersonate in the invasion of Earth was Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman, once an agent of Hydra, once an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. And now an Avenger.

            As far as the Avengers knew, Jessica had lost her powers, and Hydra had offered to get them back for her if she would act as a double agent. She went directly to S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury and told him the truth, but Rury surprised Jessica by telling her to take the deal. She was working in secret with Fury until he quit S.H.I.E.L.D. and went underground. Since then, she had been a double agent, reporting only to Fury, but Fury was no longer in charge. As far as the Avengers knew, every day had been a death-defying double cross for Jessica. And then Captain America made her an Avenger, putting her in even more danger. Putting her in a horrible position. The Avengers agreed to work with her and Fury to find out who was behind all the mysterious goings-on. But what really happened was when Jessica accepted to undergo Hydra’s operation that would restore her spider powers, the Hydra agents performing the operation were actually Skrulls. The Skrulls abducted Jessica, and Veranke took Jessica’s place. Veranke planned to destabilize S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra, eliminate the mutants, and turn the superheroes against each other. Veranke had Jessica placed at the Raft, and Veranke was at the Raft the night of the breakout which brought about the formation of the New Avengers. She had also had former Avenger Hank Pym/Yellowjacket replaced with a Skrull agent. Veranke told Viper/Madame Hydra that now that Spider-Woman was an Avenger, Spider-Woman deserved a better payment than before for now being a triple agent. Fury’s replacement as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. Maria Hill informed Spider-Woman/Veranke that Hill was not happy that there was a New Avengers and that Hill would be keeping an eye on the newly formed team. The Yellowjacket Skrull informed Veranke of a joint Avengers/X-Men operation on Genosha to confront Wanda Maximoff/Scarlet Witch, who had lost control of Scarlet Witch’s reality altering powers and had been the reason for the disbanding of the original Avengers. Both Skrull agents were in attendance of this operation.

            Then the world burned away to white. Wanda transformed the entire world into a utopia where mutants were the dominant species and most everyone was given their heart’s true desire. Her fathers dream had become a twisted reality – he was lord and master of the ruling class, the House of M. Only Wolverine seemed to remember the world as it was and gathered his fellow heroes to try to bring reality back. When reality was restored, Wanda stripped most of Earth’s mutants of their X-genes. This act, the realization of part of the Skrulls’ plans coming to fruition, coupled with the destruction of the Skrull homeworld, brought Veranke and her agents to believe that Earth would indeed become their new homeworld and their invasion would succeed.

The New Avengers learned that the shape-shifting aliens known as the Skrulls had invaded the Earth. And, since they could not tell who was really a Skrull, they could not trust anyone to be who they seemed to be, including each other. This sent the Avengers into a tailspin of mistrust. Recently, the Avengers stopped the Hood’s newly organized gang of super villains, but the Hood broke his cohorts out of S.H.I.E.L.D. custody and took them right back to the Avengers. The attack at the Sanctum Sanctorum was fierce, and though the Avengers won the day, they did so at the cost of Doctor Strange, who lost both his mastery of the Mystic Arts and his home. Luke Cage’s wife, Jessica Jones, fled the battle in mortal fear for their child’s safety. Jessica found asylum with the registered Mighty Avengers, even though she betrayed her husband’s beliefs by doing so.

            When Parker Robbins/The Hood rescued Whitney Frost/Madame Masque from S.H.I.E.L.D. custody, the pair discovered the S.H.I.E.L.D. agents interrogating Madame Masque were Skrulls. The Hood and Madame Masque brought a Skrull agent back to the Hood’s organization’s hideout to interrogate the Skrull. The Skrull revealed that the Skrulls had planned to replace Madame Masque and revealed the Skrulls’ plans of the secret invasion to the Hood’s organization before the Skrull passed away from injuries inflicted upon the Skrull by the Hood and Madame Masque. The Hood also realized that one of the members of his organization, the Slug, was actually a Skrull in disguise. The Hood took out the imposter Slug and burned the building and the evidence of the Skrull invasion. During the battle in the Sanctum Sanctorum, the Hood had realized his namesake hood was trying to take possession of him and wanted to learn more about the demon behind the hood. Parker threatened the demon, saying Parker would dispose of the hood if the demon did not reveal itself to Parker. The demon revealed itself to Parker to be Dormammu, ruler of the Dark Dimension.

Luke called Jessica, who informed Luke Jessica was at Avengers Tower, and Jessica had signed the Superhuman Registration Act. Luke went to Avengers Tower to talk to Jessica face-to-face. Jessica told Luke he could see their baby Danielle if Luke registered, and that she didn’t believe the New Avengers’ theory about a Skrull secret invasion. The Mighty Avengers joined the confrontation, and Luke accused them of potentially being Skrulls, which they all both denied and claimed they had no idea what Luke meant by the accusation, save for Spider-Woman, a former member of the New Avengers who switched sides. Spider-Woman told the Mighty Avengers that the Skrull reference was classified S.H.I.E.L.D. information and Director Tony Stark/Iron Man was the one who should explain this to the team. Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel decided to let Luke go. Danny Rand/Iron Fist obtained a new hideout for the New Avengers following the loss of the Sanctum Sanctorum.

            Maya Lopez/Echo had a conversation with James Howlett/Logan/Wolverine. Echo was not completely convinced that there was a Skrull secret invasion occurring. Echo went out on patrol one night and ran into someone whom she believed to be Matt Murdock/Daredevil, but who actually turned out to be a Skrull. The Skrull told Echo it was going to kill Echo and replace Echo in the New Avengers. The Skrull then attacked Echo, but Wolverine had followed Echo and was able to aid Echo in the fight and the two New Avengers were able to force the Skrull to retreat. Echo and Clint Barton/Ronin became romantically entangled.

            A Skrull ship crash-landed in the Savage Land. When both Iron Man’s public Mighty Avengers team and Luke Cage’s underground New Avengers arrived there, Luke opened the door of the ship, only to be met with a gathering of Earth’s heroes from a more innocent time. From out of the pod came Captain America, Spider-Man, Hawkeye and others who declared that they had been held captive by the shape-shifting Skrulls and had only now returned to Earth. The standoff between the Avengers of yesterday and today burst into violence. The battle upset the natural balance of the Savage Land, and a giant Tyrannosaurus rex scattered the fight.

            Peter Parker/Spider-Man found himself face-to-face with Kevin Plunder/Ka-Zar, Shanna the She-Devil, and Zabu. Ka-Zar told Spider-Man that Skrulls had infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D. and were mining the Savage Land’s resource, Vibranium. The New Avengers had stumbled onto the operation on their first mission, and the Skrulls had tried to kill the New Avengers. Spider-Man didn’t believe Ka-Zar’s story, or that Ka-Zar was a human. Suddenly, Spider-Man, Ka-Zar and Shanna were attacked by Steve Rogers/Captain America. Ka-Zar’s allies were able to shoot Captain America with a dart, which revealed that this was not really Captain America, but a Skrull in disguise. Shanna then tested to prove if Spider-Man was the genuine article, and Spider-Man passed the test as human.

            All looked lost, but the Skrulls’ plans quickly unraveled when the mighty Thor summoned both the humans and Skrulls to a battle on the fields of Central Park: for the first time in years, the original Avengers were united, and Nick Fury was back on the battlefield. And for the first time ever, with the help of the super villain kingpin the Hood, heroes and villains fought as one. The turning point came when Norman Osborn, once the villainous Green Goblin and recently the leader of the Thunderbolts, stepped up and made the kill shot that took out the Skrull Queen. The humans prevailed, barely, over the alien army. In the aftermath, the international peacekeeping organization, S.H.I.E.L.D. was dismantled. Its director, Tony Stark, took the fall for the invasion and was ousted from his position while Norman Osborn came out a hard-as-nails media hero and was put in charge of the Initiative and all it encompassed. Secretly, Norman had called a meeting of controversial figures: Namor, the king of Atlantis; X-Men leader Emma Frost; ousted Latverian monarch Doctor Doom; Loki, the God of Mischief; and the Hood.

            Osborn proposed an alliance between himself, Namor, Emma Frost/White Queen, Doctor Victor Von Doom, Loki, and the Hood. They would all get whatever they wanted, their kingdoms and immunity, so long as they publicly endorsed Osborn and agreed to sign up with his Initiative. Secretly, Doctor Doom believed Osborn’s plans as head of the Initiative would fail and Osborn would implode and was just waiting for it to happen.

            During the battle in Central Park, Jessica Jones had left baby Danielle Cage with a Skrull impersonating the Avengers’ butler Edwin Jarvis. Amidst the chaos, the Skrull fled with Danielle. The Mighty and New Avengers and the Fantastic Four united to find baby Danielle. Reed Richards tried to use his Skrull detecting technology to find the Skrull Jarvis, but the tech would not work on the Super-Skrulls. The Avengers found a Skrull impersonating a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, but the Skrull expired before it could give Jessica Jones information on the location of the Jarvis Skrull and Danielle. Luke Cage, in desperation, turned to Norman Osborn for help. Osborn agreed to aid Luke as long as Luke registered. Luke agreed to Osborn’s deal. Osborn, who had taken several Skrulls into custody following the battle in Central Park, had Mac Gargan/Venom assist Osborn in interrogating the Skrulls, and Osborn, Venom, and Luke learned of a Skrull meeting place. Luke went to the Skrull meeting place, and Bullseye aided Luke in insuring the safe return of Danielle. Luke confronted Osborn at Avengers Tower and told Osborn he was breaking the deal. Back at the New Avengers’ hideout in the Bronx, the team witnessed Osborn come out in public as the Iron Patriot and unveiled his new team of Avengers, supervillains disguised as previous heroes from the original and New Avengers teams. Ronin, who had just reunited with his ex-wife Bobbi Morse/Mockingbird, was furious with the Avengers rebrand, and wanted to take the Avengers name back from Osborn and his Avengers lineup. Spider-Woman went to Avengers Tower to lead Osborn and his Avengers into a trap set in the abandoned Hellfire Club. However, instead of being attacked by Osborn’s Avengers, the New Avengers were confronted by the Hood and his organization. The New Avengers were barely able to escape the assault. Ronin went public on television speaking against Norman Osborn and Osborn’s Avengers team, vowing that the New Avengers would take Osborn down.

            Dormammu planned to have the Hood find and eliminated Doctor Strange, and Dormammu told the Hood that the Hood was meant to be the next Sorcerer Supreme. Simon Willaims/Wonder Man also went on television and had a public meltdown. Doctor Strange found Billy Kaplan/Wiccan and told Billy that Billy was potentially going to be the new Sorcerer Supreme, but that there was a list of other potential candidates, including Doctor Doom. Doctor Strange would have to bequeath several ancient artifacts to the next Sorcerer Supreme. The New Avengers decided that Ronin would be assuming the role of team leader, and that Carol Danvers/Ms. Marvel would be second in command. However, the New Avengers were uneasy with Spider-Man, not knowing his secret identity. Ronin told Spider-Man if Spider-Man didn’t unmask for the team, Spider-Man could no longer be a New Avenger. Reluctantly, Spider-Man unmasked as Peter Parker. Jessica Jones had gone to high school with Peter and revealed that she had been in love with Peter back in ninth and tenth grade. Peter, however, did not remember Jessica Jones at all, which made Jessica angry. The Hood attacked Wiccan and Doctor Strange, and Strange managed to teleport to the New Avengers’ new hideout, Bucky Barnes/Captain America’s apartment in Brookyln. Doctor Strange told the New Avengers he had to find the next Sorcerer Supreme. With the Hood being a potential candidate, the New Avengers decided to go with Doctor Strange on his quest, against Doctor Strange’s wishes. Ms. Marvel and Captain America revealed they had taken an Avengers Quinjet before the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. Doctor Strange used the Eye of Agamotto to search for the next Sorcerer Supreme. The Eye led the New Avengers and Doctor Strange to New Orleans, Louisiana. The Hood and Madame Masque also followed to New Orleans. The Hood attacked Daimon Hellstrom, who might potentially have been the next Sorcerer Supreme. Madame Masque shot the New Avengers’ Quinjet out of the sky. Dormammu took control of the Hood. The Eye of Agamotto went to Jericho Drumm/Brother Voodoo, who became the next Sorcerer Supreme. The New Avengers and Brother Voodoo fought Dormammu to save Hellstrom and end the threat of the Hood once and for all. Norman Osborn went on television to discredit Ronin. Ronin decided the only solution now was to end Norman Osborn’s life.

            Okay, that plot synopsis was rather lengthy. Let’s move on to my own individual input for this review. For those of you who have never read a Tim Cubbin review, I’ll begin by telling you my segments following the plot analysis starts with my own personal opinions about the graphic novel. So, we’ll start with the basics, kicking off with what did I think of this book. I found this book to be relatively enjoyable for what it was. The big problem with this book is that while it is called “New Avengers: Secret Invasion,” it doesn’t actually contain any of the main issues of the “Secret Invasion” limited series, instead just collecting issues of “New Avengers” and the “Secret Invasion: Dark Reign” one-shot that came out around the time of the release of the “Secret Invasion” event. I will say there were a lot of expository pages explaining the story going on around the time of the event, which were enough to suffice reading through this book. I enjoyed the drama throughout the book, with the strain on Luke Cage and Jessica Jones’ marriage and watching them try to save their relationship was a key point throughout the book. I particularly liked how she revealed she had a crush on Peter Parker back in high school, with Peter barely remembering her as “Coma Girl.” This was, of course, following Spider-Man’s “One More Day” storyline where everyone forgot Peter Parker was Spider-Man, including the New Avengers. I enjoyed the backstory of how Luke first fell in love with Jessica. The “Secret Invasion” story arcs themselves were interesting to me, despite being presented out of order. When I did this review, I arranged the storyline chronologically, so the order of the story in this review is not actually the order the story was contained in in the book itself. Because of the disjointedness of the main storyline and the fact that the whole story of “Secret Invasion” is not actually in this book, this was a little difficult to piece together. I have read the whole “Secret Invasion” event many years ago and I hate to say it, but I really don’t remember it all that well. I feel like the purpose of this series was to give background information on the “Secret Invasion” event as a lot of the stories of the event were about the history behind the invasion, with a little bit of new stories to further the New Avengers’ storyline. I also enjoyed the conflicts with Norman Osborn, and his duplicity of sending the Hood’s army after the New Avengers instead of his Dark Avengers. The Sorcerer Supreme storyline was also entertaining, and I enjoyed the battle with Dormammu and Daimon Hellstrom. Next, we have to talk about the art. The artwork in this book was a mixed bag of opinion for me. While I enjoyed the work of Jim Cheung and Billy Tan, and the stylings of Chris Bachalo, I can’t say I’m a fan of Michael Gaydos, David Mack, or Alex Maleev. Some of these artists have come up on this blog before, so some of my regular readers already know how I feel about these artists. However, a majority of this book was on the enjoyable side, so there was more artwork that I liked compared to artwork that I disliked, so that’s a plus at least. Next up, we’re going to discuss my opinion about the title. I’ll simply just say calling this book “Secret Invasion” was a perfect title for this book as that is what the majority of this book is comprised of and I honestly don’t think any other title would suffice to fit this book. The final component I’m going to voice my opinion on here is going to be the cover. The cover depicts a group of Skrull Avengers battling the founding members of the Avengers. I will say that I thought this was a horrible cover for this book. The battle shown does not actually happen in this book and I feel like it was wrong to use to represent this particular book, and I don’t even know why it was used as a cover for an individual issue when the event portrayed on the cover never actually occurred within the pages. However, overall, I had a relatively positive opinion about this graphic novel.

            Okay, now that I’ve gone on for quite some time, let’s move on to my next individual segment, which is discussing accessibility. In this segment I answer the question of is this book accessible. I’ve been over this word over seven dozen times now in so many of my reviews, but I know that every time I do a review, I have readers who have never been to this blog before, so I have to explain myself in using this word once again. So when I ask if this book is accessible, I mean, can a person who knows nothing about the Avengers, Secret Invasion, or Marvel obtain this book by whatever means they use to get their hands on it, and then read the main story of this book, can they understand the story as written based solely on just what is contained within the pages of this book. I will say that answer is a resounding no. As I said before, this book doesn’t actually collect the “Secret Invasion” limited series, and it has stories that tie in to “Dark Reign” as well, so that’s two events in one book that are touched on but the main storyline is not actually included. And this book is Vol. 4, and it continues directly from where Vol. 3 left off, so not having been a regular follower of the “New Avengers” series is highly detrimental to following this volume. If you’re a person who has never read a Marvel Comic book before, you will not be able to properly follow these stories as they are presented in this volume without experiencing some areas of difficulty. An odd side note on accessibility is even if you have followed “New Avengers” from the beginning, you will find a spot of confusion if you did not follow the Spider-Man comics from around the time, as when Spider-Man joined the New Avengers, the team knew his secret identity, but following “One More Day,” Spider-Man’s secret identity was wiped from everyone’s minds, including the New Avengers, so not knowing that storyline will leave a reader scratching their head, thinking why do the New Avengers not know Peter Parker is Spider-Man now when they knew his identity from the start of the series. All around, I would say this book has very low accessibility to new readers and if you’ve never read a Marvel Comic book before and are looking for a place to start, I would tell you that I highly do not think that this book is the right one for you to begin with.

            So, now we’re going to move on to one of the core elements of my review: the numeric score. I would love to say it’s the reason we’re all here, but the fact of the matter is that every segment in my reviews is the most important to some people and everyone has a different favorite segment to read when they come to my reviews and a different reason to keep coming back if they are a regular reader. But the numeric score is one of the key sections of my reviews and is one of my most crucial segments. So, I will start off by explaining my scoring system. It’s actually extremely simple. I score on a scale of whole numbers ranging from one through ten. One is the lowest score I can give, and if you want to be really dramatic and extra, that means that this book was so awful that every remaining copy not sold should be rounded up off the shelves and out of the warehouses and put through the worlds biggest shredder and be completely destroyed, then Marvel should go find all the original prints for these issues and wipe them clean so this abomination can never be reprinted again and can be extinguished from living memory except in the hands of true collectors who for some reason don’t want to give them up and I shall dub them as weirdos. On the other hand, ten is the highest score I can give, and that’s a sign of sheer perfection, and I will do everything I can to promote this book until I can get all my comic book reading friends to read this book too so we can have discussions about it for hours, and if they don’t like this book, I won’t be able to understand why but I will give a good argument on why I think this is one of the best books I have ever read in my entire life. When I review a graphic novel, I am considering four main factors: story, art, title, and cover. In order to get a ten, a graphic novel needs to have an exciting and engaging story that I enjoy from beginning to end and can find nothing to complain about, consistently visually pleasing artwork that looking at enhances the already excellent story, a title that accurately represents the majority of the story contained in the book, and a cover that perfectly depicts the majority of the content contained inside and what is shown on the front of this volume is actually delivered within the pages of this book. So, when considering this particular volume, we have a story that was enjoyable but was incomplete, artwork that for the majority was enjoyable, a title that was a perfect representation of the book, and a cover that failed to deliver on what it promised. So, when all the factors are put together and thoroughly assessed, the score I have to give this book is… a seven! Overall, for what it was, I found it to be relatively enjoyable, but this book is a companion volume for “Secret Invasion” and should not be considered as the only book in your collection if you want to read the “Secret Invasion” event.

            Next up on our list of topics is our recommendation segment. In this segment, I answer two separate questions. The first question is, do I, Tim Cubbin, personally recommend this graphic novel to you, my readers, or to anyone else unfortunate enough to get caught up in a conversation with me about this graphic novel? The second question I answer is, regardless of if I would actually personally tell anyone directly to read it or not based on my preferences, whom do I think would be the kind of person who would find this graphic novel most enjoyable, and I don’t mean fans of Marvel, the Avengers, Secret Invasion, Brian Michael Bendis, or any of the artists, I mean the characteristics that a person likes that would get a high level of entertainment out of this book? To answer my first question, in general, I would recommend this book to people who want to read it, but the caveat is that this book requires outside knowledge, so I wouldn’t recommend this book to people who have no experience with Marvel Comics, but if you really want to read it now, based solely on the words I’ve just spent the past six hours typing, I’d tell you to go for it, just go to your favorite online retailer, preferred bookstore, favorite comic shop, local library, or hit up your friends who have this book and read it. If you do read this book, please feel free to let me know what you think. Leave a comment on this blog itself, or on Facebook, Threads, or X, I would love to hear your opinion. Everything I post on this blog is my own personal opinion, I don’t expect everyone to agree with my opinions and I respect the beauty that every human has a right to feel how they do, so if you agree or disagree, I’d love to know. I don’t usually get comments, so I’d really appreciate it if you’d drop a few words for me. Anyway, as for the audience I feel most inclined to enjoy this book, I’d say it would be people who enjoy stories about alien invasions, stories about deception among friends, stories about magic, and stories where the roles of friends and enemies are blurred.

            Okay, I’d say we’re at the point where we’re close to wrapping up. I do have a few things I’d like to say before I click publish. First off, I have been doing this blog for over five and a half years. I’ve posted on this blog 190 times already. In addition to having done over seven dozen reviews, I’ve also written short stories, poems, articles, essays, and editorials. My reviews extend beyond just graphic novels, I’ve reviewed prose novels, entire comic book events, and manga as well. I will say I post on a very frequent basis. I collect every Marvel Modern Era Epic Collection and Ultimate Epic Collection as soon as I can after its release and post a review on this page as early as I can after reading it, so you can figure I post a lot. If you enjoyed this post, feel free to check out my reviews “New Avengers: Assembled” “New Avengers: Civil War” and “New Avengers: The Initiative” for more New Avengers content. My next post is going to be “Annihilation: Conquest Prologue” you can expect to see that within the next two months after the posting of this review. Keep checking back for it if you’re interested. I guess that’s really all I have to say for now, so I’ll just leave you with the words, Tim Cubbin… out!