Leinil Francis Yu

Access a version of the below that discusses the series in full and includes illustrations on my blog.

This opening miniseries is particularly tedious, with umpteen different superteams (the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy, &c.) fighting monsters again and again and again. Too many characters, too many artists, no interesting character work or plotting.

Elsa Bloodstone: « Previous in sequence | Next in sequence »… (mere)

Secret Invasion is action packed with some big events, but my still limited superhero knowledge meant I was a little confused and lost in places! I spent a lot of time on Wikipedia and quizzing my Boyfriend to work out who was who.. and I still couldn't tell you them all!

The Skrulls have a clever plan to invade Earth. Over many years they have replaced heroes with identical Skrull agents, and now the superheroes have no idea who they can trust. Tony Stark, having positioned himself as the most powerful man on the planet (and head of SHIELD) is poisoned, Starktech is compromised and the Earth's defense is wide open. They're so busy fighting themselves the battle is almost over before the Skrull even attack, and then all the different powered people of earth must band together.

Like I said.. being somewhat of a Marvel newbie I only knew about 50% of the characters in this (and still only grasp about 70%)! It was fun to learn who they are though. The main headliners take the lead but this was also my first introduction to Luke Cage, Jessica Jones, The Wasp, Mar-vell and Spider-Woman. I had no clue who Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman was and she a pretty big role in this book! It was cool to see the comic book versions of Maria Hill, Mockingbird and Daisy Jones.

It's heavy on the action, which while being cool, involves about 20 characters (on each side) at a time so it's very busy and can be hard to work out exactly what the heck is going on! It all came to a bit of an abrupt end too.. but with some important events that will shake up the universe. Norman Osborne as head of SHIELD, WHAT?!

I believe Dark Reign follow on from this, so maybe I'll go there next.. I did enjoy reading this, it's made me more excited to read more! I've got such a long list of characters I want to check out.… (mere)