As is usual for this time of the year, the hype is underway for the Big Summer Crossovers from Marvel and DC. In the red corner we have Marvel with the deadliest Skrull invasion of the Earth since, well, the last one. And in the blue corner we have DC with the deadliest Crisis since, well, the last one.
Now don’t get me wrong, although the tone of the above paragraph is a little ‘yawn, more crossovers’ I actually look forward to these big event stories that come along every couple of years from the big two. House of M? Loved it. Identity Crisis. Couldn’t get enough. Civil War. Great. Infinite Crisis. Brilliant. This year, however, one of the crossovers is leaving me a little cold.
Secret Invasion has all of the ingredients that a good Big Summer Crossover needs: Global threat to the planet that needs all of Earth’s heroes to band together to defeat it? Check. All of Marvel’s major players involved? Check. Universe altering events and revelations? Check. A-list creative team? Check. Despite all of this, there’s one thing I can’t get past to be able to get excited about this story: It shouldn’t he happening.
For the better part of the past decade, Bendis has been able to do no wrong in my eyes. His record breaking run on Ultimate Spider-Man was consistently better than any of the regular Marvel universe Spider-Man titles. His take on Daredevil made it a must-read title again and those 14 or so trades form one of the finest bodies of work from a single creator on a single title. He disassembled, then re-assembled the Avengers, drove them underground and then split them in two. He rewrote the history of the Marvel Universe and made some of its oldest characters its secret masters. He even magicked a girlfriend for Luke Cage out of nothing (sort of). And it’s those last two that are the root of the problem with Secret Invasion.
Retconning has been Bendis’s stock in trade ever since he arrived on the scene – what is Ultimate Spider-Man if it isn’t the ‘ultimate’ retcon? Alias, a title every bit as good as his run on Daredevil, hinges on the fact that Jessica Jones has been inserted into Marvel continuity. New Avengers: Illuminati’s sole purpose appears to be retconning the major events of the Marvel Universe to smooth over continuity glitches. And to set up Secret Invasion, of course.
While retconning is nothing new in comic books, it’s the way Bendis, and Marvel, have gone about it that leaves me feeling cheated. Whereas DC comics make the retconning the point of the story in the majority of cases (with a few exceptions, most notably the ‘what Dr Light did to Sue Dibny/What Zatanna did to a some of the JLA’ retcon in Identity Crisis), Marvel uses these retcons to set up telling a story that otherwise wouldn’t have made sense or to undo a catastrophic storyline or continuity goof. All that does is perpetuate lazy story telling and alienate the long-time reader. What’s the point in investing your time – and hard-earned cash – if in years, or even months, to come those storylines are rewritten to suit the needs and whims of a writer or ignored altogether?
Compare it to DC’s set up for Final Crisis. Although Countdown got off to a less than auspicious start, the various plot threads all came together a few issues from the end – with some help from the tie-in one-shots and mini-series – to reveal the bigger picture and lay the ground for Final Crisis. The Great Disaster, first mentioned way back in 1972 by Jack Kirby, is finally upon the DC Universe. Jimmy Olsen’s powers – a nod to his Silver Age misadventures rather than a retraction or reinvention – were hidden in him by Darkseid years beforehand, on the grounds there was no safer receptacle for them than a man under the protection of Superman. Brother Eye and Superboy Prime, along with Ray Palmer, have come back into play forging a direct link not only between the previous DC mega-event, Infinite Crisis, but also the one prior to that, Identity Crisis. What DC are doing is respecting their history and continuity in the interest in driving forward the meta-story of the DC Universe while all Marvel are doing is pissing on theirs in the interest of driving up their profits.
When you factor in the misguided marketing campaign for Secret Invasion – the relentless torrent of images depicting major Marvel characters as Skrulls and the laughable Cloverfield-esque web video – the five (!) variant covers for the first issue, and Marvel’s recent history with undoing recent continuity and the effects of previous crossovers (Hawkeye’s return from the dead, Spider-man’s deal with Mephisto that reversed his unmasking during Civil War) then I really can’t justify adding it to my standing order. Perhaps I’ll just spend my money on the Essential Editions with all the original Jack and Stan Skrull stories instead, before they get retconned further or, Bendis forbid, out of existence altogether.
Who do you trust? Not Marvel with the legacy and heritage of their own characters, that’s for sure.
