The gradually less Well-kept secret.
(k so this post is re/ some seriously 1337 hardc0re comicbook g33kc0re crue sheeits and is rife with <****MAJOR MARVEL SPOILERS*****>, but you should be all over this, boye, so get caught up, or you don’t ride !!!11!)
I read the best comic of the year so far today, and it was Secret Invasion issue number one, Brian Michael Bendis’ intricately planned assault on the marvel universe. For the last three or four years, Bendis has been writing a whole bunch of marvel titles that splintered out from the disparate Avengers as they coped with the fear, conflict and suspicion brought about by the civil war and its aftermath, and the attendant deaths of Captain America, Clint Barton/Hawkeye, and The Vision. Bendis has deconstructed the core political structures of the classic marvel universe, and has written some truly riveting comics in doing so (secret war, new avengers, alias, mighty avengers, avengers disassembled, the Illuminati, House of M).
Having never been much of a fan of the avengers and captain america et al, Bendis’ comics gave me that shiver of recognition, the headlong rush of true geek thrillpower. His writing is epic in scale, detailing world-changing events with Machiavellian intricacy, while simultaneously developing the beautifully human characterisations of a huge cast. He is a virtuoso of the almost imperceptibly self-depreciating tone that is the mark of a great superhero comic. To read a bendis comic is to L0L, and to also say ‘woaah’ under one’s breath occasionally (fuck why don’t I just marry him already). And then the aliens turned up.
Turns out the skrulls (pictured above in figurine disguise), were understandably seriously fucked off by Black Bolt, Stephen Strange, Reed Richards, Xavier, Namor, and Tony Stark (the old-boy network of the marvel universe, also known- in a thinly veiled freemason reference- as the Illuminati) 
attacking their throneworld in a misguided attempt to stop them invading earth (the ‘holy land’ and focus of their religious fervor) so they just went ahead and invaded earth. Secretly. Possessed of a new technology that enables them to shape-shift in order to undetectably mimic human beings, they assassinated or abducted a whole bunch of people and replaced them. Elektra was viciously killed, 
and shape shifted back into a skrull, then Black Bolt turned out to be one too. Holy fuck the skrulls killed Black Bolt, king of the inhumans!
(and elektra! she was freakin ’sweeet!) 
. Faced with evidence of a skrull invasion, Iron man shits his shiny iron pants. 
Now, the next bit of the story is available free online as a 7-page digital comic and can be read here. It’s the ’secret invasion prologue’ wherein
Dum-Dum Dugan, 
director of S.H.I.E.L.D, is assassinated and replaced too! Suddenly nobody can be trusted. Paranoia is rife. In rereading the last 3 years worth of Bendis’ comics, we realise that everything has been going very wrong for a long time.
Then!!!… in issue one of the 8-part Secret Invasion miniseries, the hidden skrulls activate, and the massive scale of their attack on earth begins to be revealed. This is epic, classic, jaw-dropping Marvel business with brilliant pencils by Lenil Yu, a huge reveal every two pages, and so many ‘wooaaaahh” moments that, as soon as I finished reading, I flipped back to the first page and started again. This comic moves so fast that I missed stuff the first time.“A thing like this deserves the promise that all the answers will be revealed,” says Bendis. “This is a big story with a beginning, middle and an end. This will not drag on. This is an accumulation of all these ideas and threads that we’ve be planting for so long. So we came up with a story that we thought was a big, giant pay off for those who’ve been following ‘New Avengers’ and the other Avengers book and all these other things like Skrull fans from their appearances way back in ‘Fantastic Four.’ But if you haven’t been following those things and are just buying this particular thing, you’re getting a hell of a yarn as well. I think it works on both levels and I thought that was very important.” It’s pure guaranteed 100% uncut freebase geek crack, baby, and it goes on for seven more issues, right through the winter, .
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