It’s becoming a cliche to complain about event pacing, but seriously, this is getting a bit trying even for a practical Marvel Zombie like me. While almost every page of this series looks positively frenetic, there appears to be almost nothing going on in terms of actually moving the plot along. Instead, we spend every issue jumping from scene to scene witnessing the next miniscule moment in an invasion that’s supposed to be taking mere hours but has been told over a course of months. It’s decompression at its absolute worst.

Sure, there are nice moments spotted throughout the issue - finally seeing what the Skrulls have done with Reed Richards is one, Wolverine’s brief appearance is another - but overall, moments are all we’re seeing. It’s hard to get invested in the fights, and the characters themselves remain in complete disarray, so we’re not even sure who to root for. The two major scenes from the last issue were Nick Fury arriving with his new recruits, and the Skrull Spider-Woman confronting Iron Man with “the truth” about his nature. Both of these scenes continue in issue #4, but neither plot thread contains the weight and importance that their prominence suggested.

That said, the tease for the next issue does promises the entry of two familiar faces into the fray, neither of whom have yet been seen in Secret Invasion, and either of whom could turn the tide of Skrull attack on their own. While I’m aware I could just be about to get disappointed all over again, it does give me hope that there’s going to be a significant development at some point in the next issue. The problem is, at just beyond the halfway point and with no definitive win from the Skrulls yet (only attacks where they’re on the upper hand) it’s maybe too early for a definitive win for the heroes - if, indeed, the series is even heading there.

It’s something of a worry that all the big answers to the questions we’ve had about Skrulls are appearing in New Avengers while Secret Invasion instead ends up reduced to a very slow, chaotic fight scene. An expensive one, at that. Yu’s art is fantastic on every page, but the nature of the warskrulls means that it’s almost hard to get a grip on who you’re actually looking at. In a way, this effectively replicates the uncertainty of the battle as experienced by the humans fighting it - but that doesn’t mean it’s entertaining to read.

I had high hopes for Secret Invasion after following the plot in Avengers for some years now, but so far the main miniseries has been largely disappointing. It’s lucky that the tie-ins are filling in plot gaps and moving at breakneck page, because the miniseries feels almost like filler in its own pages. Halfway through, there’s still time for it to start moving at a faster pace and come to a satisfying conclusion - but no guarantee of that. 

A blockbuster epic approached as a short story collection might sound a contradiction in terms, but is a concept very suited to Brian Bendis’s slow-burn writing style. With the casts of both Avengers titles still tied up in the Savage Land, the Secret Invasion’s mastermind continues his trip through the Marvel Universe’s recent past, showing how Hank Pym was seduced by his Skrull replacement. In seeking refuge from the failure of his marriage with an impressionable student, Giant Man’s conduct may be somewhat reprehensible, but the issue doesn’t feel like a straightforward morality tale. A montage sequence makes clear that the relationship is more than just a one-night stand, and early anxiety from Pym that his new girlfriend will sell her story makes it clear that he’s taken a leap of faith. Given the limited number of pages available, the writer sensibly doesn’t attempt to establish much of a cover story for the alien student. Even without the Invasion logo on the cover, her nature would obvious, and it’s a sign of the author’s experience he doesn’t seek to waste the reader’s time by attempting to inject suspense.

The focus on Pym is an understandable decision. His absence from the regular cast of either Avengers title means that he benefits from a certain amount of re-establishment, so that the secrets his impostor can give her fellow Skrulls are obvious. However, this almost first-person approach creates problems during the second half of the story. Given how closely we’ve identified with Pym, the switch in perspective to that of his Skrull suitor is jarring. Bendis clearly isn’t ready to spill the beans on the fates of those replaced during the invasion, but the face that the Skrull doesn’t even check whether her target is still alive feels rather forced. The un-named agent’s voluntary sex change also seems artificial, given how every impostor revealed to date has been of the same gender as his or her victim, but it’s an understandable way of simplifying the story.

Although a nice enough character piece, the issue is constrained by having to fit with the Secret Invasion formula without imparting much new information. We’ve seen the skrulls’ body snatching techniques before in the pages of The New Avengers, and the way the aliens managed to disable Starktech’s systems is hardly the most pressing issue in the crossover. At times, it’s a charming little story, but the moments when the issue’s cynical conception shows through make it difficult to wholeheartedly enjoy.

We’ve said it before on this site a few times, but it does bear repeating that the Ultimate universe is in an awfully strange place at the moment. The catastrophe of the supposed flagship title, Ultimates, has of course had its bones picked over ad nauseam in the now-months-long wait between the third and fourth issues (that itself seeming to signify some pretty large-scale rewrites, you’d think). But elsewhere, there’s an increasing sense of pointlessness to the whole thing. Ultimate X-Men has just come out of an interminably dull Robert Kirkman run which seemed to forget it was even part of the shared universe, while Ultimate Fantastic Four hasn’t done anything of note since Warren Ellis’ run. Even Ultimate Spider-Man, the one shining light of the entire imprint, seems less concerned with building long-term story setups than it is with telling some cracking standalone stories – ones which you feel Bendis could do just as easily in a continuity-free, All Star kind of environment.

All this means that it’s hard to see what purpose a series like Ultimate Origins serves – it almost feels like an attempt to quickly tie up the various loose ends that have been planted over the years and which should have ended up meaning rather more, before Ultimatum comes along and puts the whole thing out of its misery (although again, with the Ultimates 3 delays, it’s hard to know what the hell’s going to happen with Jeph Loeb’s promised earth-shattering crossover – and it’s hard to care). What’s strange also is, after very little in the way of buildup, the series has suddenly been promoted quite heavily – the whole enterprise reeks of hasty afterthought, really.

Still, that said, it’s a chance for Bendis to start joining the dots, and in a way it is satisfying to begin to see some payoffs for things that you suspect he and Millar were planning all along. More than anyone else, it’s his universe, and if he wants to play around with it and give a firm “origin” for every instance of superpowers contained within, then so be it. It’s hard to deny that it’s quite a fun little read – the best moments coming in WW2 flashback, with the unfortunate demise of the first “Captain America” (a neat idea in and of itself), not to mention the bizarre team-up of Nick Fury, James Howlett and Wilson Fisk.

Art comes from Butch Guice, of whom I’ve been a fan since the days he was called Jackson Guice and drawing Action Comics. Here, as with his recent fill-in work on Captain America, his pencils are perhaps a little overly drenched in those thick inks and dark colours that have become something of a Marvel trademark of late, and so his usual level of character expression, and his elegant flowing lines, aren’t allowed to be quite so evident. Nevertheless, it’s decent, clear art that tells the story effectively, and the opening sequence with Spidey and the Hulk is particularly strong.

One instance of dodgy chronology aside (the first Hulk “incident” was only six months ago? Really? So two-and-a-half volumes of Ultimates and almost a hundred issues of Ult Spidey have happened since then?), this does bear the hallmarks of a masterplan coming to fruition – in fact, it feels like the opening salvo in a universe-shattering crossover, rather than one simply designed to give us some background. Is it too late to hand Ultimatum over to Bendis instead, do you think? Surely if anyone’s entitled to tear the place down, it’s him – Loeb’s already done enough of that with Ultimates, after all.

After a slow second issue, Secret Invasion does speed up a little, though it still feels like it could be doing a lot more. As a writer, Bendis is more reliant on slow-build atmospherics leaving Secret Invasion feeling far, far less dense when compared to the short, punchy scenes that typified Millar’s Civil War series, and I’m pretty sure the latter approach is preferable in such an important series.

This issue pretty much lays to rest the matter of whether or not Spider-Woman is a skrull. As a reader, I was really hoping it’d be some kind of triple-cross and she and Nick Fury would’ve replaced the Skrull empress to infiltrate the Skrulls, but apparently not, with the green-eye shorthand being broken out. While I can definitely see that it’s a pre-planned move for the character, I also have to wonder about Bendis’ claim that the hints are there in “New Avengers #1″ because I still can’t see anything that suggests it that early on. Certainly, later on the hints do start coming up, but not there. It’s still possible her speech to Iron Man in this issue is certainly designed to trick him, but by this point, I wouldn’t put money on the idea that we’ve seen the real Spider-Woman in a long, long time.

Speaking of her speech to Iron Man, it’s almost certainly designed to screw with his head. I can’t believe for a second they’d go to the trouble of making Stark such a popular and controversial figure, then turn him into a Skrull for a simple reset. Jessica is definitely just trying to mess with his mind.

Unfortunately, each new revelation in Secret Invasion leaves me more interested about the past than the future - I don’t care what the Spider-Woman Skrull is going to do, I want to know what she’s already done. It’s probably the wrong direction for the story to be going. After all, the heroes will presumably defeat the Skrulls (OR WILL THEY? It wouldn’t be the first time Marvel has gone balls-out with the status quo of its universe…) so there’s not really a a huge amount of tension in the current story - we don’t have any plot, at the moment, besides “anyone could be a Skrull!” and a bunch of invaders. Hell, the 70s heroes from Issue #1 don’t even get a single panel in this issue! At the end of the issue, Fury’s new gang of Howling Commandoes turn up, and right now, that’s the most plot we’ve actually had - and chances are it’s just going to lead to another plot-less fight scene.

Luckily, since those scenes will be drawn by Leinil Yu, there is going to be some extra value in them. He’s really proving his mettle as one of Marvel’s A-Listers, handling massive array of characters expertly - though that said, I actually prefer his work in the shorter scenes, where his images tightly fit Bendis’ script to flawless effect.

So far, Secret Invasion’s main effect has been to leave the reader with nothing but slivers of facts on which to hang increasingly rampant speculation and confusion. As the book approaches the halfway point, it’d be nice to get a more coherant plot and some clarity on a lot of the matters brought up by the first few weeks of the crossover. At the moment it’s a complete mess just waiting to happen. Hopefully, by the time issue #4 is out, some of the puzzle pieces will have started to slot into place a little better.

Okay, Mighty Avengers has officially lost its identity. We’re now getting a one-off Sentry story. Excuse me? What happened to that Nick Fury arc? This is an issue of New Avengers and there’s nothing anyone can say to convince me otherwise. What, I might ask, is the point of having two Avengers books when the approach - one-off character spotlights - appears to be identical?

A few months ago, New Avengers was the “Bendis” Avengers book and Mighty Avengers was Bendis’ version of a “traditional” Avengers book. Now they’re the same thing! I love the stories, but seriously, it doesn’t remotely benefit the fan-base to have Mighty and New be two different titles right now. I expect this’ll continue well into Secret Invasion.

And, with that rant out of the way…

As noted, this issue is largely about the Sentry, and the Skrull machinations regarding him. We see more of how the mechanics of the invasion are working, which is good, and there’s a substantial moment in the Sentry’s character arc as motivated by his conversation with the Vision in Secret Invasion #2 (also now confirmed as a Skrull, if it wasn’t clear before.) - he becomes the Void. An Apprently well-meaning Void, but the Void nonetheless. Could get interesting!

Koi Pham’s art is probably the weak point in this issue. Unlike his recent X-Men work, it looks scratchy and rushed - could be an inking thing - but it’s much looser and there’s at least one point where we’re seeing three Skrulls talking - Hank Pym, Jarvis and… somneone who appears to be Spider-Woman, but I wasn’t certain, so I looked it up online. No-one else is certain either. Given that Jarvis calls her “Empress” I’m fairly sure this is confirmation that she’s supposed to be a Skrull Jessica Drew as suggested in the previous issue of New Avengers, but it shouldn’t take that much research to recognise a character. Perhaps it was written as ambiguous, but either way, it’s a massive failure for the comic.

Still, while I’m on the subject - given Spider-woman’s recent double-triple-quadruple-agent status, I’m going to suggest that the Skrull-Spider-Woman-Empress never actually managed to replace Jessica Drew, and she’s working for Nick Fury on the inside of the invasion. That’s the kind of half-baked paranoid theory Secret Invasion is making me cook up these days.

Not a terrible issue, but I don’t even know which comic I’m reading anymore. New and Mighty Avengers are telling stories that feel like they should be IN the main Secret Invasion series. You should probably buy this if you’re reading that.

We pick up immediately where last issue ended - the Savage Land. A bunch of 70s-lookin’ heroes have piled out of a crashed Skrull ship and confronted the modern heroes. A fight ensures.

After the killer setup of last issue, this one actually becomes something of a disappointment - it’s mainly composed of people pounding on each other. As readers, we can’t be sure who’s a skrull and who isn’t, and we only get some very minor hints when a couple of the 70s heroes are killed in a… dinosaur attack. Well, it is the Savage Land, I suppose.

The issue also seems to confirm at least one resurrection, though the nerd in me would be amiss if I didn’t point out it does so at the expense of a couple of (admittedly bad) issues of Thunderbolts and one of Busiek’s Avengers run from back in the day. Ho hum. Unless the character turns out to be a skrull after all, that is…

Unfortunately, Bendis and Co. have so expertly established that telling Skrull from Human is virtually impossible that we can’t even believe the test that leads our heroes to believe the resurrected character actually is who they claim to be. Some of the skrulls don’t even know that they’re skrulls, so the cover must be pretty deep - does it involve brain-scans and such that could convey otherwise forgotten information? Maybe! Who knows? It’s a little frustrating, because we’re unable to take the events at face value, even now. Still, with one apparent resurrection, I can’t help wondering who’s going to be the first person to die because they get mistaken for a Skrull…

The fight in the Savage Land, does, at least, prove to have a point beyond throwing a spanner into Marvel Universe continuity - with both Avengers groups distracted in the Savage Land, the Baxter building opens up and out spill a bunch of armoured, super-powered Skrulls, with only half of the Young Avengers on hand to help out. Things can’t end well.

Still, plot-wise the massive fight scene that takes up 3/4 of the issue makes it all seem a bit… thin on the ground. I was hoping for a little more payoff and a bit more plot. Yu’s art looks better than it ever has, so seeing him draw all these characters makes up for that to some degree, but as ever, Bendis’ event pacing needs a little more work, and less of an eye on the trade release, where this fight will no doubt read very well indeed.