They’re here! Today officially marks the start of Marvel’s Secret Invasion with the arrival of Secret Invasion #1. Brian Michael Bendis has had this story simmering in the pot over at New Avengers for years, and only recently has it started to bubble over into stories like Captain Marvel and Mighty Avengers. But now, the story has officially reached boiling point! I just finished reading the first issue, and while I won’t ruin the major reveals, I can say for certain this series is set to literally blow the Marvel universe wide open.

With the confirmation last week in Ms. Marvel #25 that Ms. Marvel is being impersonated by a Skrull, it seems clear that she is going to play a big role in the upcoming crossover event. And just who/what/how is that Super X-Skrull? I’m not normally much of a Ms. Marvel fan, but I’m already sucked in just to find out what’s going on in the background here.

So by now, those of you that aren’t total comic geeks like myself are either really scratching your heads or reading some other website. If you’ve stuck around this long, I guess you deserve a bit of an explanation, I’ll try to make this as painless as possible. So, skrulls. Skrulls are shapeshifting aliens that are incredibly militaristic and hostile. They’ve been around since the beginning of the Fantastic Four and have pretty much always had beef with us Earthlings. Despite their military skill, the Skrulls are generally kinda dumb, so we’ve always managed to defeat them whenever they rear their weird bumpy chins.

Anyway, these skrulls have been pretty MIA over the last few years. Or so we thought. Apparently they’ve infiltrated in preparation for the invasion that started with the first issue today. Nobody quite knows why they’re back and to make matters worse, nobody knows for certain who they even are. We first learned this beyond any shadow of doubt in New Avengers #31 when Elektra’s corpse turns all…skrully. But now they’re here in full force and Marvel is leaving no major characters unaffected by their presence.

No comment on that image above. Nope. Not a word. Shhhh. Seriously though, with the runaway success of Civil War and World War Hulk (both of which will play a role in Secret Invasion by the way) I have high hopes for this series. Bendis is at the helm for the book and some major tie ins, and this dude is definitely one of the best comics writers of our time. I just hope they can stay on schedule, which is something that really brought down the Civil War series.

Speaking of schedules , here is the tentative checklist for the first half of the series and the multitude of tie ins. None of these dates are set in stone, in fact, they’re hardly set on paper. There may be some other tie ins yet to be revealed, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

April 2008:
Secret Invasion #1
Mighty Avengers #12
New Avengers #40

May 2008:
Secret Invasion #2
Captain Britain & MI:13 #1
Incredible Hercules #117
Mighty Avengers #13
New Avengers #41
Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #1

June 2008:
Secret Invasion #3
Avengers: The Initiative #14
Captain Britain and MI:13 #2
Incredible Hercules #118
Mighty Avengers #14
Ms. Marvel #28
New Avengers #42
Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #2
Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers #1
Secret Invasion: Who Do you Trust? One-Shot

July 2008:
Secret Invasion #4
Avengers: The Initiative #15
Black Panther #39
Captain Britain and MI:13 #3
Incredible Hercules #119
Mighty Avengers #15
Ms. Marvel #29
New Avengers #43
New Warriors #14
Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #3
Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers #2
She-Hulk #31
Thunderbolts #122
X-Factor #33

Be sure to get to your local comics shop to pick up the Secret Invasion: Infiltration tie ins to catch up on the back story and don’t forget to grab the first and rest of the Secret Invasion series.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 pm and is filed under Comics, Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.