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.

Tags: Brian Michael Bendis, Leinil Yu, secret invasion
Publisher: Marvel