Young Avengers Catch-Up: Civil War: Young Avengers & Runaways (2006) and Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers (2008)

Marvel's big line-wide event/crossover stories generally provide the publisher with the opportunity to pump up their output for a few months, and a positive side effect of that is that it allows for book-less characters to appear. That was the case with the Young Avengers characters during both Mark Millar and Steve McNiven's super-successful Civil War (in which heroes fight heroes over 9/11 metaphors) and Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Francis Yu's less-successful Secret Invasion (in which heroes fight Skrulls over gross, clumsily executed fear-of-Muslims metaphors). In both instances, the characters met up with Marvel's other team of young, created-this-century heroes, The Runaways.

Their very first meeting came during the so-called Civil War, during which Iron Man wanted every single super-powered person in the United States to register with the government and then be drafted/press-ganged into a huge superhero army to make sure Speedball never accidentally makes an explosion-powered supervillain blow-up near a school again. And he felt so strongly about it that he was willing to murder his former teammates and imprison them without trial in extra-dimensional concentration camps.

Captain America disagreed.

The Young Avengers sided with Captain America (although Stature would eventually come around to Iron Man's position, after the conclusion of this series), while The Runaways were essentially conscientious objectors, seeking to avoid this conflict as they generally seek to avoid all of the Marvel Universe's conflicts. Conflict finds them, of course, as it usually does—otherwise, Runaways wouldn't have been much of a Marvel comic.

So when a TV camera catches The Runaways being attacked by SHIELD agents and their android member Victor Mancha is badly injured, the Young Avengers track them down and try to recruit them to Cap's side. In the might Marvel manner, they fight before realizing there's been a misunderstanding, and they're all on the same side.

Meanwhile, a sinister SHIELD agent sics a brainwashed and reprogrammed Marvel Boy (the Grant Morrison/J.G. Jones version from 2000's Marvel Boy) on both teams, but instead of capturing them all, he's ordered to simply retrieve a handful of aliens for his controller to experiment upon.

Zeb Wells wrote this one, and Stefano Caselli drew it. Typically of Wells, it was very well-written (Or is that Wells-written..? Ha!), and organically funny. There are jokes in here, but they are jokes made by the characters—it's funny because the characters are being funny, not because the writer is manipulating them.

The story doesn't really go anywhere in terms of status quo, at least not in terms of the Civil War. The Young Avengers are still with Cap at the end of the story, and The Runaways remain determined to stay out of it. Wells does manage to come up with some interesting suggestions for relationships between some of the characters—most unexpected being the friendship between Speed and Molly—and to move a few emotional arcs forward. Similarly, Marvel Boy is put right back where Morrison left him at the end of Marvel Boy, but in a rather triumphant manner.

Caselli's art is excellent, and he handles the straight superhero designs of the Young Avengers and the street-clothes of the Runaways with equal aplomb. He does a fine job of juggling some dozen or so characters, and making each distinct. He also does remarkably strong work with his "acting" through the characters.

This was an odd one to re-read after reading Young Avengers #1, as Marvel Boy is apparently being added to the cast of the new, ongoing Young Avengers title, and, in fact, the book opens with Hawkeye Kate Bishop waking up in Marvel Boy's bed after having spending the night with him.

She casually refers to the events of this series—she apparently didn't recognize Marvel Boy until she sobered up the next morning with "Oh, yeah! You kicked all our asses that one time! Billy, Teddy, everyone!"

In fact, he beat the living hell out of both teams, killing one of the Runaways (who was a shape-shifting Skrull, and thus able to recover from a broken neck), capturing Billy, Teddy and Karolina and delivering them to his boss for a few hours of torture and he began strangling Kate until he was interrupted by Nico, and started strangling her instead.

In other words, whatever Kate was drinking the night before Young Avengers #1, it must have been some strong stuff.

In Secret Invasion: Runaways/Young Avengers, the two teams once again meet, this time on the Avengers' home turf of New York City (The Runaways were still visiting there after recently returning from the 19th century with a new member in tow).

The actual events of Secret Invasion are so nonsensical that I don't think I can recount them in a way that makes a whole lot of sense. Essentially, a bunch of religious fanatic Skrulls think their gods promised them Earth as their homeland, and want to take it over; they've been taking it over by secretly infiltrating it for years, and then they simultaneously try a PR push to convince the Earthlings to join their religion while also violently invading New York City with spaceships and an army of Super-Skrulls.

The two teen teams are there when the Super-Skrulls attack and, as it turns out, both teams have their own Super-Skrulls on their teams. Teddy/Hulkling of the Young Avengers is a half-Skrull, half-Kree who was prophesied as a savior meant to unite the various warring factions of Skrulls, while Xavin of the Runaways was a Skrull prince and Super-Skrull in training who ran away.

The plot of this series focuses on Xavin's efforts to infiltrate the infiltrators, providing cover for his superhero team to get safely out of New York City, and to try and rescue Hulkling. Both Xavin and Hulkling are targeted for special attention by the invading Skrulls, since the former betrayed them and the latter's existence could maybe sway some Skrulls from their Skrullegion.

Despite the prominent roles played by several characters from both teams—mainly Xavin, Hulkling, Wiccan and Speed—this isn't really much of a Young Avengers comic. Many of the team barely cameo, with Patriot and Hawkeye barely getting a line or three. The Runaways don't fare much better, but they are certainly more of the focus of this story, as their Xavin is the de facto star, and the story starts with their point of view.This one is written by Christopher Yost, and features art by Takeshi Miyazawa. It's Miyazawa's art that is probably the most noteworthy aspect of this collection. It's rare to see teenage superheroes actually look this young, but Miyazawa actually draws them all to resemble children, rather than shorter than usual adults.

That the Secret Invasion mini seems the weaker of the two in terms of its scripting may have something to do with how short it is (it's just three issues), and the fact that the premise of the story its tied to makes it more difficult to expand the focus too far from the Skrull-related characters.

Yost's effort isn't as all around strong as Wells', but there are some fun moments in this—Speed's rescue of Molly and the Runaways' newest recruit is particularly memorable—and Miyazawa's charming art goes a long way towards making this well worth a read.

Twenty more-or-less random thoughts that occurred to me while reading The List

1.) It's just called The List, not Dark Reign: The List. I thought that was a little weird, given that the individual special all shipped with overly complicated titles, like Dark Reign: The List—The Avengers, Dark Reign: The List—Wolverine and so on. They put the words "The List" in what looks like some kind of Dark Reign font, though.


2.) I honestly can't tell you how much I hate this cover:
Not because I'm bashful about expressing my hatred for it, but simply because I can't quantify that hate. It's a lot of hate though.

Here we see five random Marvel characters more or less milling around in various half-assed poses, a list of names hovering behind them (Please note: That is not actually Norman Osborn's list, which is eight items long and shown a couple of times throughout the course of the book.) Also note that Wolverine, who is barely even in the book (despite having his name on one of the specials collected), is wearing the wrong costume, and The Punisher seems even more off-model, forgetting to put his gloves on.


3.) The book is pretty much a perfect sampler platter of the Marvel Universe circa 2009. Here's the creative roster, for example: Brian Michael Bendis, Andy Diggle, Matt Fraction, Jonathan Hickman, Rick Remender, Greg Pak, Jason Aaron, Dan Slott, Marko Djurdjevic, Billy Tan, Alan Davis, Ed McGuinness, John Romita Jr., Ben Oliver, Esad Ribic, Adam Kubert and others. Additionally, many of the characters are in modern, assuredly short-lived iterations (The X-Men are on their little island Utopia, Daken is running around as Wolverine, Bruce Banner can't turn into the Hulk, and is mentoring his son Skaar, etc). Some stories are better than others, of course, and there are a variety of art styles, but overall it's not a bad way to check in with the Marvel Universe as it currently stands.


4.) Marvel just recently released a book entitled Brian Michael Bendis: 10 Years at Marvel, celebrating the anniversary of the company's most successful and influential writer. So you know Bendis has been at this—making comics in general, making Marvel comics specifically—for a really, really long time now. So I was amused to see the first two pages of his Avengers special:
As long as Bendis has been writing these damn things, he still doesn't seem to have been able to figure out an effective way to put one of his very Bendisian conversations into a comic book page layout. That, or Ares is standing on one leg throughout that conversation for some reason.


5.) Fun fact: Lexapro is the brand name for the drug Escitalopram, a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, which is used primarily for the treatment of depression (although it is also often prescribed for anxiety disorders). I'm neither a doctor nor a psychiatrist, but as far as I know, it's not prescribed to paranoid schizophrenics. Spider-Man seems to be making a joke about Clint Barton/Hawkeye/Ronin II being paranoid, so Lexapro is a weird one to go with.


6.) Barton/Hawkeye/Ronin totally wants to kill Norman Osborn, for reasons not entirely clear to me based on this single story (He refers to the X-Men's little island as "a concentration camp," which doesn't seem much different then when they were confined to the Xavier mansion post-House of M, and is a lot less concentration camp-like than, say, Guantanamo Bay...did Hawkeye wanna kill Tony Stark or or Maria Hill or any U.S. presidents...?).

Some of the Avengers argue with Barton how killing is wrong. This story is written by the same man who wrote Secret Invasion, in which Barton advocated genocide against the Skrulls and killed a whole bunch of them himself. Everyone in the room with him in this scene were A-OK with killing Skrulls. I just don't get the moral compasses of Bendis' Avenger characters at all, as they're always changing without explanation, like a compass in a movie where the characters enter into some kind of screwy energy field or something, and the needle spins at random.

That said, while I understand the premise of "Dark Reign," the whys of it have never made any sense to me. Osborn was publicly known as a serial killer, and his redemptive act and the reason for his popularity in Secret Invasion was simply shooting the about-to-be-killed-anyway Skrull queen in the head before Wolverine could chop her head off or one of the other dozen heroes about to kill her killed her. If Secret Invasion was merely a miniseries devoted to making Osborn the new-new Nick Fury, Bendis really should have spent more time on him in the series, and shown him actually doing things that would make a reasonable case of his succeeding where Tony Stark failed (or, I don't know, maybe he just did a deal with Mephisto or Loki, and they changed Marvel continuity for him...maybe that will be part of Siege).

Wow, I got off topic real fast there, didn't I...?


7.) Norman Osborn kills 107 people in an explosion to send a message to Daredevil. That's a whole lot of civilians to just kind of kill randomly for pretty much no reason. The Daredevil story is the second one in the book, and it's the first of several times in which Osborn attempts to take out someone on his list, doesn't quite do it, and then just moves on. There's a frustrating amount of non-status quo changing, for a series all about an almost all-powerful Osborn attempting to change the status quo.


8.) I don't care for Billy Tan's artwork much. He draws one big, beefy Daredevil.


9.) I was dreading the Secret Warriors chapter, as I had little-to-no interest in the characters after meeting them in Secret Invasion, but it turned out to be a Nick Fury solo story, and, thanks to Hickman and McGuinness a pretty damn good one.


10.) I like how Fury breaks into Avengers Tower to get at Osborn, which Barton just did a few chapters ago, and he manages to do so much more effectively. It may just be a coincidence—not sure how much each writer knew about the other writers' plots—but the effect is a demonstration of how awesome Nick Fury is (and/or how relatively lame Barton is, I guess).


11.) Fury's own list is awesome, as is the fact that he has it all written down on a piece of paper and ready to show to Osborn, just in case the subject of lists comes up when they meet.


12.) I really like the way McGuinness draws Ares in his helmet:


13.) McGuinness does a lovely job of drawing Osborn making Green Goblin faces without his mask, quite effectively demonstrating that even though Osborn is supposedly reformed and in control, he's still essentially a crazy supervillain (Other writers usually demonstrate this by having Osborn yelling at himself or something a little more obvious). Poor show on the repeating image there though, McGuinness!

14.) I can't add anything of value to Abhay Khosla's discussion of the X-Men special, which I hope you've all read by now.

Although it is a pretty frustrating story. Osborn goes to the trouble of creating a weapon specifically designed to kill Namor, because Namor betrayed him by leaving his evil cabal (And how did that work, exactly? Osborn had a secret weapon behind a door to keep his reluctant allies in line, one so scary they couldn't quit. Yet Namor, Emma Frost and Doctor Doom have all since quit. Did they reveal what that weapon was? Did Osborn just never use it? If the Sentry's on his side, why not just have the Sentry beat these traitors up?). So Osborn has this monster weapon kill Atlanteans ("Hundreds are dead, if not thousands," Namor reports), and the monster ultimately attacks Namor and the X-Men. They kill it, and then Namor throws its severed head at Osborn and glowers at him.

And that's the end of that. Osborn lets Namor go, Namor leaves without trying to kill Osborn (despite the whole "hundreds are dead, if not thousands" thing).

That's pretty weird, isn't it? It's like the two enemies saw they only had a few pages left in that particular issue, and decided they would finish this later...maybe in a Siege book.


15.) Hey, if they ever get around to a Namor movie, I wonder if they'll be able to use the blue-skinned Atlanteans, or if moviegoers will just accuse them of biting off Avatar?



16.) I wonder if some of these stories will be re-collected elsewhere, perhaps grouped with the ongoing titles whose characters they feature. The Punisher issue, for example, is a pretty pivotal moment for the character, and what comes next in his own Marvel Universe book.


17.) This was my first exposure to the Bruce Banner/Skaar team. It seemed like a neat twist on the Banner/Hulk dynamic, with both personalities physically present at the same time and interacting with one another. I also liked how Pak played Banner as a sort of MacGyver-esque superhero (Has there been a Skaar, Hercules, Banner and Amadeus Cho team-up yet?). That said, I hated the art on this chapter, and I didn't understand the conflict or the resolution. I think Osborn "won," but I didn't understand how, or the goals of the participants.


18.) The Punisher story stood out as being one in which there is a clear winner and a clear loser. The Punisher gets throoughly killed in a way that's rare in superhero comics, with Daken literally slicing him into little pieces and leaving them as a bloody pile, removing any and all suspicion that The Punisher could somehow survive (Well, he does of course...the very next storyline in his personal monthly title was called, um, "FrankenCastle," and featured him as a Frankenstein's monster). I knew it was coming, and it was still something of a shock to see The Punisher finally get killed.

The more I thought about it though, the more unfortunate the issue seemed, like a bit of a lost opportunity. Marvel's only going to get so many chances to kill off The Punisher after all, and it would have been nice if he had a better death than being killed in a one-on-one fight with Wolverine's mohawk and tattoo-having son Daken. The Punisher's fought and beat and/or escaped from pretty much every superhero in The Marvel Universe multiple times by now, right? And it's Daken who finishes him off? It might have been more satisfying to see him run a gauntlet of Dark Avengers before Daken chopped him up, if not having a more unbeatable Avenger like Ares do him in.

This is another story that repeats something from earlier in the collection, in this case a fight with Daken. In the first chapter, we saw Barton take on and/or defeat most of the Dark Avengers—including Daken—before Ares ultimately captured him. If Hawkeye can take Daken and Daken can kill The Punisher, does that mean Hawkeye can wipe the floor with The Punisher? That doesn't quite sound right, does it...?


19.) Jason Aaron's Wolverine story is pretty fantastic. As I mentioned early, Wolvie just barely appears in it at all, and it's basically a team-up between the Grant Morrison-created Marvel Boy with the Grant Morrison-created Fantomex for a mission inside "The World," the Weapon-Plus factory from Morrison's New X-Men run. And surprise, surprise, Aaron writes both characters really, really well, making him one of the few people who can satisfyingly follow Morrison (Of course, this was only a single story, but it was still striking how much more closer to Morrison's Marvel Boy Aaron's was than, say, Bendis' first crack at the character was).

Maybe after Siege Bendis will retire from Marvel Universe-running, and they'll let Jason Aaron handle the gig for the next five or so year...?


20.) I was kind of shocked how good Adam Kubert's Spider-Man story was, particularly since the last time I saw his work it was pretty unimpressive. It's really too bad he can't keep a monthly schedule.

Behold—The kiddy table of evil!

Geez Norman Osborn, you're a big, powerful businessman type who's been running a federal superhero-busting organization for a couple of months, you just got a big, huge promotion to be in charge of The Avengers and the entire Fifty-State Initiative, and you decide to hold a super-secret meeting in the basement of Avengers Tower, a meeting with two highly irritable monarchs, the Norse god of mischief, the kingpin of super-crime and an X-Lady, and that's the table you decide to use?

Really? That's the best table you can supply for that particular meeting? My kitchen table is bigger and more stately than that. That looks like a piece of patio furniture.

Just look at poor Dr. Doom there. Dude is pissed to be seated at such a small table. He's like one second away from "Doom demands elbow room! Bah, Namor and Red Hood won't quit kicking Doom's feet under the table!"

This isn't a very auspicious beginning to your dark reign, Osborn.

Aren't you taking this "Team of Rivals" thing a little too far, Mr. President-Elect?

Putting your vanquished political opponents like Hillary Clinton and Bill Richardson in your cabinet, and keeping a token Republican like Defense Secretary Robert Gates is one thing.

But making Norman "The Green Goblin" Osborn the Boss of All Superheroes? That really doesn't seem like a very good idea.

The coming of Skrullactus

So, you know this Secret Invasion story going on in Marvel Comics at the moment? It's a story about a group of shape-shifting aliens called Skrulls who are trying to take over the world by secretly replacing various heroes, villains, babies and butlers over a period of years until they're practically running the world before anyone even knows they're here.

Two issues ago, Reed Richards invented some kind of deus ex maguffinica that shoots a beam at the ground and reveals all disguised Skrulls as Skrulls. In the latest issue, Reed turns it on the bulk of the Skrull army (who, fighting a 21st century interplanetary war, have decided to emulate the 18th century style of formal warfare, and amass all of their soldiers in one place to fight all of their enemy's soldier).

Once Reed's Skrull Revealer is activated, the Skrulls all go green, and their wrinkly chins and pointy ears appear, although most are still wearing superhero or supervillain costumes, so either they're wearing real costumes (instead of just shapeshifting them on) or the Skrull-shower only affects the area between the chin and ears.

The sixth issue ends with a double-page spread of all the real superheroes and supervillains fighting all the Skrulls (which might have been an exciting last panel, if it weren't immediately preceded by another double-page spread). In the background, we see this Skrull: Apparently, there was a Skrull disguised as Galactus, I guess. That has got to be the absolute worst Skrull disguise. Galactus is, of course, a god-like being who travels the universe looking for planets to eat and, when he usually visits Earth, it's to destroy it. So, not a very good person to dress up as when trying to secretly infiltrate Earth; chances are, all the heroes are going to confront you as soon as they see you anyway. It would be a little like if someone were trying to infiltrate Britain in the mid-1940s and decided to disguise themselve as Hitler. A giant Hitler.

Anyway, that Skrull got screwed when they were doling out disguise assignments.

More on Bendis' goofy-@#$ swearing in Secret Invasion

As he did in the previous issue of Secret Invasion, writer Brian Michael Bendis included self-censored swear words, represented by caps-locked number keys (i.e. "@#$%!"), in Secret Invasion #6. And, as he also did in the previous issue, he included such self-censored swear words with odd-numbered characters, so that if we assume a one-random-SHIFT + number-key-to-one-letter-in-a-swear-word ratio, there were a couple instances of highly idiosyncratic swearing in this issue as well.

For example, when New York City super-crime kingpin The Hood gathers his syndicate of super-criminals on a rooftop to watch the melee between the Nick Fury lead superheroes and the Skrull invaders, one of them responds to the action by saying, "@#$, are you guys seein' this?"

A three-letter swear word? That can only mean the random villain said one of the following:

"Ass, are you guys seein' this?"

"Fag, are you guys seein' this?"

"Tit, are you guys seein' this?"

Those are the only possibilities I can think of, anyway. I'm not up on NYC criminal slang, but all three of those sound rather unnatural to me. But hell, maybe they just swear funny in the Marvel Universe.

Here, a New York policeman asks some demonstraters with signs welcoming The Skrulls what's up, and the one of them sees some actual Skrulls approaching, and says "@#$, look!"

Again, what did he remark?

"Ass, look!"

"Fag, look!"

"Tit, look!"

Maybe "ass" is the new "damn" in New York swearing style..?

The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #6

This week a new issue of Secret Invasion, the single greatest line-wide superhero crossover about aliens secretly infiltrating earth from a major publisher this millennium, was released. Which means it's time once again to examine an issue of Millennium, the single greatest line-wide superhero crossover about aliens secretly infiltrating earth from a major publisher last millennium.

The action opens in deep space, where Superman leads a very determined team of heroes. As you can see, this installment is entitled “Out.” In the next 22 pages, one of these heroes will indeed come out. I’m assuming it’s Hal Jordan. But let’s find out together, shall we?


So let’s see, it says here that the “hidden home world of the Manhunters has burst like a ripe melon in the violence of its war with the spaceborne heroes of the earth--”

What? We missed the whole thing? Last issue, these guys were setting out to find the Manhunter homeworld, and this issue we learn they’ve already located, fought and violently destroyed it? In a tie-in? Man, what a rip-off.

Note that the ultimate Manhunter, the mammoth Highmaster (not to be confused with the mammoth Master Mold) managed to escape Superman and company’s act of android genocide.

They’re in hot pursuit of this giant, yellow Manhunter, who suddenly blasts them and turns to face them shouting about how they had cost him “the fruit of three billion years” and that no man escapes the manhunters. (Hmm, if one were to devise a Millennium drinking game, in which you had to take a shot every time someone said “no man escapes the manhunters” in this thing, I wonder if one would merely be really drunk right now, or dead of alcohol poisining?)

The heroes brace themselves for the onslaught:
Man, I love that crazy googly-eyed zombie Lantern.

Using his “anti-green light,” the Highmaster traps everyone in space debris save Superman and the Martian Manhunter.

Superman arrogantly assesses the situation, while the Highmaster rolls out his forearm cannons
and blasts them so hard he disintegrates J’onn’s harness right off (Man up, Martian Manhunter!)

The Highmaster then seems to shrink out of existence, while ranting about how the Guardians will get theirs yet. Dr. Fate tries to pursue using “The Call of Vayu,” but it’s the wrong spell, and the heroes are thrown into some infernal locale where they all start dying. Dr. Fate transfers their life energies into Superman and Hal, who are the last two flying. They rush off to find the Guardians, probably in a tie-in.

Back on earth, the chosen are all passed out in the grass in their transcendental states, while the immortals look on. Herupa Hando Ho explains that they are experiencing visions of the unity permeating the universe and their united places in it.”

Joe Staton and Ian Gibson draw those visions out for us:

Okay, Gregorio dreams of being a…dendrite of some sort? Celia Windward sees an abstract space monster? Janwillem Kroef pictures himself as a fat Hitler? Takeo Yakata is a samurai business man? Floronic Man imagines just cold dancing in the grass, Tom Kalamaku dreams of being a Green Lantern and punching a fat alien tapir man in the ass during the oath recitation ceremony, Xiang Po dreams of a wicked skateboard design, and Betty Clawman dreams of squatting in the desert, just like she was doing when the Immortals first encountered her.

Outside of their skulls, Wonder Woman tries to strike up a conversation with Batman, and he bites her head off:
They’re still a long way away from being the BFFs they’ll become in JLoA about 20 years later. Of course, this is set in the post-Crisis continuity, in which Wonder Woman was still a recent arrival to America, and had just met Batman and the other heroes. I suppose this scene didn't even happen after Infinite Crisis's de-reboot of Wonder Woman continuity. So just ignore it.

Guy Gardner, still suffering from the bonk on the head that turned him into an incredibly nice, deferential guy, rings himself and Batman over to Booster Gold International, where Booster is waiting for them.

Booster downs Batman with a laser blast, punches Guy down a flight of stairs and then does this:
Wow. Booster Gold took out Guy Gardner and Batman! At the same time!

When the Chosen start to awaken, Tom finds his family anxiously waiting for him, and not too happy about his going all cosmic on them:
I like the look on his son’s face, when he realizes his dad must be on drugs. Just say no, dad!

Of course, as we've seen in previous issues, Nancy Reagan, proponent of the Just Say No campaign, is herself an evil Manhunter android, so perhaps just saying no to drugs is one of the Manhunters' schemes within schemes? Perhaps people of the '80s should have just said yes more often...?

Janwillem’s finally had enough of this “hippy hoorah,” particularly when he realizes that his consciousness is finally being unified with those of a bunch of filthy minorities.

He demands the Immortals stop or he’ll leave, to which Nadia responds, “Farewell!”

On the way out, Janwillem takes a moment to hurl a racial epithet at a big guy with a super wishing ring on his hand.
John Stewart responds by...
decking him with his power ring? Jeez John; can’t you use your own fist? You had to generate a giant ring construct fist to deck the fat old guy?

Finally, Floronic Man sneaks off to meet a Manhuner agent, as he was supposed to betray the Chosen to the Manhunters. Instead he betrays the Manhunters, opting to throw in fully with the Chosen and the Immortals. Rather than a double-agent, he's become a triple-agent. I think that's how that works.

As Floronic Man turns the captured Manhunter agent over to Batman and company for interrogation, Blue Beetle and Mister Miracle announce that they’ve figured out that the Manhunters must have a secret base at the center of the earth.

The heroes decide to strike there…next issue!



Previously:
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #1
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #2
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #3
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #4
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #5

On two invasions, one secret and one emphatic

Or: The Invasion! trade comes out tomorrow, and Secret Invasion still doesn't make any goddam sense to me

Tomorrow sees the long-awaited (by me) release of Invasion!, the three-part 1988 series by Bill Mantlo, Keith Giffen, Bart Sears, P. Craig Russell and little known artist Todd McFarlane.

Now, I’m not going to buy it (at least not tomorrow), as I have the originals, and like the way they smell just fine, but I always thought it was kind of insane that DC didn’t have the series collected in trade, if only because it includes pages and pages of McFarlane art, which it seems safe to assume a lot of people might want to check out now that they know who this McFarlane fellow is, and new examples of his art are getting fewer and farther between.

The story itself won’t teach you any great truths about human existence or make your teeth whiter, but it’s not at all bad for a superheroes vs. alien invaders story. Sure, there’s probably a bit too much space politics for my taste, but it’s still your favorite DC heroes of the late ‘80s whaling on alien ass. And, like each of DC’s big line-wide crossovers, it provides a nice snapshot of the ever-changing DCU; for that purpose, I think trades of each of these things, good or bad, are worthwhile (at least for fans of DC super-comics, anyway. (You know what would make me buy this tomorrow? If DC collected this, with all 30 of its tie-ins, in a black and white, cheap paper stock Showcase Presents style collection. If I did my math right, that adds up to a 900-page story. So maybe Showcase Presents: Invasion! Vols. 1 and 2. How awesome would that be?).

I’m not sure why DC decided to finally collect this series in trade now (Is it me, or has McFarlane’s star really faded in the last five years or so?), unless they simply saw Giffen’s somewhat resurgent popularity, nostalgia for the era, and the fact that DC and Marvel readers were sufficiently interested in space stuff to support books like Green Lantern Corps, Annihilation, Nova Rann/Thanagar Trade Agreement of 2007, Jim Starlin Draws Hawkman and so forth.

Personally, I think it may just be the same reason that DC decided to finally publish Millennium in trade this summer—just to be dicks to Marvel.

(I don’t mean that as a criticism; I think they should have gotten Legends out in trade the same year as Civil War, and The Flash: Hell To Pay as “One More Day” was going on. Marvel may be selling loads of these books, but it wouldn’t hurt DC to tweak their rivals by saying, “Yeah, great job on that hot new story, guys; remember when we did it, twenty years ago?”)

As I’ve spent probably way too much time already discussing, Secret Invasion shares some surface similarities with the 20-year-old DC crossover Millennium, in that both are about sinister alien forces invading earth by posing as friends and family of the superheroes there.

It also bears some similarity to Invasion!, not simply in the fact that it’s about an alien invasion because, come on, aren’t like, one-fourth of super-comics about alien invasions? It even echoes the title of the DC version.

So maybe after not making a big deal out of the similarities of other highly-hyped Marvel events to old DC stories, DC simply decided they were going to take the time to tweak their rivals here, and get Millennium and Invasion! in front of Secret Invasion readers to, if not rain on Marvel’s parade, at least piss on the corner of a street on its parade schedule.

Now, Invasion! and Secret Invasion are still very, very different stories. The latter is secret, the former is not. Also, the former makes perfect sense, whereas I’m having a hard time figuring out what the Skrull battle plan is in the latter.

In Invasion!, the race of aliens called The Dominators (who look like every sinister oriental villain fro Golden Age comics, only without the noses) convince an alliance of hostile aliens to invade Earth and remove the threat of meta-humans from the universe once and for all. So the Khunds (What if Genghis Khan’s mongol horde was pink?), the Thanagarians (Known fascist asshole Hawkman’s even more fascist asshole bretheren), the Durlans (shape-shifters familiar to Legion nerds), the hilariously named Gil’Dishpan (someone for Aquaman to fight) and several races form the Vega system who don’t use animal products and thus brought vegan culture to earth in the late ‘80s, all unite to invade earth and capture, kill or killpture all the super-heroes. They do so by dropping bombs, and shooting laser guns and suchlike, conquering Australia and hoping to go from there.

It was a pretty straightforward invasion plan. Basically, just step one, invade, step two, accept the enemies surrender, or, if they refuse to surrender, keep invading until they do.

But what the hell are the Skrulls up to, exactly? They’ve spent years planning and preparing for a very gradual invasion and, once they’ve just about rearranged earth politics to the point that they’re practically running the earth without anyone even knowing they’re there, they say, “Screw it, let’s just do it old school with infantry and so on after all.” While also pulling an elaborate bit of mental warfare on some Avengers that doesn’t really make much sense. And also appealing to the people of the world (or maybe just America?) to willingly join the Skrull Empire, while they’re simultaneously sending their shocktroopers to conquer various regions.

Pick a plan and stick with it, Skrulls!

Their main plan—infiltrating the superhero community with their own, undetectable agents—seems like a good one. They may have been involved with engineering the superhero civil war, the ejection of Hulk into space, the assassination of Captain America, the SHRA that made half of Marvel’s heroes outlaws, the Fifty-State Initiative. With a few more agents in the right places—one in for President Bush, one in for Maria Hill, one in for Tony Stark—they could rule the world without anyone being any the wiser, although they seem to shoot this idea down on account of wanting to make the likes of Tony Stark and Reed Richards suffer in a way that doesn’t include replacing them.

So this plan makes sense. If they keep it up, a good PR campaign could surely sell the American people and or the population of Earth that joining the Skrull Empire voluntarily is actually a pretty good idea.

But then, the Skrulls do their Savage Land psi-op thing, which consists of taking a group of brainwashed suicide soldier Skrulls who think they’re Marvel characters from the ‘70s, putting them on a spaceship, and crashland-ing them in the Savage Land. This sends both teams of Avengers scrambling there, and they are suddenly very confused for, like, an hour. Oh man, who do they trust? Are the heroes on the ship Skrulls, or are the heroes not on the ship the Skrulls?

You can see how this will mess with the Avengers’ minds a bit, but so what? What’s the point exactly? Especially if the Skrulls don’t even know they’re really Skrulls, like Captain Skrullmerica and Skrullckingbird? Wouldn’t they end up joining forces with the Avengers to fight off the other Skrulls?

While they’re doing that stupid little gambit, the Skrulls also attack as Skrulls. They don’t pretend to be X-Men and Avengers teaming up to destroy New York, and push public opinion against the superheroes even harder, they just start pouring Super-Skrulls into New York City (and, if you read the tie-ins, San Francisco, Portland, Oregon, Wakanda and England) to start blowing shit up and fighting superheroes. Oh no, the average citizen of earth might think, alien invaders are invading and they’re completely destroying everything!

And then the really, really stupid part. There’s a weird two-page spread in Secret Invasion #5 with a million little boxes on it, and in each box, a well-known earth celebrity is shown smiling on a TV screen, each saying a snippet of the same speech: “We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to save.” They say they want the Earth to join the Skrull Empire, and in return they will end “poverty, hardship disease and greed.”

This might be a convince argument, if the Skrulls weren’t also in the middle of a violent invasion. At the center of the spread, we see a Skrull shaped like Tony Stark speaking on one of those Times Square jumbotron screens, and he says “We wish no harm or bloodshed…” and the building the screen is mounted on has a big smoking hole in it.

I was rather confused by this whole sequence, not only because it seemed to contradict the other two major aspects of the Skrull plan (secret infiltration to run the world behind the scenes, and open military attack), but because I was unsure why the Skrulls took the shapes they did. Some are celebrities here in the real world, some are Marvel characters (Dr. Doom, Namor, Magneto) and two are Marvel characters we know isn’t a Skrull (Tony Stark, Reed Richards).

So does that mean that all of these Skrulls simply took these shapes for this address, or that these people have been Skrulls all along?

See, we’re talking Ann Coulter, Stephen Colbert, Paris Hilton, Barack Obama, John McCain, The Pope, Tom Cruise, Osama bin Laden, Tiger Woods, Chris Rok, Opra, the Dali Lama, Kim Jong Il, and some others I’m less sure of (Mitt Romney? Hilary Clinton? South Park’s Cartman and Homer Simpson for some reason?).

If all of those people were just Skrulls all along, why come out and say, “Hey, we’re Skrulls! Join the Empire or die!” wouldn’t it have made more sense for them to stay in character? Like Skrullprah do some shows about how it’s time for one world government over the course of the year, and then, when a Skrull delegation comes along, start talking about how it seems like the smart thing to do? Have Skrullbama and John SkrullCain both insert “Joining the Skrull Empire” into their political parties’ respective platforms?

That is a much better plan, Skrulls!

But, like I said, it’s unclear if these are just Skrulls adopting faces they know earth people like to look at while they make their pitch, or if Tom Cruise has actually been a Skrull since Days of Thunder.

Either way, the plan is overly complicated, and each prong of attack seems to be at odds with itself. The majority of the superheroes could probably just sit the rest of this one out and watch the Skrulls defeat themselves, the way things seem to be going.

The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #5

Now that DC has finally done the right thing—with "the right thing" being here defined as "something done mainly to be dicks to those bullies over at Marvel who are always making fun of them about market share"—and released Millennium in a handsome, re-colored trade paperback, there's not really a whole lot of incentive to keep doing this monthly looks at 1988's weekly series which bears some conceptual similarity to Secret Invasion.

I mean, if any of you are terribly interested in Millennium and want to know whether the Manhunter androids defeat and destroy all of DC's superheroes or not, you can just go get a copy of the trade and find out for yourself. Like Sally has. (Although she may have just bought it because of Hal Jordan's sexy Green Lantern pool party; for a DC crossover, this thing does have an awfully high Green Lantern-butt-per-issue ratio).

Of cousre, I'm already halfway through this thing, so at this point, I should probably just soldier on through the back half. It's not like it's going to be any worse than the first half, right?

Let's see, what do Steve Englehart, Joe Staton and Ian Gibson have for us this time...


Teaching! This is the issue that will contain teaching! It says so right there on the cover! Man, this is going to be the best issue yet!

So, what are we going to be taught, exactly?
Uh oh.This is going to take a while, isn’t it?

Yes, the immortals Herupa Hando Hu (left, blue) and a Nadia Sefir (right, peach) sit their eight chosen ones down in Hal Jordan's back yard to explain the entire universe to them.

The explanation is going to start out heavy on the Philosophy 101:
(Please note Gregorio in the top panel; as the first and flamingest gay super-character, his portrayal throughout this series is actually the most interesting and relevant aspect of Millennium today. Just to remind us that he is soooooo gay, his hand is on his hip at all times. Even when he's reclining on the ground).

Okay, so nature of the universe, logic, philosophy...where do the superheroes come in?

Page four.

Here's Superman, talking to himself and then, realizing that he was talking out loud to himself, switching to thinking to himself, which is a much less worrisome habit for the most powerful man in the world to display. He thinks about his own adventures thus far during the line-wide Millennium event, most of which will have occurred off-panel if you are reading this for the first time in trade. This leads directly into the climax of the entire series: Superman walking in on some kind of crazy congratulations surprise party for Batman...



Mike Sterling already discussed the above splash page at his site earlier this week, and both he and his commenters pointed out some of the awesomeness and some of the context.

What I love about this scene is the sheer coincidence of all of those characters saying "Way to go, Batman!" simultaneosuly instead of, say, "Hooray!" or "Yeah!" And all of them saying it at the precise moment Superman walked in the door. It's like Batman knew he was coming and planned for them all to say it at the precise moment Superman walked in.

Outside, Nadia follows up HHH's speech about the concept of one with a panel about the conecept of two, which means the universe is basically all about counting, and then we see inside Batman's head a bit regarding his rivalry with once and future BFF Superman...


Batman and Captain Atom and the Spectre catch us up on what happened in their tie-ins—Batman couldn’t find Shaw but ran into Jim Corrigan, and together they resuced the Manhunter hostages before temple exploded; Captain Atom and Firestorm were fighting one another do to some Manhunter mix-up madness, and were able to save the others from the explosions; the Suicide Squad was around but Cap is keeping 'em secret from the assembly—and then we cut back to the immortals, talking about another number, and we see a remarkably on-the-ball President Ronald Reagan, thinking on his feet:
Man, Reagan gets a lot of panel-time in this thing. He's had more lines than Wonder Woman at this point, I think.

Aside from the teaching—the numbers four through 9 are covered in similar fashion—the main non-lecture action is when Aquaman and Aqualad show up at Hal's pad and bring the assembled superheroes a flying saucer they found. The presence of the saucer gets the superheroes thinking. Even if Batman and company seem to have defeated the majority of the Manhunter andorids in the tie-in adventures they had in their own books, they could always send more androids to Earth. The only solution, then, is to fly to the Manhunter world and, I don't know, destory them all.

This sounds a bit extreme to me, like England deciding after they defeated the Spanish armada that the only way to protect themselves form future Spanish agression would be to travel to Spain and kill every single person there, but what do I know, I'm not a superhero, and Manhunter androids aren't sixteenth-century Spainards.

The Manhunter Kill Krew consists of Superman, Captain Atom, Firestorm, Martian Manhunter, The Hawks and a trio of GLs, with Dr. Fate providing magical transport. Will they be able to broker a peace treaty, or will they commit genocide? We'll have to keep reading to find out.

Meanwhile, on the Manhunter homeworld, Harbinger is still being held hostage...at least until help arrives, in the form of some kind of crazy zombie Green Lantern who talks a bit like Bloom County's Bill The Cat:



Hmmm...a zombie Green Lantern. DC should really do something with that concept in the near future...

Finally, the immortals explain the number "ten" to their chosen ones:
Profound! And, as Nadia says, that's all there is to the universe. The chosen ones are now ready to move all of humanity forward by becoming the worst superheroes of the past 2,000 years, a process that will take roughly three more issues to complete.



Previously:
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #1
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #2
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #3
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #4

Warning: This post is totally full of swear words, and is thus NSFW (or for people who don't like the sailor-talk)

The above is a panel from Secret Invasion #5, depicting the superhero Hawkeye swearing vengeance on all Skrulls for the emotional wringer they had just put him through.

Obviously, it’s a rather goofily melodramatic panel taken out of context like this, and it’s pretty goofily melodramatic in context too. But the goofiest part is that writer Brian Michael Bendis has Hawkeye get so mad that he screams “Every @#$%ing last one of them!”

The persistence of swear words, obscured by the caps-locked number keys, in today’s comic books cracks me right the hell up.

It’s one thing to have characters swear the way that, say, Sarge does in Beetle Bailey, or Hagar in Hagar the Horrible, where it’s just a string of funny little symbols like lightning bolts and skulls mixed in with the @'s and %'s, with no clues to what they’re actually saying. But when Bendis uses the old @#$% style swears, he usually does it in such a context that it’s pretty clear what he meant to say anyway.

Hawkeye is clearly saying “Every fucking last one of them!” because that’s the only swear word that really makes sense in their, right? Bendis does this in his Avengers comics a lot: “@#$% you” is clearly “fuck you,” “Shut the @#$% up” is clearly “Shut the fuck up,” et cetera.

What I don’t really understand is why he bothers to do this. If you’re old enough to be able to read and understand that @#$% means a swear word, then you’ve heard swearing before and will just go ahead and read “fuck” in that panel with Hawkeye anyway. So not only is it the same as saying “fuck,” but it also draws attention to the fact that the writer/publisher is purposely not saying “fuck;” it’s a kind of worst of both worlds situation where the writer looks both crass and cowardly at the same time.

(Whether Marvel comics should have such language is perhaps another argument; they aren’t governed by the Comics Code Authority, they self-rate this particular comic as “Teen-Plus,” one really needs a full-time job to be able to afford Secret Invasion anyway, and is salty language any worse than scenes of shirtless Tigra being pistol-whipped in her bedroom on videotape? Or worse than our heroes totally murdering a bunch of people at the climax of this issue?)

And it’s so easily avoided, anyway. If Hawkeye simply screamed “Every last one of them!” in that panel, what would be lost, exactly, other than the comic strip swear word, reminding readers that as gritty, sexy, violent, morally ambiguous and “mature” as this Marvel comic may be, it’s still one that’s too immature to be allowed to swear like a grown-up comic?

Anyway, the reason I bring this up at all this month is because Bendis writes some pretty weird “@#$%” scenes in this issue. Because he uses those symbols so specifically, at a one “@#$%” –per-implied-word (or part of a word) ratio, you can almost always be sure of what the word is meant to be.

We’ve already mentioned that Hawkeye is probably saying “Every fucking last one of them!” Because “Every cocking last one of them!” doesn’t make sense.

Sometimes it’s slightly more ambiguous. For example, this scene of Agent Brand getting frustrated while trying to free Reed Richards before a bunch of Skrulls rush in and kill her:

She could be saying, “Fuck!” Or she could be saying, “Shit!” Both are perfectly contextually appropriate, commonly used four-letter words used to express frustration. (And here, if Bendis wanted to avoid the kiddie comic comparison, he could have just went with “Damn!” or “Crap!” or even a multi-word, "clean" expression of frustration, like, “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon…”)

There were a couple of instances where the one-to-one @#$% for swear word substitutions just don’t really make any sense. Or else some of these people just swear funny.

So, for example, here’s Agent Brand again, giving up on a plan to trick a roomful of Skrulls into abandoning ship and deciding to just open an airlock and suck them all out into space instead:

Now, contextually, “Eh, fuck it” would make the most sense. If I were Bendis, I might have just said “Eh, screw it” to avoid having to use the @#$% symbols at all, but “screw” isn’t a bad word. So he probably meant “fuck it.”

BUT! Note that the “@#$%%” used has not four characters, as the four-letter word “fuck” does, but instead has five. Therefore, Brand used a five letter swear word that is inappropriate for a comic book readership of “Teen-Plus.”

Whatever could she have said?

Most of the swear words you don’t seem to be able to say in a non-Max Marvel comic are four letters long: Fuck, shit, piss, cock and the, um, other c-word I can’t bring myself to type.

But a five-letter swear word? Let’s see…

“Eh, bitch it.”

Unlikely; I’m fairly certain “bitch” is okay in a “Teen-Plus” book, either as a noun or verb.

“Eh, pussy it.”

“Eh, prick it.”

Nah, neither of those make any sense.

“Eh, penis it.”

Now, “penis” isn’t really a swear word, but I imagine it’s one that Marvel heroes can’t say unless maybe, maybe they’re talking about an actual penis. But I don’t think they’d let Captain America say, “God, Iron Man, why are you being such a penis about this Registration Act?”

Of course, “Eh, penis it” doesn’t make any more sense than any of the other options, but it’s the last of the five-letter swear words I can think of.

Conclusion: Agent Brand swears funny.

The other odd swear word came from Ares, the Greek god of war who is currently serving on Iron Man’s Avengers team.

Engaged in a battle against Skrulls that think they’re Avengers, Ares rushes up behind a Skrull that thinks it’s Thor and is trying to convince the Avengers that he is actually the Odinson. Ares buries his battleaxe in him mid-speech, saying:

Note that there are only three characters in this swear word, eliminating the obvious “Shut your fucking hole!” Or less obvious “Shut your pissing hole!” or “Shut your shitting hole!”

A three letter swear word?

Did Ares say, “Shut your assing hole!” to Thor before smiting him?

The only other swear word I can think of that would have three letters would be “fag,” but if he attached an “-ing” to it, you’d also add a “g,” making it, “Shut your fagging hole!” That also eliminates “cum,” which, while not technically a swear word, is still something you wouldn’t hear Spider-Man and Wolverine talking about in a Marvel comic.

So, “Shut your assing hole!” it must be. That doesn’t make very much sense, but then I think Ares is probably the kind of guy who gets so angry that he gets flustered and says some pretty nonsensical stuff in the heat of battle.

Stuff like, “Shut your assing hole!”

The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #4

The fourth issue of Millennium, helpfully entitled “Forth,” begins with a grim Batman hiding in the bushes outside The Green Lantern Citadel (i.e. Hal Jordan’s condo), frowning at the gathering there and thinking, “I don’t like it”:
Coincidentally, lurking in the bushes, frowning at the rest of the gathering and thinking, “I don’t like it” is the exact same thing I do at all outdoor parties.

Writer Steve Englehart quickly catches us up on what’s been going on in the manyMillenium tie-ins of the previous week, none of which I have read or re-read. We learn that eight of the Immortals’ chosen people have survived—including supervillain/plant man Floronic Man—and they’ve all been brought to Hal’s swinging bachelor pad for a garden party to get to know one another better.

This is accomplished via the GL rings, which translate everyone’s native language into English (Although can’t seem to do anything about Celia Windward’s Chris Claremont-ian accent).

Of the chosen, Giorgio continues to be the only one who seems at all interesting to read about:


Unless you count the fat, racist white South African guy. His racism is refreshingly blatant. I mean, it takes some courage to dis a bunch of lunatics, mongrels and degenerates right to their faces, especially when some of ‘em have superpowers:


Batman, meanwhile, isn’t just brooding, he’s also helping catch us up on what’s transpired in the crossover so far, until he’s hit by inspiration:

Inspiration apparently involving the gay pirate version of Manhunter.

Oh, and I think Ian Gibson’s Reagan deserves closer examination:

As lame as it can sometimes be when super-comics try to pretend their stories exist in the really-real real world, I'm occassionally glad they do, if only because it gives us such visual treats as Ian Gibson's vaguely Lincoln-ian Ronald Reagan.

But back Batman, he double-checks something on his Bat-computer, then hops on a STAR Labs ship headed for the swamps south of Houma, which is where “the cult of the Manhunter congregates, like ‘gators on a bloated dog!"

There, The Manunters are in the process of recruiting Booster Gold to their cause, by making a deal with the one man whose collar is as big and pointy as Booster’s:


Meanwhile, the immortals give the eight chosen ones (their chosen eight?) one last chance to back out before commencing with their never really all that clearly explained plan to push humanity forward into the next millennium.

Each answer in the affirmative. Grigorio, whom, don’t forget, is gay and therefore not terribly likely to breed with a woman at any point in the near future, says, “Well, dears, I never thought I’d do anything to advance evolution--"

See, it’s funny because he’s gay!

Immortal Guardian Herupa Hando Hu then invites them all within the citadel to begin their “instruction in matters cosmic.”

Mister Miracle finally notices that Martian Manhunter is, in fact, named Martian Manhunter, which that one guy pointed out in last issue’s press conference:

I love the weary look on J’onn’s face as he replies, like he’s already said this like sixteen times.

Back in the swamps, pot-bellied Warden Economos is getting ready to send the Suicide Squad out into action against the Manhunters.

You’ll note among their number here is Gay Pirate Manhunter Mark Shaw, also known as the The Privateer. This doesn’t sit well with Captain Boomerang, who thinks he’s a “bloody droob!” who will likely betray them all.

Bloody droob or not, it was Shaw that Batman was hoping to meet in the swamps, of course, but he’s apparently just missed him.

Economos lies to Batman, telling him that Shaw was released for time served two weeks ago. But Batman doesn’t buy it, being the world’s greatest detective and all.

In New York City, we meet up with cover girl Madame Xanadu, who just got her own Vertigo series because Vertigo just can’t seem to get past the fact that the first group of obscure DC superheroes who were turned into Vertigo series were such a hit, that all they have to do is keep repeating that formula and there will eventually be another Swamp Thing or Sandman, despite the relative failures of every attempt that followed, most recently and most spectacularly Beware The Creeper and Deadman (Did you recognize that last sentence as a run-on sentence? Congratulations! You may have a future in copy editing; more of a future than I have in writing).

Now this was back when Madame Xanadu was sharing office space with Jim “The Spectre” Corrigan.

A bearded Manhunter operative comes in to have his cards read by Xanadu, and when she turns to show him a Manhunter mask she acquired for her collection of occult curiosities, he clobbers her, puts on the mask and then heads upstairs to ransack Corrigan’s office, looking for info on The Spectre.

When Corrigan returns, the Manhunter acolyte escapes, and then The Spectre appears to conduct a séance involving Corrigan, Xanadu and Kim.

By placing one hand on the cards and the other on the globe, The Spectre is able to pinpoint the location of the Manhunters—Louisiana which, um, we already knew.

But now Corrigan knows too, and he’s headed there, giving us another of those swell last pages where we see multiple story threads all headed in the same direction:


And if you ever wondered what Batman’s motor-boating face looks like, wonder no more:


And that's it for Millennium #4! Be here the week after Secret Invasion #5 comes out for the pulse-pounding fifth issue of Milleenium, in which the chosen ones get a lecture on the nature of the universe by The Immortals. No, I'm not making that up! Actual comic book lecturing! In just twenty-some short days!



Previously:
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #1
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #2
The Other Secret Invasion: Millennium #3