With Marvel's Secret Invasion series having debuted a few weeks ago and the launch of DC's Final Crisis only about six weeks away, now seems like a good time to consider each series for a moment or two.
I've already described Secret Invasion, in which chameleon-like Skrulls have apparently infiltrated the Earth and are threatening to take over, but what is Final Crisis all about? As the title suggests, it's at least tangentially related to 1986's Crisis on Infinite Earths and 2005's Infinite Crisis. At the New York Comic Convention this weekend, Final Crisis was described as "the final saga of the multiverse." It's also been tagged as "the day evil won." Apparently some really bad stuff happens, on a cosmic level, "and the DC Universe will never be the same again." At least one well-established Justice Leaguer is alleged to be killed during it (Internet speculation is that it'll be the Martian Manhunter). To which I say: yawn!
Now, it's entirely possible that writer Grant Morrison and artist J.G. Jones will knock my socks off with their 7 issues of Final Crisis. But if they do, it'll be a very pleasant surprise for this fan. Central to the plot are Jack Kirby's New Gods characters, who I quite frankly have zero interest in. I didn't find any of Kirby's 1970s work to be the least bit appealing, either when it was coming out, or since. The characters themselves - Darkseid, Orion, Metron, Mister Miracle, Big Barda, etc - all seem two dimensional at best, with the same notes being struck every time they appear. Other fans have seemed enthralled by these archetypes, including the aforementioned Grant Morrison, but to me they're just blah. Beyond the so-called Fourth World cast, what I get out of what I've heard about Final Crisis is that something will occur that changes the basic nature of DC's multiverse. That would be the multiverse that they've done almost nothing worthwhile with since re-introducing it a couple years ago? Yeah. I wonder why my expectations are so low, hmmm?
On the Marvel side, Secret Invasion posits a world in which no one can be trusted, because they might be an evil, shape-shifting alien in disguise. I can see some good potential there, but considering that the series will spill over into dozens of other comics beyond the 8-issue mini-series, is it really deep enough of a concept to carry that much story? Somewhat reminiscent of DC's (rather crappy) Millennium series from the 80s, Secret Invasion could similarly fall into the trap of simply being a "shock of the week" series, as character after character is revealed to be an imposter... or are they? I think the true measure of this event will be what tales come out of it in the year or two immediately after the central series wraps up. Civil War continues to leave its fingerprints on the Marvel Universe, for example, but nothing really new seems to have come out of it in that time.
By the same token, will Final Crisis have any lasting impact? Wasn't the DC Universe supposed to lighten up following Infinite Crisis? If so, was that it? Did I blink and miss the 2nd Golden Age? With some of the downright depressing storylines that DC's run over the past year - in Batman, Checkmate, Countdown, Salvation Run, and Green Lantern, just to name a few off the top of my head - I kind of thought that we were still waiting for that particular makeover to start!
It's entirely possible that Morrison has something incredible up his sleeve, but considering that his Seven Soldiers series of a few years back left me cold, I'm not feeling all that optimistic right now. While I dearly loved his early issues of Animal Man and JLA, the majority of his work of late has been mildly entertaining, at best. I don't know if maybe he's doing brilliant work and I'm just too dense to get it, but it certainly hasn't worked for me.
On the art front, I can safely give the nod to Final Crisis. Jones is a good artist, as he showed with 52 great covers on 52. Leinil Yu, the Secret Invasion artist, is more of an acquired taste... and one that I haven't picked up, personally! Most of his characters just look wrong to me, and not in a "oooh, he's a Skrull!" sort of way, either! I can live with Yu's style on a series that's well written, but it definitely adds nothing to the experience for me.
Ultimately, I'm not looking forward to either series with the kind of fanboy enthusiasm that previous events have gripped me in. On the other hand, I'm planning to buy both, and expect that I'll get my money's worth... just maybe not much beyond that!
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