SuperSearnold - Comic Book Reviews

Greetings from your friendly neighborhood Searnold [Shár- Nŭhld]. Welcome to my comic book review blog - where you’ll always get recommendations on what to read but you’ll never get any spoilers.

Today we continue Secret Invasion Week with Secret Invasion - Front Line. I know I told you I’d look for a Secret Invasion title I could give a BAD review to (actually, if you want to go back a few weeks I did a review on Secret Invasion - Runaways/ New Avengers #1 which I thought sucked) - but I’ll keep looking. Until I find something though… I thought Secret Invasion - Front Line was genius. My favorite Front Line title so far.

The premise of Front Line has always been seeing the major crossover events from the persepective of reporters Ben Urich and Sally Floyd. But they have still always tied into the major events of the series (i.e. Civil War and World War Hulk) - almost being necessary to read in order to get the entire story. Secret Invasion - Front Line is completely different. You don’t need to know anything about anything that has ever happened in a single issue of a Marvel comic book for this to be a great read. The premise: aliens have invaded - let’s follow the lives of a few regular people as they try to deal with this travesty. The way Front Line gets into peoples’ heads and looks at the invasion from a personal perspective is genius.

I think the “previously” section of issue #2 sums it up better than I could, so I’m just going to type their own explanation of the comic book:

“It’s the morning of the Skrull invasion. The Battle of Manhattan is in its opening minutes, and the city is falling to Skrull might. Around town, the tales of six survivors begin to unfold:
Ben Urich helps treat the wounded in a hospital emergency room…
Vincent Crane and his daughter Melanie are amongst those trapped inside Stark Tower after security protocols seal it shut…
Jonahan Bryant drives for his life, hoping to outrun the Skrulls…
And police officer Bill Dawson just tries to do his best to keep as many people as possible out of harm’s way…”

That’s what the book’s about. And Brian Reed does a good job of taking an alien invasion seriously. People die. People freak out. Regular ordinary people (and Ben Urich) have to deal with the fact that people around them are dying. And the way they react is very human. The story is written great, is incredibly touching, and does a wonderful job of digging into the human psychee. I give it a high recommendation.

I have three negative things to day. But keep in mind that these in no way detract from the recommendation that I still stronly stand by.
1: Secret Invasion - Front Line doesn’t unfold the story of the invasion at all. So don’t pick it up if that’s what you’re looking for.
2: Something that bothers me that I didn’t realize until I read Front Line – the entire plot of Secret Invasion is almost exactly the same as last years’ major summer crossover (at least from the perspective of the citizens of New York). The motivations are different. And the execution is slightly different. But World War Hulk was basically, “Aliens (lead by the Hulk) invade New York City and take the world hostage.” And now it’s “Aliens (lead by the Skrulls) invade New York City and take the world hostage.”
3: We see Spider-Man fighting Menace the day before the invasion in the pages of Front Line. Menace is a new villain, who didn’t show up until AFTER Brand New Day. This is going to cause unbelievable complications for continuity, forcing Brand New Day to happen BEFORE Secret Invasion. Oi - it’s already giving me a headache just thinking about it.

I included these negatives in the review of Secret Invasion - Front Line simply because these realizations came to me while reading it. The writing in the issues themselves was simply spectacular and these problems have nothing to do with that.

Well that’s it for today. As always, thanks for reading. I’ll see you next time.
-Searnold

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