By Dante' Maddox

It seems to be the way of things for me to cast doubt on some of my favorite writers mid way through their prospective projects.

Sometimes its easy to get so lost in the forest that you lose sight of the tree’s. I’ve been a major critic of Secret Invasion since the first issue and while I’m not ready to take back my words just yet, things are improving as the story is finally starting to pick up.

Nick Fury made his move in the last issue of the book, and in this issue it’s the Skrulls turn to make their bid for world domination. This issue really reminds me of a lot of alien invasion stories that have come down the pike (a certain Nicole Kidman remake to be certain) which is a good thing. I finally get the scope of the story I’ve been asking for in the actual core title and not trapped in tie in hell instead.

The heroes of earth now get to earn that title as the threat goes global. This is where it’s at for me, where the heroes face a worthy threat from some of the Marvel Universes earliest villains. It was great seeing agent Brand from the Astonishing X-Men series interact with a suddenly hardcore Mr. Fantastic. The book is finally exciting like I expected from the first issue, and it only took more than half of the series to accomplish this.

I’m here to tell you folks that for the first time Secret Invasion has lived up to the hype surrounding it. If you have been taking a wait and see approach to this series then let me be the first to urge you to get on board as these remaining issues should shake the very foundations of the Marvel universe. Iron Man and his team look to have finally wrapped up their five issue business in the Savage Land (finally!) and look to head back to the main land. The Captain Marvel Skrull is still a wild card that could go either way, and the Sentry is still MIA.

I have to say that as I look back on the series I might be more forgiving than most concerning how the story was handled. My biggest complaint is still that even ten years ago a story this huge would have been a twelve issue series that ran through several core titles and didn’t suffer from so many tie-ins. We would really have to examine which method is better in hindsight though its only fair to admit that both methods have their pluses and minuses.

In the end Secret Invasion is back on track to a great degree, issue five was really exciting and moved along at a decent clip. Remember folks that there are only three issues left of this series, so a lot of things are bound to happen in a short amount of time so get out to your local shops and get on board with Secret Invasion.

Writer: Brian Michael Bendis
Pencils: Leinil Francis Yu
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Cover Price: $3.99
Series Count: 5 of 8

Crave Online Rating: 8.5 out of 10