Secret Invasion needed a less politically atrocious facelift for the new Disney+ series, and I do think it cleared that (admittedly low) bar. Unfortunately, I also think it leans into some of the worst parts of the original Secret Invasion, and fails to really subvert expectations even while trying really really hard to do so.
Before I dive fully into that, I need to address the most surprising and delightful quality of this comic; Francesco Mobili did incredible work here. I’ve been known to say things like “oh Mobili is on this? Oh no,” but I see the vision now. Maybe it was the color artists he’s been paired with, maybe it’s that he’s paired with the best color artist alive, but the art in this is really next level stuff, an argument that Mobili is a front-line talent.
He and Bellaire pair together throughout to make moody and evocative work that looks gorgeous and tells the story perfectly. They go from quiet conversations to big fight scenes smoothly and competently, in a way that sells the whole thing. This is a book that’s worth reading just to see the two of them show off how well they work together.
As for the writing, I think this is a place where North did impress me, at least where character voice is concerned. I often find his writing to be a little too twee for my taste, but I like his take on Maria Hill being the most socialized Computer Science major in the room (likewise, Tony Stark as the most liberal-billionaire-computer-science major is something he’s very good at, and I’m very fond of). He got to have a fun take on those two, and putting them in a room together worked really well for me when I would have thought I’d die from the patter. Impressive stuff.
That all being said, this thing loses me every time it reminds me that Hill is a CIA agent. This is a comic that is supposed to rehabilitate the Islamophobia in Secret Invasion, and it ends up doing this by way of CIA apologia that would make Tom King blush. I just don’t understand how that’s even possible. This thing makes me imagine Maria Hill doing every “advanced interrogation” tactic on thinly-veiled metaphors for Islamic people: I can hardly believe that this was the angle decided on.
The whole story rests so heavily on Hill being a crazy racist that when the red herrings pop off and the baits get switched, the tiny semblance of a redemption thuds like a pile of dead Skrulls (that aren’t even actually dead!). It’s frustrating because this could have almost worked—we probably still would have had a pile of dead not-Muslims which wouldn’t have been ideal—if they had committed to being meaner. If Hill was actually characterized like an actual CIA operative, this might have been better. Instead, we got an ending that felt unearned, inconsequential, and seemingly counter-productive to what the book was even meant to be.
It’s a real shame, because this is a book where the character work and the structure are really compelling to me. North, Mobili, and Bellaire work well together here, and the craft really is next-level in a lot of places. It’s just impossible to ignore the real-world connections between this and highly publicized monstrous activities that the CIA actively takes and has taken part in throughout its history. Like, at least Bendis could hide behind “S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t even real” – there’s a movie on Amazon Prime starring Kylo Ren that shows how horrible Maria Hill and her colleagues are.
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