356. Secret Invasion #1 to 8 ... Marvel ...

And now for something totally different, we are going to review the entire series of a limited series instead of issue by issue ... so over the past decade, both Marvel and DC have decided on 1 big major yearly event that has implications (almost) line wide and at the end of each series, the so-called universe will have a new setting to play on ... until next year's big event. In the cast of Marvel, sometimes if the event is not so all encompassing, then there will be several like one for the mutant books, one for the cosmic books and one for the remainder of the Marvel U ...

But this series encompasses all the titles!

It continues from where Civil War left off and ends by giving us Dark Reign ...

What's it about? Basically Marvel awesome scribe, Bendis decides that years ago, after the nonsense with the Skrull war and intervention by earthlings, they wanted to get even and established a long term plan that studied how to come and invade earth without being detected by magic, science and telepathy ... all the while having other conflicts in space ... this came to a head as their empire fell apart and so they decided to officially adopt earth as their new home

What made this a pain for the heroes and serve as the tension point?

Who do you trust?

When word came out at first, each hero began to question friends around them especially since the first confirmed Skrull was when Elektra was killed and before then, Elektra was everywhere including SHIELD, Avengers, and even DD's world ... with that happening, what else can be wrong?

And then when the Skrulls unveiled their hand, the entire world was taken completely unawares! From even non super powered beings and family, the Skrulls have put plans in motion. And they provided for contingencies like Stark tech, Maria Hill, Shield and even Sword!

So it's a long scramble as the disparate parties try to run away, find a breathing space, recuperate and hopefully find a way to turn around the invasion

It's a decent read BUT ... the biggest letdown for me are 2 things:

1. The end is one slugfest between heroes of earth and skrulls with powers? I mean, that's it? You are an alien race, advanced, years in the planning and your intention is to slug it out with earth's heroes and decided to do it in USA where the most heroes are?

2. Yu's artwork - sorry but it is too scratchy for my taste

Don't believe me? Look at back issue prices online. Of all the past decade's worth of crossovers, this is by far the cheapest to buy still

Ratings: 6/10 (would have been 7 if not for Yu)

339. Iron Fist (1996) #2 ... Marvel ...

Sad cover ... even though it conveys the action within accurately, it lacked a certain OOMPH know what I mean? It seems like the artist is wanting to put too much on the cover and finally wasting the space. Now if he had zoomed in a bit more like say another 30% and we may not have that bubble circle thing and what-not the impact would have been far more effective

Anyway as per last issue, once again the writer tries to inject what he thinks is great story telling by including the usual mumbo jumbo that passes as watered down "oriental" philosophy ...

And it is from this that Danny now seeks to find his enemies and ... o yes before we forget ... guess who joins him? The two semi-useless kung-fu-wannabe chicks, Misty Knight (with a bionic arm) and Colleen Wing (a samurai sword). They are supposed to be good but somehow, in all their appearances, everyone else can upped them in a direct fight! Sigh!

The long and short of this tale is that at the end, Danny encounters his nemesis for one final fight to see who gets to keep the force of the Iron Fist and as you know this series is only two issues no surprises here who won

What is cool as I re-read this issue after years later is the cryptic ending where the defeated Steel Serpent goes out alone and the ending paragraph states "Somewhere, a mystical gate opens and closes." Now I now after this there are other Iron Fist mini-series but the huge short lived second ongoing series, Immortal Iron Fist that was largely enjoyable in its first 2 years had a feel as if it continued from this because we are to learn along with all the IF characters that there is indeed a mystery gate that they knew not about ... a mystical mystical gate ... hmmm

Ratings: 5/10

338. Iron Fist (1996) #1 ... Marvel ...

20 years ago (wow) back in the late half of the speculation boom ... where everything grim n gritty is considered cool to the max ... Marvel decided to roll out Iron Fist ... now at this point, his history is a complete mess with people almost similar names being Iron Fist, being dead, or perhaps not dead and what have you ...

Anyway forget all that!

All you need to know is that when martial arts were cool, Marvel had Iron Fist and Shang-chi. Iron Fist was featured in one of those mags that introduced new characters and proved popular to elevate himself to his first solo ongoing which lasted about a year or so ... and then with waning popularity and sales was sandwiched together with Luke Cage into one combined team called Heroes for Hire

As for his history, basically he was a kid when he lost his folks and was found by a special mystical city called Kun Lun. He was raised there including trained for his martial arts. At his coming of age, he challenged Shou Lou, a dragon and won and hence his chest is emblazoned with a dragon tattoo. Aside from martial arts, his power is to focus all his inner chi or energy to one of his fists making it super powerful but a feat like this would leave him weakened ... kind of like Ultraman who always wait until the end to unleash his zapping beams ahahahahahah!

Well, got that?

The artist here is Robert Brown (who) and inker is Rey Garcia. If you like your artwork full of lines and dots and splotches masquerading as details, then this works. However, I do believe given time, Robert would develop to be good on his own although I have no idea if he has done much more besides this

Anyway, the story opens with a depressed Iron Fist fighting a small platoon of mercenary thugs like people and him thinking long soliloquy about how his Iron Fist is not as powerful as it once was. So why was he attacked? It apparently, at first, seemed to him that everyone is after a gem stone that he encountered. Naturally, to make matters complicated, this is not entirely true because his one and only nemesis Steel Serpent, a fellow rival from Kun Lun is seeking a way to come back to our world and the world of the living

And behind all these shenanigans? There are others from Danny's past plotting away. Are they going to be friends once more and something nastier? Well, this is the first of two part limited series. I guess they want us to pick both issues up eh?

Ratings: 5/10

337. Power Man/ Iron Fist #113 ... Marvel ...

Remember in our last review we talk about stories that has more than one issue? Well, this is sort of an epilogue of the tale involving the kid you see on the cover and what an issue it is as we finally have several villains and also several heroes

We see Fist coming to a special holding cell for supers and going through the motions of security check. We also get a glimpse of the Falcon and then head of facility security but not in his guardsman (cheap Iron Man knock off) uniform

While the humdrum of administration is being administered, something wicked is happening down below as one by one, both villains and good guys started encountering something that scares the shit out of them and yet is impervous to any one of their attempts to stop it. What's this mystery presence? Well, go and buy the book

Suffice to say, the action is drawn out rather than a few pages of over the top fight and the fight here is actually brief but full of tension that makes you keep on turning the pages. For this tale, I do wish it was done in more current contemporary style as it would have benefited the extra pages. Still Greg Laroque penciller turned in awesome pages!

Ratings: 8/10

336. Power Man/ Iron Fist #109 ... Marvel ...

There was a time in the 80s when the Power Man/ Iron Fist series was failing in terms of sales and Marvel made these cute house ads with one version having Fist whispering to us readers to try their mag and the other has Cage telling us to buy

Anyway, so what did they do to ramp up the sales? Well instead of giving us guest star after guest star, for some weird reason, the writers and editors didn't. They did give us stories with a bit of continuity every now and then sort of letting you buy the next couple of issues but that's it and I have to wonder why Spidey didn't drop by or the X-Men? Hehehe!

For me, I started this series with 108 and found myself actually enjoying the straightforward storytelling that stresses more on the human angle and this issue is no different. Here we have Power Man hanging out at the community church as apparently a kid was in there with a gun. Sad story is that the kid is no druggie or thieve. And he ... well ... you have to read the story okay?

While at the office, Iron Fist is approached by a beautiful, sad woman to find her husband as apparently he is ex-forces who has gone off the deep end in trying to bring justice to what he perceived as a world lacking and who he kills along the way including innocents do not bother him

Naturally thanks to TV coverage, Fist's search and Luke's stake out ends up intertwined and in the same place (cool storytelling) ... and the ending is more sad and tragic rather than a simple fist fight

Ratings: 8/10