The Marvel Cinematic Universe peaked in 2019. While Spider-Man: No Way Home, Deadpool & Wolverine prove there’s still major hits to be had, you only need to look to the box office and critical reception after 2019 to prove the general trend has not been so positive. We’ve reached a stage where the MCU is no longer putting out consistently amazing work, and has even put out what some consider to be genuinely bad work. In 2023, though, Marvel Studios released what is almost certainly their worst series ever in Secret Invasion. This series was a Nick Fury vehicle for some reason, and it’s gone down as legendarily bad.
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Secret Invasion is an example of everything that the MCU fails at, but the worst part is that the source material is actually pretty good. Secret Invasion was a 2008 Marvel event comic by Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Yu. It has one of the best Marvel event build-ups ever, with four years’ worth of set-up done for the event. It was an intricately built comic, and while the resulting story isn’t perfect, it’s one of the defining Avengers comics of the 00s. Marvel Studios’ making it so terrible has always felt like a grave insult, especially seeing as how important it could have been.
Secret Invasion in the Comics Was One of the Most Important Stories of the ’00s
It all began with 2005’s Secret War, the story that broke SHIELD, leading to Nick Fury leaving the organization. The Skrulls had already begun to infiltrate the agency, and were able to get even further enmeshed in it with Fury gone. The Skrulls paid Electro to break open the Raft, leading to a new Avengers team that they put a mole on. From there, they manipulated events behind the scenes, and House of M and Civil War broke apart the superhero community.
Marvel in the ’00s was on a different level, and they built this story to a tee. In the months leading up to the book, Elektra was revealed as a Skrull, leading to the ad campaign for the book telling us to “embrace change”. Readers were hyped, debating on who was actually Skrull and just how far they were going to be able to take things. So many outrageous things had been happening at Marvel, and many of them were laid at the feet of the Skrulls. The hype on MySpace (where I talked about the book on the Comic forums) was huge.
’00s Marvel was far from perfect, as was Secret Invasion. The eight-issue series was a bit slow-paced, more concerned with drawing out the story sales purposes than to give readers big action scenes until the very end, which brought the pro and anti-Registration heroes together for a battle with an army of Skrulls with someone they had trusted at the head of that enemy force (I won’t ruin the surprise; it’s one of the best parts of the whole thing). It definitely had its moments that landed and moments that didn’t, and it led to huge changes.
The invasion was ended, but the heroes were blamed for allowing the Skrulls to get so far into the superheroic national security apparatus, leading to a villain taking it all over. “Dark Reign” spanned the next few years, ending the Marvel boom period of the ’00s with a bang that led to greater change in the years to come. Secret Invasion is an integral part of Marvel’s history, a perfectly built story that had its problems, but was hugely important to the evolution of various characters and teams.
The MCU’s Secret Invasion Was Such a Waste of Potential
Secret Invasion was an integral part of a story that ran from 2004 (when Secret War began; it took a while to finish) to 2009, and had major repercussions for the future of Marvel. Its plot lines stretched back to the “Kree-Skrull War” in the early ’70s, and it changed things in a number of ways that would play into the future. It was a catalyst for change in the Marvel Universe, and had some cool moments (and Yu’s art was gorgeous throughout the series). It’s an iconic story.
Marvel Studios has done justice to several iconic stories over the years, like Civil War, Infinity Gauntlet, and aspects of numerous others. However, instead of making something great that lived up to the legacy of Secret Invasion in the comics and led to something greater in the years to come, they gave us… that. There are very few people who have anything nice to say about the show, and it’s a dark spot on the legacy of a very cool story. Years of stories, really. Marvel Studios doesn’t always respect Marvel Comics, and Secret Invasion is proof of that.
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Official art by Bastien Lecouffe-Deharme -
Image Courtesy of MAPPA -
Image Courtesy of DC Comics
