This is a classic example of why I'm refusing to follow this whole story. Someone wrote in that they thought that this whole Secret Invasion thing may be Marvel's way of undoing what was done during the whole Civil War thing. I think he may be on to something. Personally . . I was thinking that it was aiming at undoing Captain America's death, but . . my scope may not have been broad enough. Part of the reason I'm changing my mind is because of all these flash-back issue . . or 'previous history' issues . . whatever they want to call them. I understand that were going back and seeing previous events with insight that we previously didn't have . . specifically that the Skrulls played a part in pretty much every major event for like the last 10 years . . but, I think it's an easy way out. I'm not saying that Brian Bendis is taking it easy. If anything he's more involved than ever, because he's the one that has to coordinate all of this and put in the Skrull influence on these historic events, without changing what's already been written. No, I think it's the easy way out because there's enough room out there for some creative license that it would be pretty easy to change what we thought . . or the heroes of the Marvel Universe, for that matter . . of what the motivations or goals of these events actually were. One one hand I think it's brilliant. Comics have always been written in a linear fashion creating the continuity that we all so love and enjoy. But, at the same time, there's always been room in the stories . . or in-between them . . for, what I call, 'retroactive history'. It's presented as history . . or a legitimate view of a previous story . . that we didn't know about, or even believe existed. It's something that's been popping up more and more over the last 10 to 20 years of comics, but it's really being taken to the extreme with this Secret Invasion thing. The problem, or pitfall, in all of this is that what was once a ground-breaking story, because of what happened or who was killed, can all be negated with a rather simple twist of perspective. Also, as it appears is happening now at Marvel, all the 'earth-shattering' stories from the last 5 to 10 years can be explained away because of a previously unknown alien influence. Which is really sad for the readers and collectors of comics because now . . all the various story-lines that they've been following . . they found out are now all wrong . . or skewed. Like I said . . on one hand I think it's brilliant, while on the other . . I don't think it's fair to the readers or collectors . . or fans. Plus, the way story-telling was previously done . . sometimes the characters dictated the path of the story. A writer would start out a story, but then as it went along his intentions may change a bit because of the various character's personalities or motivations. I've heard more than once, a writer talk about how the story ended up writing itself, basically, because all he had to do was follow the natural occurrence of events as unfolded by the characters or situations. Which, in turn, made them more believable or accepting by the reader. With this 'retroactive history', all of that's thrown to the way-side. Anything can change, at any time, for any reason. Honestly . . it's not a lot of fun to try to follow.
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