Hero Realm!

MS MARVEL #25 REVIEW!

Written By Brian Reed
Art By Adriana Mel, Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema
Review by Ryan Stevens

    If there’s one common theme running through Marvel’s flagship titles right now, it’s this: SKRULLS!!! Skrulls galore! Here a skrull! There a skrull! Everywhere a green-chinned skrull! Ol’ Quesada had a skrull, ee-y-ee-y-oh!!!!! Boy howdy have there been a lot of skrulls as of late. Marvel really wants to push their upcoming company-wide, franchise-spanning, universe-rocking, summer-blockbuster, wallet-gobbling mega event of 2008, Secret Invasion, in which shape shifting Skrulls have infiltrated all facets of the Marvel Universe in an attempt to dominate Earth. Skrulls have even began to masquerade as super heroes to further their nefarious deeds.

    As evident by the cover of Ms. Marvel # 25, Carol Danvers, aka Ms. Marvel, is next in line on the skrulls’ list of super-people to pose as. The skrulls clearly are not playing around, and even in the beginning of this 3-part Secret Invasion tie-in, they have begun to claim the first casualties of war. Those green-chinned miscreants, having seemingly taken over, or at least allied themselves with, the terrorist organization A.I.M., have begun their opening salvo on the Marvel U, and only through dumb-luck does Ms. Marvel get mixed up in the skrull situation. But you’ve got to hand it to Carol for knowing to obey Murphy’s law ¾ to the letter, in fact.

    Brian Reed scripts this double-sized venture, and does a fine job. Our fair heroine is admirably flawed, and her desire to become a truly noteworthy and efficient hero is commendable. Her boyfriend, William Wagner, seems like a nice guy with his heart in the right place, but evidently knows more than he’s sharing. He appears to have some interesting secrets that everyone wants to know, even some wrinkly-chinned outworlders. Sarah Day, Ms. Marvel’s publicist, isn’t looking to make friends, but you can’t argue with her undying devotion to her job. She seems to want the best for Ms. Marvel’s reputation, and will make sure anyone who tries to sully Carol’s reputation pays for it until she is satisfied.

    While the issue could be a bit more new-reader friendly (being my first issue, I had to ask fellow realmer Jimmy T as to what the characters were talking about at certain points), Reed makes sure that new readers aren’t too in the dark about important information, and it turned out what I didn’t know was fairly trivial.

    Art was, for the most part, handled by former Witchblade artist Adriana Melo, who’s art style is truly perfect for the book she used to draw. If you know a single thing about Witchblade, you know what I mean. If not, suffice to say his rendition of Ms. Marvel is……gifted, although I’m certainly not complaining. I guess all the really matters is if the art is clean, crisp, and detailed, which, in Melo’s case, it is, so I can’t complain. Although there is one instance where a certain character meets their untimely demise in this issue, and the body doesn’t look dead so much as….well, frankly, the word “constipated” comes to mind. Apart from other such small instances, the art is exceptional.

    Evidently the skrull invasion has been in the planning stages for years. Early preparations made by the skrulls seemingly date back to when Captain Marvel was still alive and before Carol Danvers had powers, as illustrated in a couple of nifty flashback sequences in the issue. These flashbacks are not illustrated by Melo like the rest of the issue, but instead are drawn by Ron Frenz and Sal Buscema, who’s reputation established by their work on Spider-girl precedes them. The art is extremely reminiscent of early 70’s marvel, and Brian Reed goes out of his way to write these scenes in a way matching the retro-illustrations, complete with the over-expository and kitschy dialogue that was all-too customary in the rollicking Marvel 70’s. It’s all in good fun though, and the flashbacks do good work to break up the main story to build suspense, the way commercial breaks do with television shows when used correctly.

    The skrull invasion is looming on the horizon, but the opening shots of the war are already being fired. Ms. Marvel is obviously going to be a huge player in Secret Invasion, so I recommend picking up this issue before it sells out to Secret Invasion completists.

7 out of 10.