Secret Invasion v. Final Crisis

So, hi and welcome. This is the first post to our little comics (and other stuff) blog. I'm shadow and my co-host is called gish. I won't bore you with much introductory stuff, except to let you know a little about me. I'm 30 going on 31, a 3rd year law student, and former writer. I more familiar with the Marvel Universe but I've been growing somewhat more acquainted with the DCU. In my pre-adult years I read mostly Punisher comics. In college I moved over to the DC Vertigo titles. And now I'm mostly into comics of the super hero variety, but really I'll read anything. You can see our current pull list over on the right.

So enough of that. Completely unsolicited, I'm going to give you a few of my thoughts on this summer's two big events: Secret Invasion and Final Crisis.

Secret Invasion -- Pros:

• Tight storyline with good continuity across titles;
  
• Excellent tie-ins, some of which, like Captain Britain and Incredible Hercules, are better than the main book;
  
• Easy to follow for new readers. Abhay at Savage Critics lamented (to be polite) the third issue's focus on "obscure" Young Avenger and Initiative characters, but even I -- who has just recently returned to comics -- had no problem identifying all the major players. People who haven't read Young Avengers or Avengers: The Initiative are really doing themselves a disservice by ignoring or writing these characters off as inconsequential. Plus, you've got a list of all of them on the first page so you can Wikipedia them if necessary.
  
• Some good shock value from the initial reveals, though I definitely think it could use a few more major ones. The best choice is Iron Man but we all know that ain't happening;
• Super skrulls are cool -- how could you not like a feral green alien with Thor's hammer, Wasp's wings, and Iron Man's armor? The technological replication of super hero powers is tres cool.
  
• Good tie to Civil War and World War Hulk. The skrulls are clearly taking advantage of those situations, but Bendis has yet to explain how they were involved. Of course, if they would just make Iron Man a skrull, this would be easy.
  

Secret Invasion -- Cons:

• A little too derivative of BSG. Shapeshifter sabotages planetary defenses... yawn.
  
• Not enough big-name characters replaced by skrulls, especially given the lead-up hype (see, for example, the "Who Do You Trust?" sketches)
• Death of the Vision. I see why this was done -- we need a reason to hate the skrulls. But there was no real build-up and in fact many philistines who didn't read Young Avengers didn't even know he was alive again.
• Nick Fury's New Howling Commandos. Is the answer to the invasion yet another band of teen superheroes who have no experience or training? Because of it is, I'd sure as hell rather see that role played by the Runaways, Young Avengers, the Initiative, or the New Warriors. How cool would it have been to see Nick Fury team up with these guys?
  
• Lenil Yu, who is only saved by his inker and colorist. He's getting better, but I would've preferred Jim Cheung or someone like that.
  
• The pace is way too slow. From Abhay:
  

  "The plot has advanced another 10 minutes, which-- if the life expectancy of the average American is 77.8 years, assuming this pacing holds, according to my rough calculations, one human lifetime is the equivalent of 408,968 issues of Secret Invasion. A comic telling the story of a single human life at this rate would thus take 34,080 years to be published. Not including annuals."
  

• Bendis' dialogue is just awful sometimes. I can see he's going for realism, but it often comes off as annoying and choppy.
  

Final Crisis -- Pros:

• The death of the Martian Manhunter and one of the New Gods. This gives you the feeling that anything could happen. I'm not a DCU devotee, but hearing that the Martian Manhunter got killed really sparked my interest in this book. You get the felling that something big is happening.
  
• Dark Sied is a great villain.
• Great art.
• Morrison is a master storyteller, even though sometimes he doesn't explain things well enough for casual fans like myself.

Final Crisis -- Cons:

• I had no idea what was going on. Seriously. Who the fuck are the monitors? That part just draggeed and couldn't see the relationship to the other events. And what's the deal with the first boy/last boy scenes?
  
• Too many D-list characters. I didn't know who hardly any of the villains were. I know people have the same complaint about Secret Invasion, but those characters at least have or had their own series, all of which are actually pretty good. Is there a Human Flame series I'm unaware of?
  
• Not enough action.
  
• I heard somewhere that it contradicted existing continuity from Countdown to Final Crisis. I also heard that Countdown was awful so... who cares? The lesson here: you shoudn't waste your money on crappy comics just so you can keep up with the continuity.
  

Side-by-Side:

So it's a little early to compare the two. On the whole, I've found the SI tie-ins to be more exciting than the main book. Captain Britain does a much better job of portraying the scale of the attack. An alien invasion should give you a feeling of hopelessness and despair -- the aliens are just too strong, too powerful, and too prepared (see Independence Day, War of the Worlds, etc.) The Savage Land business has kept all of Marvel's heavy hitters from really getting into the thick of the invasion. Final Crisis looks like it could be really interesting, but I think it just presumes far too much familiarity with obscure bits of history of the DCU. The first issue was all set up, but I don't even know what was being set up. If I had to chose, SI wins based solely on the strength of its tie-ins and strong cross-title continuity.

My two cents. What do you think?