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Secret Invasion: Inhumans

Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 7:15 am
by Paul Bourcier
Is anyone else seeing a continuity problem with Secret Invasion: Inhumans?

Medusa's appearance in a panel of SECRET INVASION #6 suggests that SECINV:INH occurs at the same time as SECINV. SECINV:INH 1 starts out with Iron Man handing the dead Black Bolt Skrull over to Medusa. This scene must occur pretty shortly after the the identity of the Black Bolt Skrull is revealed to the Illuminati in NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMNATI v2 #5. Otherwise, you'd think that Medusa would be wondering whatever happened to her husband.

But could NA:I2 5 possibly occur just a day or so before the big invasion? Doesn't Xavier appear in NA:I2 5 before Messiah Complex? Doesn't Namor appear in NA:I2 5 before he hands himself over in ORDER2 6? Doesn't Reed appear in NA:I2 5 before he changes his costume (first seen in FF 554)? Doesn't Strange appear in A:I2 5 before he exiles himself in NA@ 2? Argh.

We could force a big gap in SECINV:INH 1 between, say, pages 13 and 14, but that would mean the Inhumans were waiting around for a while for the Skrulls to make a move. Also, I recall reading somewhere that the exposure of the Black Bolt Skrull forced the Skrulls' hand and led to the invasion launch.

Thoughts?

Re: Secret Invasion: Inhumans

Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 10:22 am
by Somebody
Paul Bourcier wrote:Is anyone else seeing a continuity problem with Secret Invasion: Inhumans?
Lots. And not just chronology problems - did the writer actually READ Silent War? He seems to be working off a one-paragraph summary. A badly written one-paragraph summary at that...
Paul Bourcier wrote:Medusa's appearance in a panel of SECRET INVASION #6 suggests that SECINV:INH occurs at the same time as SECINV. SECINV:INH 1 starts out with Iron Man handing the dead Black Bolt Skrull over to Medusa. This scene must occur pretty shortly after the the identity of the Black Bolt Skrull is revealed to the Illuminati in NEW AVENGERS: ILLUMNATI v2 #5. Otherwise, you'd think that Medusa would be wondering whatever happened to her husband.
Here's the thing - at the end of Silent War, Medusa is completely in Maximus' thrall. COMPLETELY (Maximus planted a virus in her head some time before, which activated during Silent War and left her distant from Black Bolt, snogging Maximus and more, helping Maximus escape and forcing Luna to remove the controls on Max's power. Maximus then takes the chance after the Marine suicide-bombers destroy Attlan to do something similar to everyone else, except the immune Luna). So, no, I don't have a problem with a gap there where Medusa's not "wondering whatever happened to her husband" (and, hell, how long before IM got Skrullectra on the dissection table?).

The fact that she's suddenly so... independent... again in this mini is the glitch.
Paul Bourcier wrote:But could NA:I2 5 possibly occur just a day or so before the big invasion? Doesn't Xavier appear in NA:I2 5 before Messiah Complex? Doesn't Namor appear in NA:I2 5 before he hands himself over in ORDER2 6? Doesn't Reed appear in NA:I2 5 before he changes his costume (first seen in FF 554)? Doesn't Strange appear in A:I2 5 before he exiles himself in NA@ 2? Argh.
Reed's wearing his Pacheco costume in Secret Invasion proper, remember. Namor & Strange, yep.

And there's certainly a lot of time between MCX and SI. If the X-Factor "five months" wasn't enough, X-Men: Manifest Destiny #1/1 (set before Iceman turns up in San Francisco, and consequently before SI:X) has Iceman saying it's been "months" since Mystique suckered him (before she promptly does so again).

Re: Secret Invasion: Inhumans

Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 8:53 pm
by Paul Bourcier
Somebody, thanks for reminding me about the conclusion of Silent War. Actually, it's totally plausible that Maximus could have looked at Black Bolt's disappearance as a gift horse and influenced the Inhumans not to think about it too much. We can put a gap either between NA:I2 5 and SECINV:INH 1 or between pages of SECINV:INH 1. That depends on how long you figure Stark would have held onto the Black Bolt Skrull before handing it over to the Inhumans. Maybe Medusa's independence is just Maximus' grip loosening?

BTW, I'm in total agreement with you on what a f***ed up mess this is. That "five months" passage in X-Factor underscores the insanely different lengths of time that appear to pass between World War Hulk and Secret Invasion, depending on whose continuity you follow. X-Factor, She-Hulk, and Captain Marvel (Skrull) -- lots of time; Hercules and Ms. Marvel -- very little time. We have to end up ignoring references to lengthy time passages and insert gaps where they weren't intended to make everything work, more or less. There's still the matter of Stark doing nothing for a long time after Skrullektra was revealed and the Jessica Jonesian length of time for Siryn's pregnancy, etc., etc. Bah!

The MU has been so tightly woven lately, and pulling this off depends on editorial attention to chronological detail, which I think has been lacking for some time.

Re: Secret Invasion: Inhumans

Posted: Mon Sep 15, 2008 10:02 pm
by Somebody
Paul Bourcier wrote:We can put a gap either between NA:I2 5 and SECINV:INH 1 or between pages of SECINV:INH 1. That depends on how long you figure Stark would have held onto the Black Bolt Skrull before handing it over to the Inhumans.
After Illuminati #5, easily. There may be a smaller gap duing SI:INH 1 so that Stark can hand over "Black Bolt" before SI 1 and still have Medusa in a panel of SI 6 (I don't have the comics to hand right now to check the SI 6 panel), but the major gap should be before SI:INH 1.
Paul Bourcier wrote:Maybe Medusa's independence is just Maximus' grip loosening?
It's not a "grip" in the sense that Max is holding onto Medusa (& co) per se - the comparison Max used in Silent War was to a computer virus, that just erased ("cleared") bits of their minds hostile to Max away, leaving him room to write Maximus-friendly data.
Paul Bourcier wrote:Hercules and Ms. Marvel -- very little time.
Can't speak for Danvers' comic (don't read it), but after the initial arc and a spell at Athena's house, Athena, Herc & Cho do drive cross-USA, in a car (with a few hundred stops for Herc to Beer Up. And one for the She-Hulk guest-appearance). That's got to take a bit of time. (NB: There's also apparently a significant gap for Herc between "Sacred Invasion" and "Love and War", the arc starting with #121, that may be flashed back to later per Greg Pak @ http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page ... e&id=17945. Just for the record.)
Paul Bourcier wrote:and the Jessica Jonesian length of time for Siryn's pregnancy, etc., etc. Bah!
That's one I'm not sure I agree with you on. Siryn's been pregnant for a bit by the time "Nicole" finds the pregnancy test. She apparently goes into labour "three weeks early" in XF3 38 (a second issue in a row solicited as not-by-Stroman, I may be able to start picking up the book again if that keeps up). Barring any major time jumps between now and then, she's thus in her late seventh or early eighth month as of the time jump. That gives at least two and a half months between XF3 13 and XF3 33, unless you want to push the conception earlier. And #13-24 is a *tight* series of stories time-wise. Then it's MCX, and then it's the fallout from MCX, which takes only days to reach the time jump of #33. So unless you're inserting a big gap between #24 and MCX , I'm struggling to see how you get two and a half months in there, let alone a Jessica Jones-esque 18-month pregnancy that's born 3 months premature.
Paul Bourcier wrote:The MU has been so tightly woven lately, and pulling this off depends on editorial attention to chronological detail, which I think has been lacking for some time.
Well, the Secret War-before-Disassembled thing is really driving me nuts. What. The. HELL. Marvel? What the hell?

Re: Secret Invasion: Inhumans

Posted: Thu Oct 09, 2008 10:13 pm
by Somebody
Okay, apparently Silent War took place entirely before WWH after all, per SI:I 3. It was realBB in Silent War, and SkrullBB in WWH.

[I would say that it adds %&*#s over Annihilation-related stuff with Ronan's words in the issue, and still doesn't make any sense in the context of Silent War, but...]

Re: Secret Invasion: Inhumans

Posted: Sat Oct 11, 2008 2:08 pm
by Paul Bourcier
Somebody wrote:
Okay, apparently Silent War took place entirely before WWH after all, per SI:I 3. It was realBB in Silent War, and SkrullBB in WWH.
Yup, sure seems that way. Fuss and bother -- more reorganizing. *brickwall*

And WWH would have to occur long enough after Silent War for Attilan to be rebuilt. And what happened to Maximus' plan to move the Inhumans back to earth?

Interesting, too, that MARVEL: YOUR UNIVERSE SAGA chose to relate the events of World War Hulk before the events of Silent War. :roll:

It seems that Marvel just keeps shifting chronologies around lately. I get the impression that it's just not that important to them, even though a grand plot on the scale of Secret Invasion requires careful consideration of the sequence of events.