Secret Invasion: Tony Stark's Biggest Failure 

Sadly, that bit about Norman Osbourne getting a huge fandom despite the known supervillainy and getting the keys to US National Security is probably the most realistic thing in this series.

The idea of Tony or Norman being a Skrull would've been shocking. That a Skrull became so unstable pretending to be Green Goblin that he killed his queen not knowing or caring about it

I actually think it's a good thing that they didn't do a bunch of big Skrull reveals for significant characters. I remember that going into this event, people were expecting Marvel to use this to retcon away everything they didn't like. Hank Pym never slapped his wife, Tony was never pro-registration, etc, etc. People were hating on the retcons before they even happened. Then they didn't happen. I think Marvel learned the right lesson from the Clone Saga. Readers don't want to be told that decades of continuity was actually some other guy they don't care about and will never see again. Using some restraint on the Skrull replacements was a good call.

I love Scott Summers's ruthlessness in this era. He internalizes the idea that his people have been nearly eradicated down to a 198 individuals. This is around the same time that he becomes aware of the machinations and failures of Charles Xavier and takes on more of a Magnito role in his defense of mutants against the rest of the world. Very much a "never again" mentality but by any means.

This Era is honestly when Marvel, as a whole, was on fire! Everything felt like it led into each event seamlessly! And I LOVED the Dark Reign!! I was mad that it ended so soon.

I love how Norman Osborn sees a alien invasion of earth and he immediately saw dollar signs and went full patriot. In my eye: The best supervillain move is convincing people your a superhero

Honestly the lead up to Secret Invasion and the tie-ins (like Fury recruiting the illegitimate kids of C list heroes) made the whole event worth it

Pantheon literally means "all gods", so in a way, 2 is a minimum. I would also like to add that the idea of rigid pantheons of gods in the ancient world is not accurate as there was tons of intermixing and syncretism.

13:10 I gotta admit, I felt bad for the Skrull Mockingbird here. She was essentially brainwashed to believe she was the real Mockingbird and had all her memories and was legit trying to help them. But Clint killed her before she had any idea what was going on and was very confused after Reed had revealed her. Clint ain't always the best when it comes to judgement, that's probably why him and the real Mockingbird remain separated even when she returns.

Obligatory shout-out to the Avengers EMH adaptation of Secret Invasion. It is a really good take on the storyline that streamlined the plot beats while adding some excellent character moments. The episode with the ship full of imposters descending on Wakanda is a highlight, Ms. marvel's confusion over the situation was infectious.

On their own, Civil War, Secret Invasion, Dark Reign and Seige were all mixed but as a whole, i think was a good series of events leading into the heroic age.

The best part about Secret Invasion was the build up to it. I will never forget the Elektra reveal. The marketing of "Who do you Trust" and the little ads where it would be skrulls and earthlings together were also very memorable. I bought every tie-in and limited series trying to figure it out myself, and it was a great time. I don't think I ever had an event had me fully engaged everything like I was with Secret Invasion and for that it will always have a place in my heart.

I'm surprised spider-man didn't barge into office and sucker punch norman

Marvel: Secret Invasion is Stark's greatest failure Disney: Secret Invasion is the MCU's greatest failure

As much as I really like Secret Invasion as an event, especially the Black Panther stuff (all y’all NEED to read the Black Panther Secret Invasion story because HOT DANG it’s awesome ✨) …every thing involving Iron Man is just more doubling down on the character assassination committed against him during Civil War instead of trying to repair the damage. And watching him get all the flack and blame while folks like Reed Richards get away scot free is just painful. 😭 Like it actually hurts seeing my boy get beat down over and over with no chance for recovery or redemption. And he’s still paying for it even now, all these years later and it’s just not fair 💔 Even directly following this event, as renowned as Fraction’s Invincible Iron Man run is, the entire first half of the run is essentially damage control from Civil War/Secret Invasion…the fact that it was necessary means there were probably stories we didn’t get because he had to deal with this mess 😫 Sigh. Being an Iron Man fan is so hard y’all…but I just can’t quit it. Even if the world is against him, Shell-Head is still my boy! 😭

One of my favourite things about this channel is seeing the small changes in the background. Seeing what new logos you add.

I wish you talked abou Earth’s Mightiest Heroes adaptation of Secret Invasion since it fixed the biggest flaw of the comic version in my opinion, it had interesting character reveals. Well not really but a major character is a skrull for half of season 2 and it is amazing, seeing all the little things they do to ready the Earth for invasion

I only read the main event after years because one of my cousins told me how threatening the Skrulls were and I was completely on board with a story about multiple identity thefts all at once in order to take over the planet. Thing is, there wasn’t much mystery or shocking reveals in the end. Most of them were revealed right off the bat, which was a huge letdown for me. I think I’ll always prefer the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes adaptation of Secret Invasion.

For what it is worth, I was always glad they didn't do the reveal that Tony was a Skrull. Tony in this era was behind some of the most unpopular and worse decisions in-universe such as Civil War, pressuring Peter Parker to unmask, sending Hulk to space leading to World War Hulk etc. A lot of divisive and scummy stuff that the writers so easily could've back peddled on but they didn't.

A rich guy making a contingency plan behind people's back that bites him and his team in the ass? Hmmm.... where have I seen that before? BRUCE? Bruce Wayne is that you?

You left out that Deadpool was actually the one to kill the Skrull leadership, Norman just lied about it being him.

Dark Reign and Siege are absolutely amazing and it’s worth reading through secret invasion for the build up to that alone in my opinion

Matpat finally got a Marvel theory right

The Skrull empire went from being in a stalemate with the Kree empire to being reduced to a single destroyed home world in search of a new world... and to make things dumber, the Skrull's ancient adversaries had to be told "hey, your enemies are just about dead. Help us finish the job"? Bendis was giving everything for a Skrull invasion on Earth... except he couldn't supply the REASON for it to happen?! "Something something religion, the Skrull Emperor became a Skrull Queen, don't ask questions I'll have to answer."

The most interesting thing about the Dark Reign is that Norman Osborn essentially became Iron Man's arch-nemesis while Spider-Man does not interact with him nearly as much as he should. I think the real reason Osborn was turned into Tony's villain rather than Peter's is because Tony's arch-nemesis the Mandarin is a walking talking racist stereotype at this point which is why they originally turned him into Aldrich Killian in Iron Man 3 before eventually modernising him in Shang-Chi

The Black Panther and Storm Tie-In is one of the best Event Tie-Ins I've read. T'Challa and Ororo are a power couple that I wish could come back, but with the events of Krakoa, I find it difficult.

Now that Dark Reign’s officially in the cards, can we get a vid on Victoria Hand. She was pretty great IMO. Also, I find it kind of hard to take that Hawkeye+Mokingbird moment seriously considering the moment I got into comics was the moment he dropped her like a hot sack of rocks to be with Spider-woman (which went no where)

Ah, The era in Marvel where every writer shat on Tony in every event possible and usually even in his own books! Oh... Wait? thats still basically going on? Damn.

I hated what the writers did to Tony during Civil War, so Secret Invasion basically cementing Tony's "development" was pretty disappointing.

Secret invasion as a event I always found to be a complete mess and a complete miss opportunity mostly because this event had so much potential to retcon so many bad stories like one more day which would be really awesome and finally bring back peter Parker and Mary Jane to have there marriage alive and kicking yes but also have there daughter mayday Parker Spider-girl alive and kicking and boom problem solved everybody wins but that’s just my opinion.

Drake single-handedly cosplaying as the entire Illuminati is the silliest most ridiculous thing I’ve seen this week. Thanks Comic Drake.

The event that made Skrulls popular in the modern era

I think phase 4 of the MCU should've started a Dark Reign saga. The heroes won but are mostly gone. It would've been great to introduce Osborn and build up Spider-Man to be a bigger part of the universe. Or really set up a Dark Avengers or Thunderbolts team instead of the drip feed of half-measures they've been doing. I think it would've been a fresh, darker direction for the MCU. Instead phase 4 was about 🤷‍♂️ and they've been setting up a dozen half-baked ideas.

For his neutral special, Norman Osborn wields a GUN

Always a good day when there's a new Comic Drake vid. At the rate he's going, he'll be at 500k subs in no time at all.

I always love how wakanda is this rock of a civilization that will stand strong no matter what

I seem to remember deadpool being a part of normans takeover. He gathered intel or something that allowed normie to kill varanke. He also caused muliple skrulls to go insane when they became copies of him.

Glad Secret Invasion kind of explained why Hank Pym became a abuser and just became completely different

They could have used this event to retcon a lot of characters which were written out of character in the past into being a skrull, the big one I am surprised they didn't do was Hank Pym.

4:27 Worth noting, as you enjoy your deep dives Drake. There was technically* a prologue to Secret Invasion back in 1999. X-Men #89 - #90 and UXM #369. A three part story that saw the X-Men teleported to the Skrull Homeworld on the day Galactus arrived. The entire exchange between Professor X and Galactus was a particular highlight. *I doubt Bendis knew/was made aware this story existed.

2:51 props for not blinking a single time in all ur cosplays except Namor and Tony 😂

Great work again, Drake! Thanks for mentioning some of the interrelated stories that aren’t part of a typical plot summary.

God Squad is my favorite superhero team-up of all time. It's so sick in concept but ends up being incredibly goofy and it's so fun

Excellent video Comic Drake! I'm trying to go through and read all of these major events and I went through what I thought was the majority of Secret Invasion a month or two ago. I'm currently reading through Dark Reign and I was wondering how do I go about reading through these big events and not miss important stories? I'm using Marvel's Unlimited App and I'm going by their collected lists but there are a few stories you mentioned that I didn't read. How did you go about reading through Secret Invasion for this video? Is there something you can recommend to people that have Unlimited? Thanks in advance for your work and for looking over my comment.

Bendis can be hit or miss, but I can't deny what he did for Spider-Man, Daredevil and The Avengers will be something I'll always cherish

I remember being enthralled by this story as a kid, though I only had the main story, so I didn't know about the Wakanda and Norman Osbourn speech stuff. One scene that still weirds me out to this day is that opening scene with Dum Dum Dogan, like I had no clue what was going on there.

You can’t tell me when Norman Osborn was going on a killing spree that America fuck yeah wasn’t playing in the back

I'll point out that Scarlet Witchs "No More Mutant" spell was not just planetary, not just intergalactic, it was multi-dimensional. Hell it was felt in Old Man Logans universe where mutants were just seen as a genetic hiccup and none had been born in years (not knowing what had occurred in the 616 Universe and the timeline itself was further along in its future). When Logan and Hawkeye arrived in Doom's Lair in the story, Emma Frost said there was about 30 of them left on the planet in general. Not really relevant to this story but its a great insight into how goddamn powerful Scarlet Witch is, basically committing genocide on an multi-dimensional scale

Thank you for making this insightful video about this saga!!

When secret invasion started, it was a very exciting time in comics. I was just getting deep into comics and the build up for this event was still, imo, the best built up to any marvel event. It started great but I don't think it stuck the landing well. Why wouldn't the skrulls give every skrull wolverines healing factor? Imagine a nearly unkillable army? That would've helped them. The big battle in the end just turned into a slaughter of skrulls with no real casualties on the heroes side. (Sure, wasp "died" but only due to a gimmick.) I thought it would've been a much better status quo to have the skrulls win and assimilate into the world like many of the ads for the event seemed to indicate. That would have been a better status quo for dark reign. Instead, we get Norman Osborn (who I love, Norman is great as a villian) getting praise and a huge promotion for... shooting the queen in the head. That could've been done by anyone. It would've been better if there was something unique needed to be done to kill her that only Norman could have known (there was the deadpool/thunderbolts series that gave him this info in the first place... just to shoot her in the head.) So... for me it was a disappointing ending after a fantastic set up.

I remember when Wolverine try to fight one of the horsemen of the apocalypse and got killed. When everyone was surprised, it was revealed that Wolverine was a skrull and the horsemen were the true Wolverine... It was not related to secret invasion?

Dark Reign through Siege is probably still my favorite era of Marvel to this day.

Love your content keep up the great work

Hey, I'm loving the big marvel event series and have enjoyed your vids for years! Still kinda new to comics, but i read Axis and Secret Empire and would love to see videos on them explaining any backstory or tie in details i missed

Great viddie! I usually watch a few viddies before I decide to subscribble or not, you got it in one son; in fact I'm cutting some chores short and leaving them for tomorrow 'cause I'm bingin' baybeee

Bro I just want to say I love your content and you always slam it out of the park.

Great video Drake!

Tony having nukes and not being kept in prison is crazy

Man, it sure was lucky for the Skrulls that Hulk wasn't there.

Great video. Also, 7:25: The REAL MCCOY? How long you been waitin to use that one😂

Part of me thinks the Marvel artists wanted to redraw stuff they were nostalgic for, and Marvel itself decided to set this all in place to do that.

Giving the keys of the goverment to norman osborn is literally straight up marvel version of lex luthor being president

Osborn in front of Lincoln memorial would've been fire album cover😂

I just want to push back against your opening statement. Kurt Buseik's Avengers sold really well and unlike Bendis' run it actually respected the history of the team.

This era of Marvel (Civil War to Dark Reign/Siege) was my introduction to comics and whilst confusing, I absolutely ate it up. I have a fondness for Bendis and event comics in general because of it.

Great video! Thanks for letting me voice Bendis, it was fun!

Ive been putting off this video because I've been reading the secret invasion event. Great watch!

The adaptation of this story in earth mightiest Heroes was top tier

😂😂😂😂That illuminate bit was hilarious! Best laugh I’ve had all week!😂😂😂😂

Dont know too much about the comics, but I love this story breakdown!

I had Marvel Unlimited for a bit a few months back and I read basically the whole Bendis event storyline thing from Nick Fury's Secret War through The Heroic Age but the only event I read all the tie-ins for was Secret Invasion. There was a lot of cool stuff in the tie-ins but man was that way too many comic books. It took me weeks to get through them.

That mr fantastic costume with the uno card got a laugh from me 😂

15:11 "And also Elvis" Excuse me- Drake, buddy, mind elaborating on that? At what point did the Skrull decide to kidnap the king of rock?

I really did love that whole "The Incredible Herc" run even if parts of it have aged a bit worse than others

0:17 "Really a skrull this time" That's exactly what a skrull would say.

nice to hear what this was all about

I have most but the ben urich series. This, civil war, and dark reign were a perfect trillogy. The initiative was a great jump on for teams. The main old standard teams were compromised and the newer teams had to stand up.

love to see the new logos on the background

Osborne is such a Luthor, change my mind.

I'm so glad my boy Hercules got one of the best parts of this event

One of the few things I liked about this story, they didn't retcon Tony, Marvel and Bendis let all the shitty things he did stand, and let himself work out some sort of redemption story. The rest of story? Rather indifferent, but just this one thing good job all

A highlight to me when it was coming out was the plot with... 3D Man? Whose goggles allowed him to see the Skrull imposters a la 'They Live.' If I remember correctly, it was part of the 50 state initiative series (which I remember liking overall)

i loved the bit right at the beggining

I started reading comics during Secret Invasion, the Inhumans tie in is one of my favourite stories ever 😁😁😁

For the next episode can you do Dark Reign? I heard about the event but I never knew what the event was about

To make pantheon. You need more than 4. One is monotheism. Two is just duo. Three is a trinity. Then 4 is an music quartet. 5 is team.

kind of annoying that optics ended up mattering but i guess that is politics, a little frustrating that tony had to fall back rather than repair on the fly, or having a backup suit waiting nearby to jet in

2:53 lamo question whats the voice filter you used for iron man and i love the joke of elivs being a skull

I think that the event was just too messy sometimes, like, it lacked focus and quality really varied… I think that the earth mightiest heroes for example ended up doing the secret invasion story line way better by exploring the essential ideas of the storyline perfectly.

I didn't knew this event had interesting tie-ins.

Lol "Norman Osborn's Neutral Special: Gun"

Nice shirt, Drake

It did gave us iron man Most Wanted arc that awesome to read

I’m still impressed Elvis was important enough from the Skrulls perspective to kidnap

He's not wrong, that crusader video is really good

So which event is next, Siege of Asgard, or maybe a one from DC?

Norman: Yeah fuck StarkTech, that shit is slow and buggy. I'm something of a scientist, so I'm an expert on this

👏 What a surprise, Black Bolt got his cheeks clapped 👏

this is completely unrelated lol but is that a zelda triforce in the top right of your backround?

My favorite side story is Thor and Beta Ray Bill fighting an army of Skrulls underneath Asgard (it was floating ten feet off the ground of Oklahoma so he can say it’s not on American soil) and in the climax of the fight Thor orders Asgard to *fall out of the sky and crush the army as he and Beta Ray Bill hold it up*.