Secret Invasion: Front Line

Who says this isn't the Marvel Age of Disaster Movies? First Bendis gave us that angle on Ultimatum in Ultimate Spider-Man, and now I find Brian Reed has done the same for Bendis' own Secret Invasion. And like in most disaster movies, the story's impact comes from who lives and who dies.

Secret Invasion: Front Line follows reporter Ben Urich as he makes his way through the chaos of Manhattan during the Skrull invasion, hooking up with other non-super powered citizens and fighting just to get out of the way of the war.

Back in the 90s, you'd watch a movie like Jurassic Park or Volcano and you'd more or less know ahead of time who was going to die, brutally and Darwinistically - the old and weak perished while the young, pretty, and witty survived. More recent examples of the genre have gleefully turned the formula on its head, keeping a plucky old guy alive and killing someone younger and stronger for the surprise. SI: Front Line works that way too, but Brian Reed manages to deliver a new twist to the game in its last few pages.

Throughout the issue, Ben Urich talks about wanting to get home to his wife, Doris. She was in the shower when he left that morning, and he forgot to say "I love you," on the way out the door. Nothing particularly novel so far; any movie-goer would tell you that Urich's the goner, right? But what we don't learn until the very end is that Doris has been very ill, and she passed away during the day her husband spent surviving the attack. We find Ben talking to his therapist, explaining how in the final hours he was just wandering the streets, muttering notes into his tape recorder, and realizing he could have just walked back home to his wife, could have been there in time, and he wasn't. He made notes for a story he now finds he can't even write.

It's a stunning death because it happens to a character we never see and for reasons entirely unrelated to the plot. It's perfectly foreshadowed but completely unexpected, like all the best literary surprises. And it matters, because Brian Reed has made sure that whether we knew him from previous Marvel Universe appearances or met him for the first time in this book, we care about Ben Urich. Reed makes a grand, colorful sci-fi epic into a beautifully sad, down-to-earth story about the life that slips past us when we're looking at the big picture.

- JC