Secret Invasion: The Amazing Spider-Man

Secret Invasion: The Amazing Spider-Man #1-3

by Brian Reed, Marco Santucci (Illustrator)

New York is full of Skrulls and Spider-Man... where the heck is Spider-Man, anyway? Now, thanks to Brian Reed (Ms. Marvel) and exciting newcomer Marco Santucci, Jackpot and the rest of the cast of "Brand New Day" must pick up Spidey's slack and go toe-to-toe with Super-Skrulls - including one that might just be Spidey himself!
Collects Secret Invasion #58, The Amazing Spider-Man #1-3, and Amazing Spider-Man 2008 Annual.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Marvel, Spider Man, Fiction, Superheroes, Comic Book

112 pages, Paperback

First published March 4, 2009

About the author

Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name

Reviews

[Gavin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Amateur hour in both story, writing and characters...no Spider-Man at all...Jackpot? What the fuck? Garbage tie in cash grab piece of junk. Tripe.

[Chris Greensmith · Rating 1 out of 5]

"In the mighty Marvel manner, we bring to you the most stunning of sense shattering spectacles: The stairwell of the terrifically tabloidian DB. The Amazing Spiderman- in BRAND NEW SECRET INVASION."
The look of this reminded me of the 90's Spider-man comics, with a touch more detail which I liked so the art gets 2 🌟
The story in relation to Secret Invasion felt forced, Spider-man was in the Savage Lands as the Skrulls first hit NYC so the focus was on Jackpot, battling a Super Skrull looking for Spider-man, which didn't make sense because of the Skrulls planned this all they would have know he wasn't in NYC? And the way the battle was won by Jackpot was a bit unbelievable, I didn't really like this so 1🌟
Relevance to SI, 1 🌟 So overall for this TPB 1 1/2 🌟

[Anthony · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've seen some of the other reviews complain that Spider-man is hardly in this, which is a fair criticism given that the book is called 'Spider-man'. But there reason he's not in it is because he's in the Savage Land with The Avengers, which I have no problem with. The problem I have though is that most of this book involves Skrulls seeking out Spider-man's friends in New York because they're looking for him, even though he's fighting Skrulls in the Savage Land. Is there some lack of communication between the Skrull army? (Hey, maybe that's why the lost!).

It's not something I'd usually complain about, but given it's one of the main plot points of the story, it's hard to ignore. And given that it all focuses around Jackpot, who I never liked as a character, it's just boring. Which is a shame since the Spider-man tie-ins to Marvel Events are usually pretty good (and I even include the JMS Amazing Spidey Civil War tie-ins in that statement).

Completely skip-able if you're reading through Secret Invasion. I only give it two stars because the art is kinda okay and because it takes into account what Spider-man is doing in the main Secret Invasion book.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Comic readers going back to those early days when “continuity” was a new concept have wondered how a member of a superhero team can be fighting Bob the Not-Very-Polite Alien on the Planet Zycam while he or she is simultaneously battling the Human Windshield Wiper on their home turf, with both comics being released simultaneously. The footnote “This occurs before the events in ‘Bunch of Heroes’ #47” addresses the situation, but is somewhat of a cop-out.

The comics reprinted in the graphic novel “Secret Invasion: The Amazing Spider-Man” do not take that tack. The titular hero of the story is off in the Savage Land battling Skrulls in the “Secret Invasion”. Meanwhile ANOTHER team of Skrulls comes up to New York City seeking out Spider-Man, not knowing that their planetary colleagues are tackling the webslinger on the other side of the world. SO – they try to force information about Spider-Man’s location out of the folks at the DB (formerly “Daily Bugle” before getting bought out and tabloid-ized), wondering if perhaps one of them actually IS Spider-Man – after all, “we can SMELL him here!”

Unfortunately, this concept is also the major weakness of the collection. If you’re going to publish a collection about Spider-Man’s friends and acquaintances, then TITLE the darned thing “The Amazing Friends and Acquaintances of Spider-Man”!! (Regular readers of the comic where this was originally published must have felt the same way, especially given that this was a mini-series and not the regular title.)

This is not to say that the story itself wasn’t well told, well-drawn, and worth the read – it was. The new attractive super-hero Jackpot, taking over the job of “super powered battler”, proved to be an acceptable protagonist. (Aside: Redheads look so good in green … ah, but I digress …) It was also interesting to see characters like Joe Robertson have to take an active physical role in dealing with a super-powered threat. Unfortunately, the ultimate success or failure of this anthology still boils down to the title character making only cameo appearances in this book.

However … there are FOUR stories collected in this book, not just the 3 described above. The last one, taken from a Spider-Man Annual published shortly after those comics, concerns the aforementioned heroine Jackpot; it address her origins AND how Spider-Man feels about the newly costumed woman who is co-opting his home turf. While it didn’t exactly say this, it made me wonder: What comes first, the “Great Power” or the “Great Responsibility”. THIS was a powerful story, one of the better comic stories I’ve read in a long time, and it made the volume worthwhile for me.

RATING: 2 ½ stars for the 3 part Skrull story, 5 stars for the Annual – applying some weighting … going to call the entire volume 3 ½ stars, rounded down to 3 stars where ½ stars are not permitted.

[Ryk Stanton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was reading New Avengers for some reason and got up to the Secret Invasion storyline and said, “Hey, I have the Mavel Unlimited app, why don’t I just read the entire Secret Invasion storyline? I’d be really interested because I know that the MCU is going to come out with a movie pretty soon.” Great idea, right?

Ugh, that thing is 99 issues long and just starts to d r a g in the middle as Marvel tried to cash in by incorporating as many titles as possible. But I was committed, and I read every single issue. Was it worth it? Absolutely not. Am I glad I read it? I’m not sad, but I wish that Marvel had done a better job writing with concise storytelling. Or that I had not made the decision to read the whole blamed thing.

But, you know, in for a penny, and for a pound. And it’s red and I will never have to read it again and I can enjoy the movie when it comes out. So I’m just going to copy and paste this review in every single trade paperback that contains the secret invasion, storyline and call it a day.

if anyone reads this review, I recommend you just read the essential story itself without all of the side issues.

[Kyle Berk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Alright, so this is entertaining enough that I can’t say it’s bad but it doesn’t add anything to Secret Invasion and isn’t memorable. It spins the wheels. It’s fine. But maybe that’s worse. I’ve said and will say so many comics are entertaining enough but at a point you want something to wow you. Something you can really recommend to everybody and get invested in.

This isn’t that and all it is was an unnecessary side story. Because it did nothing of note and I’ll likely forget everything about it.

2 stars and what were we talking about?

Oh and just to cover it this collection only contains four issues, not Secret Invasion #58 like it says. Amazing Spider-Man Secret Invasion 1-3 and Amazing Spider-Man annual 2008.

[Kris Shaw · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before I begin my tirade, please allow me to clarify one thing: This was an enjoyable read with solid writing and artwork. While it was a good read, the title of this book is entirely misleading. The Secret Invasion mini-series focused on Jackpot and Spider-Man's supporting cast, with Spider-Man himself being featured on only a handful of pages. The story did tie in to events occurring in both Secret Invasion and Amazing Spider-Man, but I was disappointed because this was essentially a Jackpot mini-series. I was also disappointed to see Marvel double dip and reprint the ASM Annual here, as it was recently reprinted in the Death and Dating Spider-Man hardcover. It does tie-in to Jackpot, but that just lends further merit to my argument that this is a misleadingly titled book.

[Andrew Garvey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This as an odd, and largely unsatisfying Secret Invasion tie-in since, considering its a Spider-Man book, there's almost no Spider-Man in it until the 2008 annual which again, mostly revolves around Jackpot. The three issues of the bloated Secret Invasion tie-in feel redundant and suffer from some basic logic problems (why is a super Skrull hunting Spider-Man in New York when he's in the Savage Land fighting other Skrulls?) The annual is a better story about registration, responsibility and the price someone is willing to pay to be a superhero that saves this collection from a one star review.

[Sarah]

Wow - an absolutely redundant piece of crap! This is so frigging poor, it’s so unbelievable! It’s unreadable, redundant AND not it’s a Spider-man secret invasion, more like - poorly written crap character Powers ‘who cares’ Secret Invasion featuring a Spider-Man (yes, SM isn’t in NY, he’s in the savage land) skrull drop in. At least have the spidey skrull do something of plot worthy merit, but no, this comic is completely skip-able, both in regards to secret invasion and just general readable-ness. Not worth the paper it’s printed on

[Adam Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

An inoffensive Spider-Man adjacent/Secret Invasion adjacent tie in.

Jackpot doesn't have a ton of unique personality in this collection, so I can see why she doesn't have as much of a following as Spider-Gwen or Silk or any of the various Spider-Women and Spider-Girls, but she's a good temporary stand in for Peter Parker. She quips, she gets in over her head, and she's connected to most of Peter Parker's friends.

The series is absolutely not necessary for a read-through of either Spider-Man or of Secret Invasion but it has some fun Easter Eggs for fan of the extended Spider-Man family.

[Ben Lund · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not a Spider man comic, this has nothing to do with him, a three book car chase, with next to no plot. Waste of paper.

[Terry Murphy · Rating 1 out of 5]

God awful. Nothing to recommend about this whatsoever. You'd be better served writing a Spider-Man story on a napkin, and then reading it aloud it an empty room. Avoid this.

[Judith Groen · Rating 1 out of 5]

Its just garbage. Stay far away from it!

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

I heard the news that Guggenheim has been tapped to write a script for Sony’s never-too-late-to-flail-directionlessly-towards-a shared universe, based on the character Jackpot that he had a hand in writing back last decade.

So after a few of the Shallow Comics Readers has no better idea than I “why her?”, I decided to see what could possibly be worth dredging her up over all the other possible fun-and-whacky Spidey-side-characters that Sony’s license agreement gives them access to.

Reading through all her appearances in the 2008-era spidey titles, and I’ve come to a few conclusions:
- Dan Slott and Marc Guggenheim didn’t agree on Jackpot’s secret identity - they were playing *way* too hard with all of MJ’s catchphrases and mannerisms - and she looks exactly like someone would draw MJ if she dressed up in a fashionable costume - and yet steered in exactly the opposite direction when asked directly
- The character has almost nothing of merit to show for her many (at least 8) appearances - weak personality, no discernible powers (maybe she’s a little strong, a little fast?)
- She’s as forgettable as the Marvel bullpen made her out to be - no particular reason for her to emerge, except as a failed experiment in creating new characters from whole cloth. Slott got better at it over the years.
- Guggenheim finally killed her off unceremoniously in a sad “drug interaction” mixup - like they just wanted to sweep the whole thing under a rug.

She wanted to be a hero, make a difference? Is this the worst generic motivation for an in-over-their-head hero wannabe, or the WORST?

So here I am, having read her entirely tedious and vapid backstory, and I still have no better idea “why her”. It can’t just be a female empowerment story (like Uncle Guggy has done to death in the Arrowverse for CW) - there’s plenty of females in Spidey’s universe we could play with
- Spider-Gwen, Silk (maybe they’re too new for the license agreement?)
- Spider-Woman (maybe she’s contested because she’s also a SHIELD asset?)
- Black Cat (why is this previously-announced movie being shelved?)
- Silver Sable (maybe she’s too much like Black Widow?)

Hell, Sony and Disney are now apparently talking about the latter two as a D+ series.

If you look at the current lineup of possible films in development in this list, Jackpot almost looks comfortably “of course” alongside Solo (whothefucknow?). It’s gotta be terrifying to be a Hollywood studio and have NO other ideas for mid-budget movies, if you’re scraping the dung heap of failed comics characters from a decade ago.

What, do they think that Spidey-fans will recognise Jackpot and flood the theatre MORE than if they just fielded any other out-of-nowhere action heroine? Hell, you bring Charlize Theron and I’ll watch her take her car in for an oil change.

[Scott Lee · Rating 2 out of 5]

Where's Spiderman? I mean, there are lame first page references to the main Secret Invasion storyline that are supposed to be amusing and fail miserably, but there's no spiderman until the final issue, which unfortunately, feels like a slightly better done version of the old anti-drug freebies starring Spiderman and Cloak and Dagger that were handed out during my elementary school years. This particular issue is somewhat redeemed by Spidey's passionate defense of his own classic "with great power..." motto to the powered woman who registered and trained as Jackpot before turning it all over to her friend who drugged up to be a superhero and then died. Perhaps I'd be more forgiving of the material as a whole if I'd read more Spiderman recently, but I don't think so.

The primary problem here is the major problem at Marvel in general. Quesada and his team seem to think that a nonstop diet of mini-series special events that relegate all their regular monthly books to continuous sideline, tie-in status is good for business. It might even be. Don't know much about the comic book business. But there is almost no reason to buy regular marvel monthly books anymore (I keep doing it, I gotta have my comic fix, and if you look around hard enough you can still be rewarded...). In the old days with the event stories often happening as crossovers within a family of books (or within two families, or, occasionally across the universe as a whole) at least the company was honest that you were getting only a portion of the story in your regular monthly book, and at least what was in the regular monthly book was a meaningful portion of the storyline. I was very tempted by the more traditional crossover style X-Men: Second Coming story line. I didn't have the money to buy it all, so I didn't, but I bought more than normal, and I certainly read that trade as soon as possible. "House of M?" "Secret Invasion?" "Civil War?" Not so much. I read them eventually later, and didn't buy any extra books as part of their stories. Why? Nothing meaningful was happening in the books I was already buying! They (Marvel) simply pissed me off by interrupting my ongoing titles for sad tie-in storylines that often had no bearing either on the regular monthly or the main event story. Sad, sad sad. Marvel needs to wake up.

[Holden Attradies · Rating 4 out of 5]

First off I want to get this out of the way: Why was it called "The Amazing Spider-Man Secret Invasion" if he wasn't in it? Well, duh, because it was done by the creative team that works on the Amazing Spider-Man comic and features characters that are usually found only in that comics pages. A series is more than it's title character, ESPECIALLY when the title character is a single character and not a whole team. It makes perfect sense that while Spidey was off doing other things his supporting cats got to continue the story.

Anyways, I really liked this story. Sure I was pretty lost having not really read any recent Spidey solo stuff and had to wiki a few things (like why no one knew he was Peter Parker after he exposed himself in civil War), but I chocked that up to being part of the genre. The story surrounding Jackpot was awesome. She wants to be a hero so bad they she becomes a kind of tragic anti-hero in the end, having done things for almost the wrong reasons in a manner that ultimately takes her life.

[Lynn Sheridan · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first thing to note in this volume from the Secret Invasion arc is that there is actually very little of Spider-man. Instead, it follows another superhero called Jackpot just in New York surrounded by Peter Parker’s friends.

This isn’t a bad story. It’s a little one-dimensional in that a Super-Skrull with the powers of the Sinister Six is looking for Spider-man and chases Jackpot and some regular people across New York. There isn’t much more to it than that.

The artwork is pretty good and I did enjoy the bonus story at the end about the origins of Jackpot.

I may have been inclined to rate it higher had actually had Spider-man in it or it was simply sold as Jackpot. I’m reading the whole Secret Invasion arc, I’m not the only one, so if they want to introduce new characters, just do it. Don’t switch them at the expense of an established character.

It’s a fun chase with lots of action, but not what it says it is. Sneaky!

[Kris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is just really bad. To start with, it purports to be all about the Secret Invasion, but half the book is a completely separate story with Jackpot - that's right, it's a Spider-Man book about Skrulls, and half the book has no Skrulls and no (well, very little) Spider-Man. Rhe dialog is cheesy, the artwork looks like something from the early 80s, and it even has those Stan Lee-esque comments about "the idea factory" and the "Mighty Marvel Manner".

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not really sure why this is put as a Spider-Man book as he's not really in it aside from a few fourth wall recaps and a brief end clear up. Plus this repeats the Annual Spider-Man annual with Jackpot which has already been reprinted in the regular collections.

The story itself is ok but nothing great, concentrating on Parker's friends dealing with a Skrull attack. For completists.

[Walt Walkowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an odd storyline for Spider-Man, honestly. When the main character of the series isn't even present in the first three books, it doesn't make a lot of sense, and because we know so little about the Jackpot character, it isn't very compelling either. And just when we begin to care... well, read it for yourself if want to know.

[Jacob · Rating 4 out of 5]

So why is it sometimes shooting/stabbing skrulls kills them, but sometimes it doesn't bother them?
Other than have Spider-Man recapping the previous issue -Why is he doing it? and How does he know?- and the excessive notes from the editors about various things it wasn't a bad story. Not great or anything, but not bad.

[Geonessary · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of fun seeing how some of the supporting characters of Spider-Man are dealing with the Skrull invasion. In some ways it was more fun than the Secret Invasion main storyline. My only problem was my expectations. Because it had Spider-Man in the title I had expected more of him, but it makes sense that he's minimally in it because of the main event.

[The Ghost's Library · Rating 1 out of 5]

Secret Invasion was already pretty bad. Secret Invasion: Spider-man is about as bad as it gets. This was god awful.

And the new hero Jackpot? What hero in 2008 would have flared pants? Doesn't make much sense to me.

[raman · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. Only saving grace was the reprint of the annual featuring Jackpot's ID and future...

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well it wasn't bad. Should have been called 'Jackpot' not Spiderman though,as she's the main character.

[Chris Boette · Rating 2 out of 5]

I believe another reviewer best summed up this book: "Meh."

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This seems to be a book made up of filler instead of anything substantial, and Spidey is only in it briefly. If Jackpot was a more interesting character, I might have enjoyed it more.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't really like Jackpot that much.

[Stolt-man · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 3 issue mini-series this book collects isn't very good, although I liked the art. The annual at the end was better.

[Thomas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't really want to read a Jackpot book.