3. Invasion!
Invasion isn’t good. Invasion is great. Invasion is so so great. Invasion is a dense three-part event, spanning something like two hundred and forty pages just in the main series.
In part one, a vast coalition of alien races decides that “hey, you know that ‘Earth’ place, where all the superheroes are? Yeah, it’s not fair that they get all the superheroes, so let’s get rid of them all!†The story follows Adam Strange as he is trapped in the galactic space prison known as the Starlag alongside The Omega Men. After a daring attempt at a prison break and Strange’s cosmic return to earth, we find he’s too late to deliver a warning, as the invasion of earth has already begun. The aliens, led by the freaky-looking Dominators, demand the people of earth surrender all known superheroes under threat of total annihilation. After deliberation from the UN, the world responds via huge block letters in the front page of The Daily Planet:
One of my favorite last pages of all time, by the way.
Issue two is all out war between the aliens and earth’s heroes, with some wonderfully done action, culminating in the aliens’ forced retreat. In the final chapter, the Dominators release an ultimate weapon: a bomb to poison most of earth’s heroes, causing their powers to overload to the point of near death. A race against time ensues to find the cure and save earth’s best and brightest. Overall, Invasion is pulse-pounding, intense, and fun. But it’s also full of great character moments especially a fantastic little scene for Lex Luthor and some nice work with Amanda Waller and Maxwell Lord. It is so totally worth a read you’d have to be crazy not to.
