The frustrations of being a comic book fan...

Just in case you're one of the few people who reads my blog AND reads comics, you might want to skip it if you haven't read the conclusion of Secret Invasion.  

So, can you believe that Tony Stark is no longer the Director of SHIELD?  And even moreso, can you believe that the organization to replace SHIELD is going to be headed by none other than Norman Osborn?  And then he's got none other than Dr. Doom, Loki, The White Queen, and Namor running the show with him?  Crazy stuff, huh?  And what's going to happen with The Avengers?  We already have two teams, and now it looks like there will be a third one!  Will guys like Spider-Man and Luke Cage ever be able to work with Stark again after what went down during the superhero civil war?  Will the superhuman registration act be repealed?  And will the new Captain America be a part of one of these new Avengers teams?

What's that you say?  You have no idea what the hell I'm talking about?

But dammit, when I flipped to the last page of Secret Invasion #8, I was totally floored.  I haven't felt this way since it turned out that The Thunderbolts were secretly the Masters of Evil!  Remember that feeling when you saw Citizen V take off his mask to reveal that he was really Baron Zemo?  That was such a kick in the nuts!

Huh?  You don't know what I'm talking about with that either?  How about when Flash Thompson was unmasked as the Hobgoblin?  What about when it turned out that it was really Ned Leeds?  Or when it was REALLY Roderick Kingsley?

You don't know about that?  What about the return of Hal Jordan?  Wasn't it great that Kyle Rayner was the Green Lantern who ultimately saved him?

Crap...you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?

This is the frustrating thing being a comic book fan.  After I finished the final part of Marvel's big Secret Invasion crossover, I was dying to talk to somebody about it.  But to whom?  My wife doesn't read comics.  There's one guy at work who does, but whenever we talk about them we get strange looks from our fellow employees.  (Maybe we need to say that we're talking about a TV show instead of comics.)

I guess that things are better than they used to be, as there are at least some really great superhero movies being made like Iron Man and The Dark Knight being made where non-comics fans seem to like them just as much as I do.  That way, I at least get to talk about superheroes with a larger variety of people.

Still...can you believe that?  Osborn turned out to be the hero!  Doesn't the government realize that they're handing over national security to the Green Goblin?