I've said it before and, barring the collapse of the franchise, will have cause to say it again, but I find the Marvel Television Universe parsecs more interesting, watchable, smarter, affecting and fun than its big-screen, big-everything theatrical component. With more time to tell a story and less money to obscure it in special effects, the TV shows invest more in ideas, in character, in novel ways of approaching a story. There's more talking, less fighting. The fate of the universe is, after all, less interesting than the fate of a person, since the universe will obviously outlast us, and people are notoriously fragile.
"Secret Invasion," which premieres Wednesday on Disney+, centers on Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), who came into being in the comics as a World War II Army sergeant and, hitching a ride on the late '60s rage for spies, was shortly promoted to a contemporary secret agent ("of S.H.I.E.L.D," originally for Supreme Headquarters, International Espionage and Law-Enforcement Division — the age loved an acronym).
In the ensuing six decades of elaboration, retconning and world-building, he has become the man who conceived the Avengers, Marvel's answer to D.C.'s Justice League; that pack of superheroes are currently off-world doing … something or other … which leaves "Secret Invasion," its alien characters notwithstanding, refreshingly life-sized. I can't say what noisy wonders the endgame — or even the middle game — might hold, only two episodes having been released for review. But it's generally true of Marvel TV series that character packs the punch, and not the punching itself. There is punching, but nothing that could take down a building.
