Third Party View

It’s time for another big Marvel crossover story. Man, these things seem to just be flying at us, don’t they? First came Civil War followed and I think a little overlapped by World War Hulk and now we have Secret Invasion.

Secret Invasion has been building for a while in the Avengers books. The gist of it is that the shape-shifting aliens known as the Skrulls have been mad at Earth’s heroes for some time and want to take over the planet. They’ve mastered genetic engineering to the point that they can give one of their own any powers of any superhuman on Earth, or any combination of powers. It’s like the Super Skrull, who had the powers of all four of the Fantastic Four, but times about a thousand or so.

So not only can they look like anyone and use any superpowers, but they’ve also made it so their real identities are undetectable. Genetic tests, mind reading, their scent, nothing gives them away.

Picking back up with the story, the Avengers (well, the upstart New Avengers, technically) discovered that Elektra was a Skrull when she was killed (again). Researching the Skrull body, they figured out all this undetectable stuff and figured out that anybody could be a Skrull and nobody would know, fostering all kinds of dissent and mistrust. We just found out that Spider-Woman is the big bad queen Skrull, which maybe helps explain why she’s been crossing and double-crossing and triple-crossing everyone.

Now that you’re up to speed, in Secret Invasion #3 the assault is finally on for real. Super-powered Skrulls, one of whom seems to have the powers of every other X-Man, have landed in what looks to be Times Square, where the New Avengers and the Initiative try to hold things down. They don’t do a very good job, but a blast from the past finally makes a reappearance.  And I’m not talking about Captain America.  (He made his reappearance in The New Avengers #41.)

Meanwhile all the Avengers (the Mighty Avengers, the New Avengers) are down in the Savage Land confronting what looks like 1970’s versions of themselves and trying to figure out who from each camp is real and who is a Skrull. Pandemonium. In the midst of this, Tony Stark, whose network has gone down rendering him pretty useless, has wandered off to try to get his Iron Man armor back online. Spider-Woman tracks him down and ruins Civil War for us.

Okay, here’s my beef, and I don’t care if you read this issue yet or not. A couple of my friends and I were talking about Civil War a while back and we said that if we go through all this and come to find out that Tony Stark, who was the main proponent and leader of the superhero registration movement, is having his strings pulled or is actually a bad guy, that it would ruin the whole storyline. I mean, here’s a guy, a big-time hero, who puts his reputation on the line and becomes THE Mr. Establishment. He comes to embody the things that people fear big government for. Maybe he’s right, maybe he’s wrong, but Tony Stark is still a good guy, right?

Well, it turns out that he’s not, and Rick, I’m sorry because you got duped into siding with the Registration Act. You see, Tony Stark was a Skrull who was so deeply brainwashed in his role that he didn’t even know he was a Skrull anymore.

So here’s the thing. I’m enjoying the Secret Invasion storyline just fine. I really like Lenil Yu’s pencils (although I prefer the inks to be more sketchy, like his New Avengers run) and Brian Michael Bendis writes some good stuff. There’s action, intrigue and casualties, all of which is good. But why, Marvel, why do you have to backpedal on the things that made Civil War good? Spider-Man outed himself and I think One More Day came along and negated that, or at least that’s my understanding.  Captain America appeared with the old school Avengers (that should be a title for an Avengers book) so I’m guessing the one that was shot and killed was a Skrull, which really would play pretty conveniently into the current story if he was planted specifically to help divide the super heroes. And now Iron Man’s a bad guy and the Registration Act was just a ruse to make it easier for evil aliens to invade the planet. Why not just let it be what it was and let Tony Stark have some human flaws, and why undo all the cool stuff you’ve done in the past year?

Marvel, I enjoy a lot of your books, but please grow a pair and let changes be changes.