Secret Invasion #1

OK, I’m not sure what to make of this. It’s about half red herring and half information – but of course we don’t know which is which.

I’ll see how much I can say without posting direct spoilers.

• The person who blew up the space station was replaced very recently (see the online only SI prequel @ Marvel.com), so there’s not too much of a continuity dent there
• The one Avenger who has been revealed 100% was not a surprise to me. The Avengers supporting cast member is also pretty logical/easy to replace.
• For the ship of Skrull/hero escapees there are several that we know have to be Skrulls.
  • Phoenix obviously, that would be too stupid if she wasn’t.
  • Wolverine, because replacing him twice would also be stupid.
  • The White Queen – because they just had that whole storyline in Astonishing going way deep into her psyche, so unless the Skrulls have a full-on personality transplant…no.
  • Beast – This one I can see them explaining away if it’s some kind of massive personality transplant (they have said that some of the Skrulls don’t even know they are Skrulls).
  • Iron Man – I can see how making him a Skrull would be an easy ret-con for the Extremis thing, but I don’t think they are that cheap.
  • Spider-Man – Duh.
  • The rest are pretty open season, I can see how most of them could be explained aways as replaced.
• Have we got 3 Captain Marvels running around right now??
• No Thunderbolts were Skrulls, really?
• Wolverine says some stupid things, basically as the setup to a punch-line.
• Someone says “Sweet christmas!”
• To what degree are the X-Men going to be involved in this? I really wasn’t expecting what they are implying – could all be herrings though at this point.

I’m thinking they will definitely got the route of direct memory implants with sublimated & activateable Skrull personalities. I have to hope there is a way to get the memories of the lives those Skrulls lived to the people they were posing as so there can be a kind of flow…but I doubt this will happen and it will be interesting that way too.

All in all it was a decent first issue and I’m definitely looking forward to the next one. I hope there are less delays than with Civil War…