Marvel's Secret Invasion had a higher concept than the majority of their big event books. Boasting the tagline "Who do you trust?", the limited series had the shocking reveal that malevolent shape-shifting aliens the Skrulls had been covertly replacing some of Earth's most prominent superheroes, with nobody any the wiser until Elektra is killed (again) and her face immediately gets all green and bumpy and gross. And then it turns out Hank Pym, who was performing the autopsy, was also a Skrull impostor! What! Once the shock of all those twists wears off, incredulity quickly sets in. Wait, why are the Skrulls slowly invading Earth? The only reason they turned up here in the first place was because they were hunting down Captain Marvel as part of the Krull-Skree War. Invading Earth just seems like payback for the time the Illuminati - a secret group of some of Marvel's most powerful heroes - turned up unannounced on their doorstep to warn them not to come play on their lawn again. The real motivation behind the Secret Invasion, and each successive reveal of who had or hadn't been a Skrull all along, turned out to simply be a good excuse to undo a load of bad characterisation and contradicting storylines throughout Marvel history. Why has Hank Pym fluctuated between being a hero and a huge jerk? Oh, because he was an alien in disguise! Why did Spider-Woman suddenly reappear, after years languishing in obscurity (despite writer Brian Michael Bendis's inexplicable love for her)? She was a Skrull infiltrating the New Avengers! Nobody cares about Captain Marvel any more, huh. Make him an evil impostor! Still, we got some neat Leinil Francis Yu art out of it, if nothing else (there was really nothing else).
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
