Secret Invasion #6 (OF 8)

After reading this issue and I felt a little underwhelmed. 

At first crack I was loving it, got to the second half thinking 'ohhh man, ohh man!,' then Nick Fury pops outta nowhere around a bunch of huge Super-Skulls, cops, and generic crunchies with a huge gun and a bunch of people screaming stuff.  Okay, I blinked.  Could have been the art confusing it, whatever.  Then Thor's just chillin in the park slamming his hammer into the ground frying grass and trees with lightening bolts.  And then everyone just shows up?   Even the bad guys?  Granted that sight would be a hard thing to miss so it does kind of make sense but it just felt awfully convenient.  In the plane ride over Reed asks Tony if he's feeling better, he's says no and his armors shot.  He's shooting a Skrull in the face a couple pages later.  How?  And was Thor just hanging round Central Park tapping hit foot waiting for a fight before finally thinking fuck this noise I'm just gonna slam my hammer into the ground and draw everybody to me, I'm hungry, this is ridiculous?

So in the spirit of good fanboy analysis and avoiding the presidential election news I reread the series again including this issue and although on a episodic basis the book is indeed kind of boring there's a pretty good amount of stuff going on it actually: it is just that the whole story is taking place in an afternoon's time.  Maybe a day.  By the time the Skrulls are making that television annoucement with all the different famous faces it's been maybe twelve hours.  At least that's how it reads to me, so by the time Agent Brand does not get killed and conveniently lands on the one ship that the Skrulls stupidly and conveniently left orbiting Earth containing Reed Richards (whic must be like Christmas to a seven year old for them if they capture him and just cannot wait to torture Reed in a public forum instead of getting the hell away from Earth), we're talking a long morning, a bad afternoon's time at best. 

So to recap: Heroes get called away by ship in Savage Land, Reed gets captured and is being tortured above Earth, meanwhile in NYC Nick Fury shows up with a huge gun and saves some of the Initiative away from the Skrulls kicking their asses in Times Sq.  Brand frees Reed, Reed makes a this-will-all-make-sense-gun, Nick Fury arranges the kids into a fighting unit while hanging out in his huge underground base somewhere, Skrulls make televised announcement, Brand and Reed go to the Savage Land, everyone gets on board their ship, all the heroes head back to NYC where Nick Fury and his huge group of kids are popping out of corners taking out Super Skrulls while Thor stands in Central Park growing impatient before just saying fuck it and drawing lightening down on himself to draw attention.  

That's basically the plot and so far this has all happened within maybe 12 hours.  Maybe a day. 

So what about the plan?  On the surface it reads like a pretty smart plan except that under scrutiny it has a bunch of convenient backdoors.  Distracting the heroes to the Savage Land was a brilliant idea but besides trying to mind-fuck Tony into thinking he was a Skrull, what was the point of the duplicate brainwashed Skrull heroes really?  Most of them were stomped out by a T Rex immediately so they're hardly effective.  Plus, you would think the tactical minds that put this kind of plan in motion would see dinosaurs in a prehistoric land as a variable but I guess they didn't play Risk as a kid.  The Queen gets shot at and peaces out while the heroes are left to just..doubt each other?  The minute the first one of those guys turned to a Skrull after being stepped on by a dinosaur I think I would have put two and two together.  If the dupe heroes were to keep them occupied while they dropped a Nuke on them or some other major weapon I could see that.  Otherwise, especially with the Queen just leaving it seemed like a pointless fight.  The real peril was that they had no ship to get back to NYC with, not is the 70's version of Wolverine the real Wolverine?? dum dum DUMMMMM!!!

So the Savage land's just a distraction, fine, but they blow of the SWORD satellite and there's tons of humans, including Agent Brand, floating in space glue and they don't fire on them?  Allowing Brand to makeher way to the Skrull ship that happens to house the masocists getting off on watching Reed get tortured.  Beyond not racing home to get a good viewing they do it next to the satellite target?  By the time they all get together for this big fight at the end of this issue it feels like the Skrulls are kind of inept for all the trouble they've put into this.  Why give Tony the virus if all it did was make him throw up and only have the ability to slightly use his awesome armor instead of totally use his awesome armor?  For that matter, why not kill the heroes directly in the Savage Land?  Where does Nick get these bases and like Ron asked, who would have built them?  Who are you voting for?

So at this point in the story I see a lot of convenient backdoors in the Skrulls plan that propel the story certainly but show the smudges when held under the sunlight.  However , having reread the series to this issue though I was a lot less underwhelmed.  If anything realizing the short amount of time this is taking place in I can't help but think I'd be the guy in the back of the spaceship asking if anyone else is hungry?  With two more issues to go I am still on board with this series, it is silver age-y camp fun but dressed up as "modern." 

And at the end of the day that's just fine because the seven year old in me really does want to know if the Wolverine from the 70's has been the real Wolverine this whole time.