Secret Invasion #1 (OF 8)

BRAVO, BENDIS AND YU, BRAVO!!!  I was incredibly surprised by the first issue of Secret Invasion #1.  I was expecting a slower than a snail's pace, House of M-style issue, but Bendis kicked it into high gear from the jump.  The pacing was easy to follow and I enjoyed the reveals, as there were many more than I expected.  The one problem I did have with the issue was Yu's art at times.  Although it was much better than his New Avengers work, Morales' inks, as good as they were, couldn't cover up Yu's awkward anatomy at times.  The book, as a whole, left me with more WTF moments than an episode of "Lost".  Bendis has made a believer out of me. A really good read and I can't wait for the next seven issues.  If they are as good as this, I'm definitely in for the long haul.

Maybe I should go back and re-read it, but could you please regale us with the stream of logic that dictates that because Hank Pym is a Skrull, that the crash-landed ship full of heroes HAS to be Skrulls?  I'm not saying that this was the greatest comic I ever read, but it was pretty neat, and it gets on my last nerve when people claim that things were "predictable", or that they "saw the twist coming a mile away."

Again, I feel like I ought to go back and re-read them, but I feel like Hank Pym's thought bubbles back in Mighty Avengers weren't those of a Skrull posing as Hank Pym.  There is nothing I dislike more from a writer than dishonesty.  If we saw thought bubbles of Hank Pym, and they didn't betray SOMETHING of his Skrulliness then I think that's blatant cheating on Bendis' part.

@JonSamuelson: unless Hank wasn't replaced yet when that scene took place.

@Balefuego  I'll allow for that possibility, but timeline-wise that was a pretty recent event, so I'd expect a fairly explicit description of WHEN hank got assimilated.

@JonSamuelson My thinking is that if the escapees were the people they're supposed to be, then they'd have Hank Pym with them.  Otherwise, the escape conversation would have gone like this:

Iron Man: "Okay, we're out.  Now, we need to break out all the other heroes and steal a ship so that we can warn Earth."

Captain America: "Sure, just as long as we leave Pym behind.  He's a loser."

Either they left him behind or they're not the people they're supposed to be.  That's not even considering the problem that would be created by Bendis writing *that* Wolverine and *that* Thor as the real ones: it would invalidate JMS' series and all the Wolverine books, entirely.  (The list goes on: if that Emma Frost and Jean Grey are the real ones, it pisses on Cyclops' entire character arc in X-Men; if that's the real Spider-Men, then the Skrull made the deal with Mephisto, doesn't it?  To be fair, that would thankfully make One More Day meaningless...)

@Joe: Sorry about that last nerve; I hope you didn't need it, because I'm one of those people who called "Fight Club" in the first twenty minutes (I wrote my suspicion on the piece of paper and handed it to my girlfriend, just to be sure), and "Secret Invasion" is no "Fight Club."  That's also why I put my called shot in the review: if I'm wrong, I'll eat crow; if I'm right I get to gloat about it.