New Avengers #40

"I knew it.  I f^&*ing knew it."

Those were my exact words when I found out the big "reveal" of this issue.  Spider-Woman is a Skrull.  No, scratch that.  Spider-Woman is the Skrull QUEEN.  Yeah, that chick that betrayed the New Avengers, insta-developed powers to stop Doom, makes Black Widow give the "glare" once a month, calls up the New Avengers to steal a Quinjet right in front of Skrull Jarvis, and then is told by Fury of the Skrulls before even Civil War goes down and says nothing even after Elektra is revealed to be a Skrull?  Yeah... Skrull.  Big shocker, huh?

Actually, Marvel could still throw a curve and Jess could still not be a Skrull.  We never actually see Jess get replaced and all we have is the Queen getting a recommendation for who to replace.  She might say, "F^&k that. Give me Lockjaw!"  It's about 95% for sure, but Marvel might still pull it back at the last minute.  I would not put it past them.

Still, this big reveal just reminded me of the first Scream movie, an odd thought, I know, but still I thought it in that Bendis managed to keep us guessing on who it was because, by nature, we don't suspect the obvious guy because it's too, well, obvious.  Like in Scream, our brain crosses out the creepy horror movie obsessed boyfriend as the killer because it's just too obvious.  So, when it DOES turn out to be the obvious guy, we sit there and go "Hurm."  Clearly, that's what Bendis was going for here, if it really IS her.  He didn't bother to hide it was Drew because our brains go "Now, it CAN'T be that obvious!"  Well, yeah, it can.

Anyways... I should probably talk about more than the reveal, right?  I haven't met my "Twice as long as the book itself" quota yet!

So what we have here is yet another "Title/Cover/Story doesn't match up" issue for SI.  It's a little less glaring then Mighty Avengers, but it still might be a problem to some.  It doesn't quite bother me but it's better than Marvel shilling another tie-in for another event.  Basically the story is the fall of Dorrek as King and the rise of the religiously fanatical Veranke as Queen and Spider-Woman poser.  Dorrek is shown here as a hard-nosed ruler with a streak of stubborness and a lack of due for the "prophecies."  Banishing Veranke for her extremism, Dorrek ends up dying in the Galactus attack on Skrullos and the Skrulls scramble to make the fanatical Veranke (in you didn't know the "He" in "He loves you" was the Skrull God, now you know) their Queen.  Oh, and Dorrek shoots a Reed clone in the face for the whole cow fiasco way back in FF #2.  It was funny.

The rest of the issue deals with all the set-up we already know.  The Skrulls believe fervently that Earth is theirs.  They can duplicate any number of powers now.  They've cloned the Illuminati.  They can operate undetected, etc.

This story was basically all the stuff the Marvel guys said in interviews over the last nine months now put to canon.  It was well written, but I felt like I was being told things I kind of already know.  The reveal was predictable and unshocking to me, given how many red flags have gone off.  The art was very good, especially since Cheung decided to not draw all the Skrulls exactly the same way as some other artists might do.  With everything together, this was an issue that needed to be done to some extent in the scope of Secret Invasion and accomplished what it needed to do but still felt little more than a road map to how we got to issue 31.  The lack of Earth heroes also hurt this book somewhat.  All in all, this could have been a little better, but I suppose it could have been much worse as well.