This story is the precursor to Secret Invasion, which is right about the time that Brian Michael Bendis’ tenure as Marvel’s key architect begins to show its age. His heavy emphasis on dialogue and nonlinear storytelling feels like much less of his personal style and much more of a studied technique. It’s still good, it’s just not as good as the work that preceded it.
At the end of the last issue, which reintroduced the resurrected Clint Barton as Ronin, Echo (the original Ronin) killed Elektra, only it wasn’t Elektra.
It was a skrull. And her disguise had fooled everyone, including Wolverine, whose enhanced senses didn’t pick up on her alien biochemistry.
Flying the body back to their base for examination, the team finds themselves unable to trust each other–because any one of them could be a skrull. Especially Clint Barton, who they all thought was dead until a few issues ago. And Spider-Woman has been a Hydra spy. The team’s resident ex-con, Luke Cage, who was literally thrown in prison based on a conspiracy, thinks the skrulls are everywhere and even caused House of M.
It’s all very interesting, albeit very talk-y. Conversing about all of this takes nearly all of issue #32, until the plane they are on suddenly loses power and crashes. Wolverine and Spider-Man are the only ones still conscious, and Jessica venom-blasts Logan, putting him to sleep, and steals Elektra/skrull’s body.
We don’t learn this until towards the end of this story, but Spider-Woman is NOT a skrull. She delivered the body to Iron Man to prove that there is a bigger threat than unregistered heroes and try to get him to take action.
After the crash, The New Avengers get a hotel room and argue some more about the depth of the skrull invasion (see what I mean about Bendis’ style getting a bit tiresome?). They decide the break up for the night so each of them can individually consider whether they want to be part of a team where any one of them could be a skrull. But confoundingly, the very next day, Doctor Strange uses magic to show that none of them are skrulls. (Why didn’t he do that earlier?)
Meanwhile, in Hell’s Kitchen, The Hood’s criminal gang steals Luther “Deathlok” Manning from The Owl.
Owl’s keeping him in a tube.
Somehow, Owl gets shot through the chest and back about 10 times and doesn’t die.
Hood’s gang consists of Whitney Frost, Dr. Jonas Harrow, The Wizard, and Hood’s cousin, John King. His master plan is to use the Deathlok to invade Avengers Tower and become the master of all supercriminals.
Wolverine decides to hunt them down during his time away from the team, and then the whole team ends up getting crossed over into the big symbiote war happening over in the Mighty Avengers series.
And then it’s an orgy of heroes fighting heroes fighting Hood’s huge gang of villains fighting symbiotes, etc. etc.
Along the way, some good stuff happens. Tigra is reintroduced as an Avenger and I always dug her. Unfortunately, she promptly gets her ass kicked by Hood.
I should have created a tag for all the times Tigra is taken hostage.
Maya and Clint appear to be getting it on, maybe(?). A whole bunch of rarely used characters get little bits of screen time. We learn baby Cage’s name.
There’s also a bit of a Doctor Strange retcon that I almost hesitate to mention because it never really goes anywhere: We learn that he’s been using black magic ever since his first meeting with the Ancient One in order to cover up the damage to his hands, and he decides he needs to purify his practice. So, he quits the team to go do that.
Finally, Jessica Jones registers with Tony Stark in order to protect her baby–thus splitting her from her unregistered husband.
This story is truly all over the place. And throughout, it’s full of time jumping and hypergradual plot reveals.
Again, none of this is bad. Bendis is a master craftsman. But it does get awfully close to the old Fabian Nicieza days of twisting, complicated plotlines starring dozens of characters that, frankly, gets a bit exhausting.
They weather has suddenly cleared up but Danny reports that they can’t land in New York because there’s something still wrong over there. He decides to head for Chicago. But then the power goes out completely. The plane starts to fall and flips over and then upright again. Dr Strange’s magic can’t help. Wolvie suggests anyone who can fly should bail out. Stephen says his Cloak Of Levitation won’t work. But SW can at least glide so Logan opens a door and throws her out of the plane. Danny sends super-heavy Luke to the back of the plane to balance the weight, followed by some of the others. Dr S uses a spell to do *something* (maybe stop people being sucked out of the open door). But Spidey ducks out of the door and clings to the underside of the plane so he can create a large web-cushion to soften the impact when they crash. Danny’s found a golf course and guides them down to pancake on it. The plane snaps in half but everyone survives but in various states of damage/consciousness.
Then Spider-Woman walks up and locates the Skrull corpse. Wolverine struggles to his feet but she zaps him with a close range bio-electric ‘venom’ blast, and then pummels him and grips his head to deliver another blast point-blank. And she picks up the Skrull and walks off with it.
English (US) · 