It looks like Brian Michael Bendis will be alternating between direct tie-ins to the most recent issue of the Secret Invasion miniseries and using his biggest ongoing series as a platform to retcon the history of Marvel in the image of the Secret Invasion event.
Issue #40 focuses on the Fantastic Four, showing Reed being taken by a relative of one of the skrulls that Reed turned into a cow (after the first appearance of the skrulls back in Fantastic Four #5). It takes place after the team first defeated Galactus, after which apparently Reed was hospitalized.
We also see the skrulls first creating their “infiltrating” tech that gives them powers of various heroes, and the very early days of their infiltration.
The taking of Reed means that he’s been a skrull for a long time, including during his time on the Illuminati.
Issue #42 establishes details in the history of the Spider-Woman skrull, revealing that she’s been a skrull since long before she joined New Avengers.
It’s also got a fantastic tribute cover…
Whatever else you might think of this event, you have to admire how much Bendis absolutely loves comics. I dunno if #43 counts as a tribute cover…But it’s close.
Issue #45 shows what happened to skrulls during House of M, in case you were wondering (I wasn’t).
Issue #46 has them infiltrating the crime families of New York. We learn that The Hood got his powers from Dormammu.
And being a nerd, it has my most favorite tribute cover of them all.
Only true, old school fans will recognize it as re-envisioning the cover of Bring on the Bad Guys.
When I was a kid, digital books didn’t exist and reprints were rare. BotBGs was a collection of villain origin stories. I read it until the spine broke and the pages fell out.
Issue #41 and the other “modern” stories begin during the big dinosaur fight, offering a Ka-Zar storyline. The mystery of whether all those older versions of the heroes were real or not is answered…
Cap was a skrull and Secret Invasion, thankfully, would not affect Ed Brubaker’s brilliant “Death of Captain America” story that ran concurrent with this event.
In a nice touch, it reaches back to the early New Avengers adventures. Like the breakout from The Raft in issue #1.
Skrulls.
The Secret Invasion Savage Land story ties to the first New Avengers Savage Land tale, where they investigated stolen vibranium. It was a plot thread Bendis had left dangling for years, and now we learn it was skrulls. Just about everyone from ever is in this, either real or skrull (or both). I am confident I missed at least 50 characters in my list below.
I’m going to leave it off here. Issue #47 is the last Secret Invasion tie-in and it has some pretty important Luke Cage/Jessica Jones/Danielle Cage stuff.
Yes, it’s all a little convenient to answer dangling threads and out-of-character events with “because of skrulls”. I get why some folks find this to be lazy writing. But it’s a solid popcorn adventure.
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