Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. It’s finally time for Secret Invasion, which takes place between issues #565 and #566 of Fantastic Four. So let’s get all green and wrinkly-chinned for some serious Skrull action.

Gimmie a gimmick: If Secret Invasion is famous for anything, it’s all the covers! Marvel flooded its entire line with gimmick covers, in which famous Marvel art was redone with the characters as Skrulls. For months, you’d walk into the comic book store and see an entire wall of those green faces staring back at you.

The event began in New Avengers #31. This was during a big shakeup for the team. Elektra had taken over as new leader of the Hand, and now commanded her own army of ninjas. She and the Hand had the Avengers on the run, with a plot to brainwash the Avengers to do her bidding. Most of issue #31 is the Avengers battling ninjas inside a Japanese castle while Dr. Strange and Echo fight to overcome the brainwashing. Echo ultimately succeeds, and then she stabs Elektra through the chest as vengeance for Elektra doing the same to her a few issues earlier. The fight stops, and there are two pages of everyone reacting in shock. We finally reveal that Elektra was a Skrull the whole time! The issue ends as Iron Fist asks, “What does this mean?” and his question goes unanswered.

At the time, Marvel did a bang-up job of keeping this secret hidden from readers up to the day the comic hit stands, a Herculean task in the age of public solicits and internet spoilers. Just as Civil War benefitted from the internet by generating massive fan hype online, the phrase “Elektra is a Skrull” similarly got all the mid-2000s message boards buzzing. There were endless debates over who else might a Skrull. Secret Invasion followed quickly thereafter.

Secret Invasion issue #1 begins in paranoia mode as Tony Stark calls Reed Richards and Hank Pym for an autopsy on the Elektra Skrull, while fearing that either of them might also be a Skrull. S.W.O.R.D., which is space version of S.H.I.E.L.D., reports a Skrull ship headed for Earth, about to come down in the Savage Land. The Avengers assemble (of course) and fly to the Savage Land as well, even though the team is not in good standing with S.H.I.E.L.D. at this time.

At the Savage Land, the Avengers find the Skrull ship and debate whether to open it. Then S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Dum Dum Dugan is revealed to be a Skrull, setting off a bomb in the S.W.O.R.D. satellite. And the Avengers’ butler Jarvis is a Skrull, unleashing a computer virus on Iron Man’s armor.

And it’s not just Iron Man. The virus runs rampant through all the Stark International buildings and tech, it downs a S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, and it frees all the villains in super-prisons the Raft and the Cube. A Skrull impersonates Sue Richards to get into the New Baxter Building and free all the villains inside the Negative Zone prison, which is still a thing since Civil War. There’s an exterior shot of the Baxter Building getting absolutely wrecked by the Negative Zone portal.

Back in the Savage Land, Iron Man suffers a seizure due to his armor’s malfunction. Then the Skrull ship opens and a whole bunch of Marvel heroes come out, wearing their costumes from years earlier. They claim to be the real ones, taken off Earth some time ago, blaming the current Avengers for being the imposters.

In space, Agent Brand of S.W.O.R.D. survived the bomb in some kind of shield/bubble thingie, and she spots a huge fleet of alien warships flying past the moon toward Earth. At Avengers tower, Reed is still working on the autopsy when Hank Pym pulls a gun on him. Hank is really a Skrull, and the gun stretches out Reed to make him look like chewed gum or something.

Issue #2 begins with a little bit of the two Avengers teams accusing each other of being Skrulls, but it doesn’t last long before the big brawl starts. Captain Marvel flies Tony away to a nearby cave where he starts repair work on his armor. The heroes end up scattered in the jungle, encountering each other in small groups and not knowing who is really who. In Manhattan, the warships arrive overhead with the big portal also still overhead, and a bunch of Skrulls dressed up like Marvel heroes emerge onto the New York streets to trash the place.

Issue #3 is a lot of business as the Skrull Jarvis shows up at a Helicarrier demanding surrender, a Skrull Mar-Vell attacks Thunderbolt Mountain, and the young trainees of the Fifty States Initiative (remember them?) are told that training is over and it’s time to suit up. In New York, the Young Avengers fight the Skrulls. Hulkling, who is half-Skrull, tries to reason with the invaders, but to no avail. All the Initiative heroes then join the fight.

Spider-Woman finds Iron Man in his cave in the Savage Land. Here we learn she’s not just a Skrull, but the Skrull Empress! She tells Tony that he’s been a sleeper agent all along, that he’s not even aware he’s a Skrull. He refuses to believe her. In New York, it looks like the Skrulls are winning, until Nick Fury shows up with a brand-new team of modern-day Howling Commandoes that he’s been recruiting in secret. Fury says, “Let’s turn this thing around!”

Issue #4 has one page of a helpless Reed Richards being experimented on aboard one of the Skrull ships. The Skrulls narrate about how they infiltrate a world, replace everyone there by shape-changing, and continue living those people’s lives on the planet. Agent Brand manages to sneak aboard the ship, and she finds where they’re keeping Reed. Then it’s page after page of the fight in New York. The Skrulls maintain the advantage, because the superheroes cannot be certain whether their teammates are Skrulls.

In the Savage Land, we see some of the old-timey heroes revealed as Skrulls when Black Widow shoots and kills them (!). She attacks the Spider-Woman Skrull, who retreats and leaves Black Widow alone with Iron Man. Black Widow assures Iron Man that he’s not a Skrull, and that the Empress was just messing with him. Back in NYC, the battle gets more and more out of control, with civilians being endangered. There’s a bolt of lightning. Thor and Captain America appear in the sky overhead.

To be continued!

Unstable molecule: Issue #3 ends with Iron Man saying that he needs Reed Richards’ help to fight the Skrulls, not knowing they’ve already abducted Reed.

Fade out: Sue is one of the heroes emerging from the Skrull ship, wearing her 1960s-era uniform. It’s highly likely this is a Skrull. A Skrull successfully impersonates Sue all the way into the Baxter Building and the Negative Zone portal.

Flame on: By the time Johnny figures out that the Sue in the Baxter Building isn’t really her, he can’t act fast enough before she opens the portal.

Four and a half/Our gal Val: The kids are shown hanging out with Johnny just before the Negative Zone portal opens.

Sue-per spy: The 2019 Invisible Woman miniseries revealed that Sue had a double life as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent all along. Given that S.H.I.E.L.D. was caught unawares by the invasion, and Nick Fury enlisted the new Commandoes while he was deep in hiding, I doubt Sue had any advance knowledge of the Skrulls.

Trivia time: While all this was going on, Marvel used New Avengers to fill in the gaps to the main story. Issues #40 and #42 were the prequel explaining how the Skrulls got away with all this. Basically, they engineered a new version of a Super-Skrull that can mimic superhuman powers as well as appearance, and shape-shifting so finite it can fool the likes of even Dr. Strange and Professor X.   

Nick Fury’s new Howling Commandoes are Quake, Slingshot a.k.a. Yo-Yo, Phobos, Hellfire, Druid, and Stonewall. Yes, Quake is Daisy Johnson, the main character from the Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. TV series. The Initiative members, meanwhile, are Gauntlet, Sunstreak, Red 9, and Annex.

Fantastic or frightful? Rather than a sprawling crossover like a Civil War or Secret Wars II, Secret Invasion is pretty much a New Avengers story guest-starring other characters, like the Thunderbolts, Young Avengers, and Fantastic Four. It seems at odds with itself, in how the drama of not knowing who to trust keeps getting overshadowed by the big set pieces, particularly the New York fight. There’s some good stuff in these first four issues, but it’s uneven.

Next: And that’s no Skrull.

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