This week in Secret Invasion:
Mighty Avengers #14

Mighty Avengers #14 continues the pattern of using the Avengers books to fill in details alongside the core Secret Invasion issues. This story starts out in the past, with The Sentry single-handedly stopping an invading Skrull ship. He attempts to confront them before they destroy their ship.

The explosion knocks him out, after which he wakes up under the care of Reed Richards and The Thing, who explain Skrulls to him in a nutshell. There was a little bit of weirdness to it that kind of reminded me of the hospital scenes in New Avengers #40, where the Skrulls attempt to acclimate the sleeper agents to their new identities.

Flash forward to a few months ago at Avengers Tower. All the gang is gathered, and Jarvis asks Tony Stark if he can review the file on The Sentry. He comes at it from the perspective of wanting to prevent another tragedy like the one that came about from Wanda’s madness in Avengers Disassembled — “I was wondering if there was something I could have been more aware of … to have served her, and all of you, more properly … and perhaps to have avoided the tragedy that came.” Of course, after Secret Invasion #1, we know Jarvis is a Skrull, and he’s apparently just doing recon on poor old Crazy Bob. Stupid old Tony tells him “All Avengers files are open to you, and you never have to ask me permission.”

Later, Jarvis and some other Skrull infiltrators are meeting in some kind of junkyard or abandoned building, lamenting the Skrulls’ inability to take out The Sentry. Skrull Jarvis refers to “not one window of opportunity to eliminate the Sentry,” but two. He suggests letting The Sentry self-destruct, based on “the Hulk situation” and “the Registration Act situation” coming to a boil and doing their work for them, suggesting that those events were free of much Skrull meddling. “The humans are doing our work for us,” he says. “Thor is gone, the Witch is gone. Doctor Strange will buckle…” at which point another agent says Jarvis is wrong about Strange.

Jarvis explains that The Sentry’s powers can’t be duplicated by these new Super Skrull methods because no one, not even Tony Stark, knows the extent of his power. That is also a source of caution, as they risk detection if they try to manipulate him by posing as someone close to him. Jarvis says it’s a risk not worth taking, elaborating on his belief that The Sentry will self-destruct if given enough rope. “All one would have to do is shapeshift into the Void … tell him that he, the Sentry, has launched this entire attack with his mind … and the only way for him to stop the slaughter of his friends and planet is to hurl himself into this system’s star and end his life.” It’s a simple plan that fits nicely into the psychosis they’ve built for the character.

We see that plan go into action in a Savage Land battle scene that picks up from the events of Secret Invasion #2. Bob tries to talk to The Skrull Vision, who begins to shapeshift into The Void and tell Bob this is all his fault, echoing the scene from SI #2.

Bob starts to fly out into space, presumably to kill himself, when he sees something floating in orbit around another planet (Saturn? It’s in a ring). I have no idea what it is that he saw, but apparently it convinced him to become The Void to save everyone. Skrulls are laying waste to New York, but a mysterious black shape blasts in to save Bob’s wife Lindy from one of the Super Skrulls invading the Watchtower.

With The Sentry being so insecure and lacking confidence in himself, the Void used to be a representation of some kind of uncontrollable, troublemaking Id force. But now it appears almost that Bob may have tapped into The Void for the confidence and relaxed inhibitions he needs to save the Earth. Beats me — it’s kind of ambiguous. The only thing that’s clear is that Lindy isn’t happy.

Past implications:
I wonder if Jarvis’ statement about two opportunities to eliminate the Sentry are 1) the detonation depicted in the flashback of this issue and 2) the event on The Raft that kicked off New Avengers.

For the Savage Land Skrull Vision to carry out Jarvis’ plan, the ship that crashed in the Savage Land has to have had some contact with Earth over the past few months. This undermines Mockingbird’s story from Secret Invasion #2 a bit, as well as the idea that anyone on the ship could be the real deal or even think they’re the real deal.