Secret Invasion of My Pull List
I’ve been doing my best to avoid all things Secret Invasion. Considering I don’t read New Avengers, Mighty Avengers, Ms. Marvel or Captain Marvel, and generally dislike anything written by Brian Michale Bendis, it seemed like a good idea to steer clear of all things Skrull. Trouble is that as long as you read a Marvel comic, you’re not going to be able to avoid the big summer crossover.
Out of the comics I read on a monthly basis, at least four are doing Secret Invasion crossovers (She-Hulk, X-Factor, Thunderbolts and Avengers: The Initiative), and another two are being combined into a mini-series while both regular series are on hiatus (Runaways and Young Avengers). While I’ve got another month before She-Hulk, X-Factor and Thunderbolts dive into the Invasion, Avengers: The Initiative and Runaways started this week.
A:TI is an interesting situation, because Hank Pym’s been a major cast member since the series began over a year ago, and as we all know now, he’s been a Skrull the entire time. Another Skrull named Crusader has recently been making appearances in the book, although this Skrull- masquerading- as- a- human- superhero is actually a good guy. During the issue, Crusader realizes that Hank Pym is secretly a Skrull because he’s eating pickles and strawberries, just like Crusader does because it reminds him of a Skrullian fruit. On the other hand, he could just be pregnant. So Crusader spends the rest of the issue trying to come up with a way to out Pym wiothout outing himself in the process.
Meanwhile, the new 3-D Man is given his new assignment as part of Hawaii’s Initiative team. Longtime readers may know 3-D Man better as Delroy Garrett, who was named Triathalon when he was introduced in the spectacular Kurt Busiek/George Perez run on the Avengers in the late 90s. Delroy gets a fancy pair of goggles as a gift from one of the previous 3-D Men for graduation, and they just happen to have the ability to detect Skrulls when they’re incognito. Roddy Piper eat your heart out. But apparently this all makes sense because the previous 3-D Man got the goggles because he himself had to fight off a Skrull invasion in the 50s. That’s a nice bit of continuity there.