Unusual comics post from me this week, since its been largely Marvel stuff that’s been catching my eye over the last couple of weeks. However with GL and GLC due later in the month, not to mention Final Crisis kicking back in at the end of the month, I don’t imagine it’ll be long until normal service is resumed

Captain America #42 wraps up Brubaker’s The Man Who Stole America arc, as well as many of the plots he began at the start of his run. With Bucky just having publicly launched himself into the limelight as Captain America to stop the Red Skull’s daughter assassinating the presidential candidates, he has to ensure she’s stopped, while The Falcon and Black Widow attempt to save Sharon Carter from the Red Skull’s stronghold.

Its a nice tie-up to many of the plots Brubaker’s been running. It was nice to see Bucky and Black Widow hook up at the end, and it’ll be interesting to see how Sharon’s memory loss is dealt with in later issues. I also liked the Red Skull’s fate: that scene really captured his horror at being trapped as he is. There’s still a few outstanding questions however, the exact plan that the Red Skull had involving Doom’s time machine for example. It seemed to be key to transferring the Skull to a new body, but what exactly they were trying to do remained a bit vague. We’ve also still got the 50s Captain America out there. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where this series goes, now that Bucky’s establishing himself as Captain America.

One of my other favourite series to rave about is, of course, Avengers: The Initiative. Following up on last month’s issue, the Skrulls have arrived at Camp Hammond in force, and with most of the recruits out fighting in New York, only a few trainers, and Ant Man remain. Its yet another great issue from Dan Slott, and I just loved Ant Man. I missed his solo series from a couple of years back, but I’m definitely going to have to check out the trades. I loved his reluctance to play hero, and how his first reaction to trouble was to hide. I especially loved how that proved to give him an advantage against the Skrulls as he remains undiscovered while they took down the other heroes. It’ll be interesting to see what he’s discovered about their plans.

The fact that I enjoyed Secret Invasion #5 has obviously given this series a shot in the arm for me, as while I doubt I’d have enjoyed these tie-ins a couple of weeks ago, I definitely did enjoy the background this week.

New Avengers revisits the Skrull Throneworld after the Illuminati’s disasterous retaliation. Here we get to see the Skrulls attempting to discover a way to infiltrate Earth undetected, and the throwaway comment from SI #5, where Reed Richards hints that its all his fault is addressed, as we get to see the role he (unwittingly) played in the Skrull’s infiltration. Its all still background that anyone just wanting to read the main series could cheerfully read though, but its interesting none-the-less. In retrospect, I think the best way (for me at least) to read this series would’ve been to get the main series, and then buy the trades of New and Mighty Avengers for the background. There’s been little in them that’s been vital to the main series, but they do provide some interesting looks into what went into the Skrull Invasion.

Mighty Avengers continues looking at Hank Pym’s replacement, and we’re introduced to an interesting idea. That replacing Pym seems to cause some instability in the agents, and there’s the clear indication that the Pym agents have a far higher tendancy to decide the whole thing’s a bad idea, than the other Skrulls. The Skrulls are putting this down to the fact that Hank Pym isn’t as great as he thinks he is, and this instability is bleeding over into their replacement agents, but you can’t help wonder if there’s something else to it. Despite his issues, there’s no doubt that Pym is one of the smartest minds in the Marvel Universe. He’s no Richards or Tony Stark, but then, the Skrulls haven’t replaced them. Maybe we’d see similar behaviour from Skrulls replacing the other big brains, and infact, the Pym Skrulls are onto something?

Avengers Initative continues to be one of the best SI tie-in titles I’m picking up. Here, we revisit 3D-Man, who survives his Quinjet crash only to be rescued by She-Thing, who he promptly recognises as a Skrull. Fortunately the Skrull Kill Krew are on hand.

Once again Dan Slott does a great job of bringing humour to the storyline, but not sacrificing the drama. We’re seeing Skrulljacket’s plan in the Initiative slowly being discovered, with 3D-Man realising the Initiative’s been compromised, then Crusader and now Ant Man has caught Pym in the act of conferring with other Skrulls.

The real fun in this issue is the Kill Krew though. I haven’t read their original appearances, but there’s a great element of dark humour in this group riding around the country killing off Skrulls. Its given me probably my favourite line of the week, when, on finding out there’s a Skrull in every team of the Initiative, one of them replies “I’ll tell you what this means…Road Trip!”

Is it just me, or are the main Avengers titles tie ins to Secret Invasion becoming more missable? Or am I just starting to hit crossover burnout?

After the missable Hank Pym issue of Might Avengers, I decided to just skip the Elektra-focussed issue of Mighty this month, as I’m more interested in the ongoing storyline of Secret Invasion. While the die hard Marvel fans will no doubt appreciate that level of extra background, as someone who’s just come onboard for this event, its not of much interest to me.

Whereas this month I was looking forward to the continuation of the Spider-Woman storyline and seeing how the Skrulls influenced House of M, having really enjoyed the first part of the Spider-Woman story, instead this month’s New Avengers was entirely focused on the Skrull Captain America in the Savage Land. To me, this was even more missable than the Hank Pym issue. At least Hank’s switch was a big part of the story. This was a one-off character. I’m not even sure I followed the logic of the Skrull plot in this instance either. So all these Skrulls are completely brain-washed to believe they are the genuine article? Why are they not similar to the other substitute Skrulls we’ve already seen? The simple fact all these duplicates have turned up together has casted suspicion on them. Captain America’s already dead in the Marvel Universe, and didn’t turn into a Skrull, so they know he was the genuine article. I’m just not sure how this Cap was supposed to successfully infiltrate as some deep cover agent. The invasion was already underway, the heroes were going to be on the lookout for Skrulls, so this Skrull Cap never really had a chance of infiltrating in the same way as Skrull-Jarvis.

I’d have much rather had the second part of the Spider-Woman storyline.

Meanwhile The Initiative continues to rock. This , Captain Britain and Fantastic Four have been the best tie ins so far for me.

In this issue we see the events of Secret Invasion #4 from the point of view of the Initiative, as they’re all rushed to the battle in New York. Poor old 3D-Man doesn’t do well in this issue, but I’m not convinced that his story is quite over yet. Instead this issue focused on Crusader, and his struggle choosing between his adopted homeworld (we see him being sent to Earth, and slowly “going native”), and his people, as he’s forced into the middle of the conflict.

Its a cracking issue, and a nice character piece. And it adds some nice depth to the New York fight we’d seen previously.

Well, its been a busy couple of weeks, with a tonne of Secret Invasion stuff.

First up was Mighty Avengers, which filled in some of the backstory as to how and when Hank Pym was replaced. To be honest, this was the first MA issue I felt was a bit missable, although I can see how knowing when he was replaced was important to the rest of the story. The new serum he gives to Janet at the end of the issue is probably going to be significant later on though.

The issue did play into this week’s Avengers Initiative well though, which further filled in some of the gaps with Hank-Skrull’s backstory. I loved the running gag with the Skrull using his superskrull powers to escape various near-death situations and then having to explain it away with “I shrank really small”. The standout part of the book though was 3-D Man. Formerly Triathalon, I remember him being a character I didn’t care about back in the Busiek run. Although here he came across really well, when he discovers that he has the ability to detect Skrulls and finds an infiltrator on his new team.

This paid off well against the other plot thread, with good-guy Skrull Crusader realising that Hank Pym is a Skrull infiltrator, but then also realising he’s left it too long to reveal he’s a Skrull himself once the Invasion begins. Great title. I really need to pick up the trades of this series.

New Avengers followed suit with filling in the backstory. This time it was Spider-Woman and her replacement by the Skrull Queen. This one definitely ticked the boxes for me. Nice art, and we get a good look at how deeply involved in events in the MU the Skrulls have been. We also have them specifically single out the mutant population as a significant threat, which leads into House of M. I’m not going to be too surprised if we find out the Skrulls managed to influence Wanda into her “No more mutants” moment, as we now know that was a big win to the Skrull plans.

Meanwhile Secret Invasion Fantastic 4 #2 continued the story of Ben and Johnny trapped in the Baxter building, which was transported to the Negative Zone by Lyja in Secret Invasion #1 (something I hope is dealt with properly in the main series, as its a big event which has currently been completely ignored in the main narrative). This was a cracking read, largely due to the witty internal dialogue from Johnny. We also see him start to get through to Lyja, so it’ll be interesting to see how this plays out, as Franklin points out that their best bet to get home is via the super-powered prison from Civil War.

Finally I picked up the first issue of Front Line.

Carrying on the succes from the Civil War tie-in, this series aims to give us more of a street-level view of the action. Its a good start, with Ben Urich trapped in a hospital as the invasion hits, and various others trapped in Stark Tower, which goes into lockdown at the first sign of the Skrull virus. Although while I enjoyed the issue, picking up the full run will probably go against my desire to keep the tie-ins to a minimum, since I’m currently picking up 3 big events (although Batman RIP I’m just buying the main Batman book and my usual monthly fix of Tomasi’s Nightwing). Worth checking out though, its just that my budget won’t really stretch to it (I’m only really picking up the F4 tie-in because its only 3 issues long).