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Secret Invasion: Difference between revisions
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A [[Marvel Comics]] [[Crisis Crossover]] for the year 2008, about an invasion of the Skrulls on Earth. It's the conclusion of plot elements introduced by [[Brian Bendis]] in [[The Avengers (Comic Book)|multiple Avengers titles]] since the end of the ''[[Civil War (Comic Book)|Civil War]]'' crossover. The possibility that anyone in the [[Marvel Universe]] could be a shapeshifting impostor woke big interest in fans, who were hoping for the comics equivalent of [[Battlestar Galactica]]. No surprise then that when the event itself came to a more [[Decompressed Comic|drawn out]] and anticlimactic end than expected, fans found it rather...[[They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot|disappointing]]. [[Broken Base|Fandom is divided]] about whether this story was good or not. It was followed by the ''[[Dark Reign (comics)|Dark Reign]]'' and [[War of Kings]] events.
The story involves The Skrulls, an [[Rubber Forehead Aliens|alien]] race of [[Voluntary Shapeshifting|shapeshifters]] who have (mostly) played a villainous role in the [[Marvel Universe]]. After [[Annihilation|a series of disasters]], the Skrull Empire is greatly weakened, and a religious figure, Queen Veranke, convinces them that their destiny is to rule the Earth. With help from an extraordinary Skrull scientist, a process is created that allows the Skrulls to fool all known means of detection- only upon their deaths do they revert to their true form. Over a period of several years, they secretly replace several Marvel characters, with Veranke herself taking the place of {{spoiler|[[Spider Woman]]}}. These [[The Manchurian Candidate (novel)||Sleeper Agents]] have even been brainwashed into believing themselves to ''be'' the replaced person, until a code phrase ("He Loves You" a reference to the Skrulls' god) awakens their true memories. In addition, the Skrulls have figured out how to duplicate the powers of many of Earth's heroes, and even prepared some agents with multiple powers. As the story begins, the awakened Skrull agents begin undermining the hero groups and organizations capable of defeating them, then invade in force...
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* [[Assimilation Plot]]: All Gods worshiped by races conquered by Skrulls become assimilated in their pantheon and turn into mindless slaves of Skrull god Kyl'Byn.
* [[Avengers Assemble]]: Invoked by Iron Man to start the [[Final Battle]] (the "Avengers" in question being his team, plus the New Avengers, the Young Avengers, Nick Fury's Secret Warriors, the Thunderbolts, Hood's gang, Reed Richards, Captain America, and Thor).
* [[Back
** Elektra ''was'' resurrected; she was replaced shortly after that. She was held on one of the Skrull ships. It would have made no sense if it was otherwise, unless the Skrulls either fooled the Hand or the Hand were working with the Skrulls all along, neither of which was likely.
** Also worth noting is Hawkeye/Ronin's ex-wife Mockingbird, who, by all means should've been ''dead'' before the estimated Skrull capturing spree (as noted above). Turns out she's caught way before that time and the one who's dead is actually a Skrull.
* [[Badass in Distress]]: Many, but especially ''Black Bolt'', who was considered one of the most powerful people in the Marvel Universe, then was easily caught. When he comes back, he instigated the [[War of Kings]] in revenge...
* [[Becoming the Mask]]: Captain Marvel.
* [[BFG]]: Nick Fury's weapon of choice to fight the Skrulls.
* [[Big Bad Wannabe]]: Quite possibly Veranke. She planned big, manages to capture and impersonate a bunch of powerful heroes... only to have it culminate in an [[Easily-Thwarted Alien Invasion]]. Then she got stomped/popped/killed by Norman Osborn (being the ox), who uses the power he's handed as a result to cause much ''bigger'' problems.
* [[Body Horror]]:
** For the sleeper agents who didn't ''know'' they were Skrulls, the sudden transformation into their true forms.
** Wasp being turned into a giant biological bomb against her will. Made all the creepier by her full awareness of the process and who's responsible, and her attempts to flee. It doesn't help (see the Mercy Kill entry below).
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* [[Easily-Thwarted Alien Invasion]]: Many people see the conclusion ( {{spoiler|one battle in Central Park and Thor taking down the entire damn fleet by himself}}) as this.
** The fact that the Super-Skulls were so easily killed to a point were every tie-in has a kill count in the hundreds didn't help.
** Another big problem was that one tie-in featured Deadpool discovering the means to kill the Skrull Queen and passing the information on to Norman Osborn. If you read that tie-in, you realized that Osborn had a gun made to those specifications and used it during the final fight to kill the otherwise-invulnerable queen, making himself the hero of the day. If you didn't read the tie-in, it looked like Osborn beat the queen by ... shooting her with a gun. And was lauded as the savior of Earth for happening to be the person who fired the lucky shot. It was ''never even mentioned'' during the battle that if anyone other than Osborne had shot her, it wouldn't have killed her.
* [[Enemy Mine]]: Oh, boy...
** The Mighty & New Avengers start off at each other's throats, but after realising that the Skrulls are invading ''right now'', start working together.
** The Hood brings his crew of supercriminals to fight alongside the Avengers.
** Longstanding enemy of the Fantastic Four, The Tinkerer, helps the Human Torch & the Thing escape the Negative Zone.
** When the Thunderbolts arrive for the final battle, Venom asks Norman Osborn for permission to go after Spider-Man, only to be refused. ''Twice''.
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* [[Flying Brick]]: Captain Britain, Sentry, Wonder Man, Ms. Marvel, Iron Man, etc.
* [[Glamour Failure]]: Exposing the Skrulls becomes a cat and mouse game, with the Earth characters continually having to come up with new methods as the Skrulls keep working around their old ones.
* [[Heroic Sacrifice]]: Captain Britain.
* [[Heel Face Turn]]: When we last saw Merlin, he was plain evil, but here he comes back to being a good guy.
* [[It's Personal]]: Skrulls hate Reed Richards for turning few of them into cows.
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* [[Shiny New Australia]]: Invoked by [[Chronic Backstabbing Disorder|Moonstone]], who offers to defect to the Skrulls in exchange for ownership of South America.
* [[Smug Snake]]: The Skrull Queen, Veranke, gets a little bit of this, especially in her [[Mind Screw|speech]] to Stark in issue #3. The Skrull Pym, initially, is less convinced: in one of the ''Mighty Avengers'' tie-ins he talks to {{spoiler|the Skrull impersonating Dum Dum Dugan}} and tells him the invasion won't work because [[Humans Are Special]].
* [[Tempting Fate]]: In ''Secret Invasion #7'', Spider-man tells Iron Fist that the battle has to going well is overall insignificant because [[The Watcher]] hasn't shown up. Guess who shows up?
* [[Tomato in the Mirror]]: This trope only raises up [[Paranoia Fuel]] - some of Skrull agents were brainwashed into believing that they were the people they'd replaced. Which means '''you''' can be a Skrull and not even realize it.
* [[Too Dumb to Live]]: Norman Osborn shot the Skrull Queen in the head. Well, that's nice of-- THEY MADE HIM KING OF EVERYTHING BECAUSE OF IT?!?!
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** [[Hero with Bad Publicity]]: And thanks to this event, [[Iron Man]] becomes this, as the failure to prevent the invasion is dumped entirely on his shoulders, since he'd been the S.H.I.E.L.D. director at the time. Also, almost everyone still treats [[Spider Woman]] like she's Veranke in disguise, never mind the fact that Norman Osborn putting a round through the Skrull Queen's head on live television is what ''got him his government position in the first place''.
* [[Villainous Crossdresser]]: Seems kind of a no-brainer, since it's common knowledge that the Skrulls are [[Voluntary Shapeshifter|Voluntary Shapeshifters]] and can turn into male or female independent of their original gender, but the Skrull that posed as Elektra is a notable example since it was his death that kicked off the story.
** The first Skrull that replaced Hank Pym (they went through a few) first captured him by taking the shape of a female grad student and seducing him after a college lecture. So either a female Skrull was impersonating Hank (and possibly dating Tigra - it's not made clear whether Skrull Hank stared sleeping with her before or after the first time they had to replace him), or a male Skrull slept with Hank in female form before impersonating him.
* [[We Have Reserves]]: Apparently, the Skrull Empire had more fighters than the "broken and desperate shell of a former powerhouse" description of them implied, considering they went through over ''ninety'' attempts to recreate the original Captain Marvel, and whenever a Skrull Pym broke his programming and protested the invasion's effectiveness, they just killed him and brainwashed a new one. Keeping track of the series, they went through at least five warriors just on that alone, and {{spoiler|Skrull Dugan}} implies there were many more.
** No really, heroes kill like ''hundreds'' of Skrulls per issue, it got to a point were people got disgusted by it.
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