No spoilers, by the way.

Okay, someone needs to nuke the fucking Skrulls already. I am so sick of them. How many times have they tried to invade Earth? And they get all pissy when we show up and are all, "Oh hi, I see you're planning to invade Earth again! What a shock. Look, guys, can you please fucking stop doing that? We will blow the shit out of you next time, because for christ's sake, the world's repair bills are piling up."

I mean, you can play the "the Illuminati started it!" card all you want, but the Skrulls were right smack dab in the middle of an invasion plan when the Illuminati showed up. I don't know about you, but playing defensively and waiting for them to show up and start shooting at us hasn't worked out so well in the past. Sure, we won, but not after racking up bunch of deaths and like a gazillion dollars in property damage. Also, they tend to bring the fucking Kree into it, who also want to invade Earth and take it over, and I'm thinking we should just forge some insults from both sides and send them to each empire and let both problems solve themselves. "HEY VERANKE. TELL YOUR MOM THE KREE ARMY SAYS 'THANKS'."

The Skrulls are like every bad teacher on the face of the planet. They're allowed to bitch and rant and rave at you all they want, but the second you decide to defend yourself, they completely lose their shit and start telling you that you deserve it for being an uppity little asshole. And god forbid you ever go on the offensive, because then they'll go running off to the principal's office like a whiny bitch to bring some abuse-of-authority-style injustice down on your ass.

And what the shit is this?:

"Recent unspecified developments in genetic engineering within the Skrull race has allowed the Skrulls, including Veranke to go undetected in human form from Iron Man's technological scans, Charles Xavier's mental scans, Spider-Man's Spider-Sense, Wolverine's animal senses, or any other conceivable forms of detection."

How the fuck does that even make sense? Okay, I can understand tech scans failing -- the Skrulls actually become the person/thing they transform into, cells and all. And Peter's Spider-Sense has failed in the past. Wolverine's senses can be tricked -- plus, as stated, the Skrulls are physically the person they turn into. Wolverine could tell when Teddy was shapeshifted, but Teddy's only half-Skrull.

But outwitting telepathy? And "any other conceivable forms of detection"? Because of genetics? Bullshit. That's just a lame fucking plot device to make this Secret Invasion work when there is NO WAY IN HELL that it would be able to get past certain people/powers.


WHY XAVIER SHOULDN'T BE USELESS

Why can't Xavier telepathetically determine who is and who isn't a Skrull? The reason is apparently because the Skrulls actually believe that they are who they say they are. Okay, fair enough. But once Xavier knew there were sleeper agents running around, why couldn't he manage to pick them out then? Or at least confirm--if only to himself--that his fellow Illuminati were or weren't Skrulls? The Skrulls were programmed to have that person's psyche, but Xavier's gotten through some pretty powerful brainwashing before, and the Skrulls' real psyche is obviously still there, it's just buried. Why wouldn't he be able to sense it once he actually started looking for it? Especially since he knows what to look for?

Logan's case can be cited as proof of Xavier's inability to totally break through a mental block, but that's a really different situation. With him, Xavier didn't know what he was looking for--but more than that, pushing too hard at that kind of thing could have fucked Logan up way, way worse, if not destroyed his psyche entirely, so it was better for him to hold back. But there's no history of just looking for evidence of brainwashing hurting someone, just that pushing at it when you find it can be harmful. And somehow I doubt Xavier would be worried about accidentally shattering a Skrull's mind while trying to find out who's planning to destroy all human.

Not to mention that there was no huge hurry with discovering Logan's past. As far as we know, Logan's past doesn't contain an in-motion plot to overthrow the planet, so Xavier could afford not to push at Logan's mental blocks.

And what about when the Skrulls are triggered? Shouldn't he be able to read their 'true' mind then? Sure, he can't read everyone's mind at once. He can, however, greatly enhance his abilities artificially, and do a 'surface' scan for certain keywords or emotions or intents or whatever. I mean, he's done it before. Besides, he only has to check the big players at first, and that's a much smaller group than 'everyone in the country'.

But, okay, whatever. Mutant abilities have been nullified in weird-ass ways before, and Xavier's not infallible. So let's move onto to someone who pretty much is:


WHY DOCTOR STRANGE SHOULDN'T BE USELESS

I can't figure out any conceivable reason as to why Dr Strange can't reveal who is and who isn't a Skrull. Sure, the Skrulls truly believe they are who they say they are, until they're triggered, but he's using magic. It's not like telepathy; it's not dependent on what the person being whammied believes is true. What, Doctor Strange isn't powerful enough to show what the truth is?

Yeah, apparently not in this case. What really confuses me, though, is that Dr Strange has frequently been said to be nearly or actually as powerful as the gods he invokes. So, what, brainwashing is more powerful than the Vishanti and, you know, reality itself?

And what about the Eye of Agamotto? Even if Strange's magic can't reveal them, the Eye should be able to. That thing reveals the truth, no matter what it is. I mean, you can bring out the psychology aspect all you want, but the truth is that the Skrulls aren't actually the people they're pretending to be, even if they believe it. Just because they believe in a certain fact doesn't mean that it's reality.

Look at Wanda's breakdown. Wanda's kids' existence was true to her, too, and so was her belief that she had every right to defend them and keep the Avengers from trying to take away her children, but the Eye of Agamotto showed her the truth anyway--and she'd actually bent reality. The Eye of Agamotto is capable of actually penetrating fabricated realities and affecting the person who was powerful enough to create that reality with her mind, but it can't reveal a brainwashed Skrull?

And what's this "genetic tweaking makes them immune to detection" bullshit? I want to know what kind of miracle gene they found that makes them immune to the most powerful magic in the Marvel universe. Last time I checked, magic doesn't give a good goddamn about genetics. Half the time it doesn't give a good goddamn about the laws of physics or other universal rules, and if you bring Dr Strange in the mix, that 'half the time' goes up to '99.9% of the time, and 100% on alternating Wednesdays'. The dude is called a Deus ex Machine for a reason. He's powerful enough that he was actually asked why he didn't just use his magic to "fix" everything that happened with Civil War. As in, fix reality so it didn't happen. That's the kind of power we're dealing with here.


Spoiler for Secret Invasion #3:
Oh, and since apparently death reveals a Skrull for who they really are, start killing people. No, seriously. Someone grab Tony and drown him or something. If he doesn't shapeshift when he croaks, then haul him out and revive him. The Extremis will fix him, and we won't have to spend the next ten issues listening to him have an identity crisis.
/spoiler

On a final note, the Skrulls are invading the wrong planet. They're supposed to take "a world of blue" as their new home. That's Neptune, jackasses; Earth has this awesome colour called green in the mix. There's also brown stuff on our surface called 'landmass' and white swirly shit called 'clouds' hanging out in our atmosphere. I mean, come on, our crappy human technology took this picture in 1972. Apparently you morons are colourblind, which explains why you wear purple jumpsuits with green skin. Idiots.