I HAVE COME HERE TO TELL SPOILERS AND KICK ASS… AND I’M ALL OUT OF SPOILERS!

So Delroy gets the goggles as a gift and they sure are old-school, and this book sure does kick all kinds of ass. But that’s beside the point.

Delroy goes to the HQ of the Point Men, the team from Hawaii , where he is their leader, and he puts the goggles on and meets the team. The group includes two characters quickly taken out of the picture later on, Magnitude, and DevilSlayer. Devil Slayer is awesome. The explanation for why the team is needed and how it’s not all about Mai Tais and coconuts is priceless (the first line of defense against attacks from the East from Giant Monsters or Fin Fang Foom).

And just about settled down and Delroy realizes the goggles have the power to see the true spirit of the person, the Skrull-ness, if you will. And an all out brawl between a super-skrull with the abilities of the 70sX-Men (Havok, Polaris, Banshee, etc) and the Point Men ends in failure and the two no-names getting their stuff tossed and Delroy and Devil Slayer coming out like true pimps.

On the other side of the world, Crusader is having issues coming to terms with his Skrull-ness as the Skrullmageddon is happening around them, and about spills the beans to Trauma, and while in the mess hall, we see Skrullowjacket eating a very Skrully dish (strawberries and pickles), same as Crusader, who changes the food quickly with his Freedom Ring so that Skrullowjacket has no idea he’s a Skrull as well (since he’s one that jumped ship way back when).

And more hints at how Skrullowjacket survived this long even after being in the line of duty and the line of fire more times than once, and how easy it was for him to swing for the fences and lie and for people to believe his sub-atomic bullplop.

Anyways…

Delroy jumps back to Camp Hammond and screams about the invasion and how there is a Skrull on every team, and Crusader, now trying to hide his true nature as no one would believe him and his valiant nature, so he does what any scared little brat would do, uses his Freedom Ring to change his appearance so that 3-D Man won’t be able to figure out, and gives us what could possibly be the splash of the year: two pages of Delroy and a group of Skrulls in front of him, all of whom are in the Initiative, and now everybody looks like a Skrull. Awesome. Just plain awesome.

As always, this book comes in like a breath of fresh air. Between dumb books drumming up to a non-event in the Ultimate Universe and DC books middling and going nowhere, this book takes the cake on awesomeness. Book of the week? You betcha.

Slott and Gage have a real knack for writing characters that a person has no interest in and giving them interest. They make each and everyone of these characters part of an overarching drama that just sustains this title, and each person feels human.

It’s funny that the one thing that the Skrulls didn’t take into account were the 3-D Man’s goggles, as they thought he was gone. And now with Delroy in as the new 3-D Man, it makes us actually care about the man who used to be Triathlon. Who none of us liked and now all of us feel for.

He may have to kill friends and family, be the worst person in the world, and still be a hero. And we do not have more capable hands than the writers and artist of this book.

Caselli is such an amazing talent that the only thing better than having him on this book is having the amazing color talents shown with his characters. They all pop, they all fizzle, they all look like comic heroes and human beings should look. Old men look old and frumpy. Young girls look like young girls. And the over-testosterone men look just like that. But it’s glorious.

This book is the model that should be held up and put in front of the rest of the other books coming out with the SI-tag atop it. The cover says it all: Hank is a Skrull. He has infiltrated their camp. Now look inside and see what happens next.

Best book of the week and I really dig the hell out of it every time it comes out. My only beef, as always, is how much is going on with this book that something will come up short. We may never find out why Slapstick is such a dillhole. We may never see all 50 teams. We may never get a conclusion to a couple of the strings and stories that are happening.

But with the blessing of the continuity gods, I will gladly fork over 3 dollars monthly to have these wonderful tales shown before my eyes.