Spoilers ON!

Countessa is revealed as a Skrull again. She was already revealed in the prologue to Secret Invasion as a Skrull, as the skrull who killed Dum Dum Dugan (or at least took his place). So apparently we’re lead to believe by this issue that there are an army of Skrulls who continue to hide in plain sight as THE SAME WOMAN? What?

Next, when Nicky boy finds out she is a Skrull (using technology apparently no one else in the world has or has ever seen and he’s the only one that has it), he kills her and is back in the Marvel U. Whoopdee doo.

It makes no sense that he has better tech than Tony Stark, Reed Richards, Amadeus Cho, and every single super-smart person in the Marvel Universe. He’s Nick Fury. He sees things in advance of other people as he’s seen it all, but he isn’t super-smart. He’s behind the scenes machismo. He’s the dude that gets the job done.

He’s John Shaft. Not the world’s biggest brain.

He apparently is smarter than Richards and Stark though, as somehow he figures it all out behind the scenes. Without even a whimper from anyone, he figures out there was an invasion. From one Skrull trying to kill him, he jumps to the same conclusion as the New Avengers. It makes no sense to jump to such a conclusion, and the final spread feels like a cheat. He has pictures up of nearly every hero and villain, with certain ones circled. Are they because he wants them on his team of Defenders or whatever? Or does he think these are the Skrulls? And what assumption lead him to this?

Another thing that didn’t work was Maleev’s art. It was flat. It wasn’t very action-oriented. This is supposed to be the reintroduction of one of Marvel’s top characters, and yet, the art is just there. Pretty to look at, but flat and uninteresting overall. It’s muddy, it’s annoying trying to figure out why the Skrulls look so weird as drawn by him, and it just doesn’t work for the story.

Finally, the cover: It adds nothing to the story. Yes it’s funny to see Avengers #4 as if they were all Skrulls. But it’s an easy cover. The Homage cover works in certain situations, but in a MAJOR summer event for a MAJOR comic company, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t make me want to buy it. It makes me feel cheated out of the 3 dollars I spent.

This story could have worked just as easily as a back-up 4 page story. It just jumps right into the story and gives us no background and no information on why we should care about Nick Fury again. I just don’t think the issue worked as a whole, as this is supposed to be his BIG reintroduction, and instead, we get 22 pages of talking and espionage and more and more questions on why Nick has certain things that other much smarter people don’t have. A big fat meh on this one.