The New Avengers: Secret Invasion by Bendis, Gaydos, Mack, Cheung and Tan

Back in New York, the new Avengers are dealing with having lost the home of Dr. Strange as a sanctuary. And Luke Cage's wife and mother of his child, Jessica Jones, has fled to the possibly Skrull-invaded Avengers, asking for Sanctuary.

Luke can't believe that Jessica has done this, after all the battles they have fought, and can't decide whether or not his marriage is over for the way his wife "betrayed" him and all they have fought for. Her position is that she wanted their child to be safe, and being with Luke isn't safe for her or their child.

But Luke and Jessica's confrontation in front of the Avengers Mansion draws the attention of the other Avengers, and Carol Danvers comes out to talk to Luke Cage and try to convince him to come in out of the cold (so to speak), because if he won't come in and rejoin the Avengers, she is going to have to arrest him for being unregistered.

The rest of the New Avengers find some new digs: a former corporate office once owned by The Leader. But since his incarceration, it's been standing empty. Maya, one of the new Avengers, wants to go see Daredevil, but Wolverine warns her that all of them are on the Skrulls radar. She goes anyway, but the Daredevil she's talking to turns out to be one of the new Super-Skrulls, and only Wolverine turning up to help her at the last minute pulls her fat out of the fire. She admits he was right.

In the morning, she's meditating when Hawkeye comes up to her to talk. After talking about the Avengers in the old days, he apologizes for walking in on her in the bathroom and asks her if she would have minded then if he'd kissed her. She says no, and they end up kissing right there. They go back to her room and fall madly in bed together. Afterwards, she wakes up and looks...strange, as if she's done something she might regret. Is she a Skrull?

Then the story goes to the Skrull Homeworld, after the escape of the characters from the Illuminati series. The Queen of the Skrulls is leader of the religious Skrulls, but the Emperor disdains religion in favor of the Skrull's science when it comes to getting revenge on the Humans and Inhumans. He imprisons her on another Skrull world while he plans his revenge.

But when the Skrull Homeworld is destroyed, the Emperor is destroyed along with it, and the Skrulls free their Queen, who takes over with his plan for the conquest of Earth. Only now she mixes science with their religion. And she is going to be hands-on this time... She is taking part in their invasion herself... as Spider Woman, Jessica Drew. But what will happen to the Queen during the Invasion?

This book certainly was interesting, showing more of the Invasion from the side of the Skrulls. And what's up with Maya? Could she be a Skrull who has become enough of a counterspy to actually get too far into the role, and really be falling in love with Hawkeye? Stranger things have happened, I'll grant you. But there was something about her expression...

I found the part about the Skrulls interesting, but it didn't have all that much to do with the New Avengers. Oh, there was a section set in the Present-Day Savage Land, where we see that the Skrulls are mining Vibranium and using the Savage Land natives to do it, but It didn't have much of any connection to the New Avengers that I could see. Its like the writers decided that after the Hawkeye/Maya love scene, they decided to drop that and-hey, let's spend the next three issues showing what the Skrulls were up to, with no mention of the New Avengers! And we have to show this stuff, somewhere, so let's dump it into the New Avengers book!

It's an okay book, but no more than okay. I didn't love it, didn't hate it, which is certainly an improvement over the last several Marvel Comics graphic novels I've read. But I wouldn't spend my money on this one, either.