At this point in the series, the Skrulls have outed themselves, and it's become way more action than intrigue.

To be fair, this series itself was never promised to be intrigue -all that happened in the myriad of Avengers titles over the last year or so.

Anyway, to me this just isn't very interesting. It's kind of turned into a by-the-numbers slugfest that doesn't make much sense. Some of the witty banter between the characters (usually one of the reasons I don't buy his books) just does not feel believable, given the supposedly high stakes of the situation.

It's like we're told over and over again that this is the most horrible danger ever -Skrulls have infiltrated every position of power possible and they're taking over. It's very hard to take this seriously for several reasons:

• Invasion of the body-snatchers has been done over and over. The story is not very fresh, and the Marvel spin on it doesn't introduce anything new. I had hoped for some inspirational new storytelling but it's all the same.
  
• As horrible and all-encompassing as this story is supposed to be, it still feels isolated. Most of the comics that I read in the Marvel U. are not involved in the story, and no I'm not buying X-Men: Secret Invasion or Thor: Secret Invasion or any of the other myriad of spin-offs. They already got me with Fantastic Four: Secret Invasion, thank you.
  
  I mean come on, I'm reading Iron-Man: Director of Shield and there's Dum Dum Dugan right there! He's a Skrull, already!! Dude!!
  
  Then there's Captain America, going on with his adventures, having nothing to do with the whole Skrull deal. Who knows what's going on with Spider-Man, but I don't see any Skrulls on the covers.
• Essentially, any character who has some importance or has some weight to them is too busy to be involved with this shit in their own series. Thor ain't having none of this Skrull junk in the main Thor series. This is the kind of thing that is meant for the likes of a second-tier character like Ms. Marvel. Let her deal with this crap.
• These fools are still in the Savage Land for five months now. DAMN. Fighting an utterly useless and pointless battle that smacks of the old 70-80s "Hey, I'm fighting myself!" stories.
  

At least the whole "rampaging through New York" bit is done. Man that was getting to be painful.

This entire storyline is another example of a miniseries that does not tell its entire story within its own pages. Most of the story is being told outside of the series and that kind of sucks.

If I was actually truly interested in this story I'd have to buy quite a few satellite mini-series plus pretty much all issues of Avengers, Ms. Marvel, that wack-ass Captain Marvel series and who knows what else? I'd be out a lot of money. I feel bad for anyone who's actually keeping up with all of this because their wallets are a lot lighter this summer.

Another detraction for me is that I just don't care for Leinil Fracis Yu's art of late, either here or in New Avengers. I used to love this guy's style back in the day, but he's changed it to something that I don't enjoy so much, kind of sketchy and skratchy. I would feel better probably with Steve McNiven on this, or whoever did that "Secret War" mini a few years back. I think that would lend some desperately needed gravity to this story.

As it stands, it's some pretty light fare. Good for a distraction, but not good enough to warrant any serious thought or consideration, since I doubt anything relevant will come out of it.

Everyone has their own limits on how they will spend their money. I'm interested enough to keep on getting it to see what happens, but I certainly would never recommend this to anyone.