While there have been plenty of major events and conflicts involving the collected heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe, few were as game-changing as Marvel’s Secret Invasion. The event revealed the systematic infiltration of the shape-shifting alien race known as the Skrulls, causing massive amounts of paranoia and distrust among the superhero community. However, it was the specific timing and subsequent fallout from the event that made Secret Invasion so devastating for the world of Marvel Comics.
Secret Invasion was largely instigated by the efforts of the Illuminati, the secret group of influential Marvel heroes that initially included Iron Man, Charles Xavier, Reed Richards, Doctor Strange, Namor, and Black Bolt. Formed shortly after the events of the Kree-Skrull War, the Illuminati traveled to face the Skrull Empire in New Avengers: Illuminati #1 to issue a warning that future incursions would not be tolerated. However, the Skrulls captured the team and quickly went to work studying their powers, anatomy, and behavior. While the Illuminati did manage to escape, the Skulls cloned Reed Richards and used his genius to develop the ability to shape-shift without being detected by the heroes of Earth, making an invasion inevitable. Years later, The New Avengers #31 revealed that a Skrull had been posing as Elektra and leading the Hand for who knows how long threw the superhero community into chaos.
The truly unfortunate elements that made Secret Invasion so devastating to Earth’s heroes were not so much their battles with the revealed Skrull forces as the paranoia surrounding the invasion. The Skrulls’ plot coming to light couldn’t have come at a worse time, as the Marvel Universe had just come out of the tumultuous and challenging Civil War. The superhero community had been torn in two, as rival factions formed in the face of new government legislation that required heroes to register their identities with the government or face arrest. Heroes who no longer trusted each other were given permission to assume the absolute worst, destroying lines of communication and making any alliance tenuous at best.
Since the Skrulls had made it a priority to infiltrate every super-team possible, many of Marvel’s titles were taken up by in-fighting, shattering any one team’s ability to properly address the threat. SHIELD and SWORD were both disabled, the Avengers teams of the time refused to work together, and Tony Stark became so paranoid that at one time, he was convinced he was a Skrull without knowing it.
The fallout of Secret Invasion was just as problematic. While the Skrulls’ plot to take over the world was stopped, the public lost its faith in SHIELD, as well as in Iron Man, who was serving as its director at the time. When Norman Osborn (formerly the Green Goblin) stole and utilized Nick Fury’s information on how to kill the Skrull Queen, he was seen as a hero by the public, shifting the balance of power into the hands of Marvel’s villains. Osborn was chosen to replace Iron Man and form a new organization known as HAMMER, creating a dark mirror version of the Illuminati known as the Cabal, featuring the likes of Doctor Doom, Loki, Emma Frost, The Hood, and Namor, giving Marvel’s despots and tyrants more power than ever in their Dark Reign.
Secret Invasion pried open every existing instance of distrust in the Marvel Universe, separating its heroes and justifying their worst impulses, and even their victory didn’t heal the rifts, with Norman Osborn given free reign to seize on the atmosphere of suspicion and put Marvel’s villains on top. With the recent announcement that Disney+ is developing a Secret Invasion series, it will be interesting to see if it will be just as game-changing and make as much of an impact on the MCU and it did in Marvel Comics.
