Secret Invasion: Why the Skrulls' Battle Plan Sucked

I haven't read much about Secret Invasion in the BlogO'Sphere. Augie de Blick has a nice write-up in one of his Pipeline columns which you can read here, but I haven't seen too many other Secret Invasion post-mortems.

I hear lots about how Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis suck, which is good for DC if you subscribe to the "any publicity is good publicity" theory. I myself can't say whether Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis suck because I'm not reading these books; unfortunately I'm not rich. Too bad.

Price tag: $85.74

Secret Invasion I did read. The meat of the story is Secret Invasion #1-8, New Avengers #40-47 (N.A. #48 is part of the story but hasn't come out yet) and Mighty Avengers #12 -20. I read these issues in one setting yesterday.

In general: I liked Secret Invasion. The first issue was the best of the bunch; it came roaring out of the gates. Of course I have quibbles: things got bogged down in The Savage Land, and Marvel easily could have cut the series down to six issues. But why rant about that?

The thing that upset me most about Secret Invasion was how badly the Skrulls bungled things. Seriously. The Skrulls are terrible world conquerers; their battle plan sucked. Here's what they should have done.

• Replace Tony Stark. If you replace Tony with a Skrull you've won the game. Yes, replacing him would be totally obvious, and that's why the Skrulls would do it. Tony is the most powerful man on Earth; the question really is, why wouldn't The Skrulls replace him? Skrull Tony could send The Avengers on a mission to the Negative Zone or the dark side of the moon just before the invasion. Skrull Tony knows the name, address and personal details of every registered superhuman in the U.S.A. Don't you think the Skrulls would want to make use of that?
• Replace every world leader on Earth. They could make Earth's military forces stand down. They could fake a world war, or a subprime mortgage meltdown, with the Skrulls descending from space at the last minute to act as Earth's "saviors."
• Scuttle the Super Human Registration Act. The last things the Skrulls want is for Earth's superhumans to militarize. Yes, Civil War tore the superhuman community apart, but it ended up stronger, more organized and under the leadership of one of the smartest humans on Earth.
• Subvert the Initiative. The Skrulls' plan to subvert the Initiative - which consisted of replacing a member in every team and yelling 'surprise!' when the Invasion started - failed utterly. The Initiative produced a number of trained superhumans, many of whom helped overthrow the Skrull invasion.
• Kill Reed Richards. Since the success of the Skrulls' plan hinges on their ability to remain undetectable it's arguable that killing Reed Richards, the one person capable of spoiling that, is the single most important thing they could do. What's this capturing him business? If you want a show trial and live execution just clone him. It boils down to this: if he's dead he can't hurt you.
• Make more Super Skrulls. Lots more Super Skrulls. I'm assuming the ratio of Super Skrull to superhuman is about equal. Why not just create 10,000 Super Skrulls? BTW: I don't see how a handful of Earth superhumans could have beaten the Skrulls, anyway. The Skrulls are a proud Warrior Race. If they can't beat a few hundred superpowered humans, what good are they? They're also religious fanatics - what's with the surrendering?
• Nuke New Jersey. Look, it doesn't have to be Jersey (I live there). If the Skrulls can fly through interstellar space they certainly have Weapons of Mass Destruction. Why not use them, as a show of intimidation?