Guest Author - Travis Belk

Over the past few years, Marvel comics has made some bold and progressive changes to its universe. However, many of these changes have seen many old time fans leaving Marvel and even comics, as a whole, in frustration. In the latest issue of New Avengers, the company may have delivered a scapegoat and has left fans asking, "was it an alien?".

Ever since Joe Quesada took over as Editor-in-Chief of Marvel comics in 2000, Marvel has gained a reputation for trying new things. Some of those new ideas, such as the Ultimate universe of heroes, have been huge successes for Marvel. Other ideas have not seen such acceptance. Some of them have even garnered the ire of old time fans and driven them to quit buying Marvel comics. The most recent controversy came with this past year's Civil War.

In this massive cross-over event, we saw heroes fighting heroes over mandatory registration of their secret identities with the U.S. government. The pro-registration side was being lead by Iron Man, who many felt was acting out of character. These events of the Civil War eventually lead to Spider-man publically unmasking, and thus ruining the character for some, and the death of Captain America. Whether popular or not, these changes had certainly upset the status quo of the Marvel Universe. But the question now is, was it all a sham?

The possibility of this has arisen with the latest issue of New Avengers. In this issue we discover that Elektra is really a Skrull, a race of world-conquering shape-shifting aliens. We also see at the end that Luke Cage's and Jessica Jones's baby is a Skrull, thus meaning one(or both) of them is as well. This is leading into a much larger invasion by the Skrulls and leaves the fans and the Marvel Universe with a lot of questions.

How long have the Skrulls been posing as superheroes? Which heroes are really Skrulls in disguise? Where are the real heroes whose identities were usurped by the imposters? What is the Skrull's agenda? Were they behind some of the massive events in the Marvel Universe over the past few years? Did they help orchestrate the Civil War?

All of these questions and more leave the potential for some great story-telling. There are however some concerns. Brian Michael Bendis, writer of New Avengers, has been quoted as saying that some of the heroes in classic stories were really Skrulls. So, how much history is going to be re-written for the sake of this new idea? Also, is Marvel using this idea as a cop-out for what they deem unpopular story ideas on their part? Are they going to blame their mistakes on something as cliched as a shape-shifter? At this point, it is anyone's guess. As readers, we hope for the best. And if we don't get it, well Marvel can always say their writers were really Skrulls.