Collects Ms Marvel vol. 2 # 25-30.

Writer: Brian Reed
Artists: Adriana Melo, Ron Frenz, Mariah Benes, Sal Buscema

Secret Invasion starts right after the end of Monster Mash. Tony sends Carol’s own Lighting Storm team after her, because he believes that she’s a skrull. Meanwhile, Carol is investigating a lead on her own.

This collection starts with issue 25 which has two stories: one tells about Carol’s earliest adventure when she was the security chief of NASA and the kree Mar-vell was masquerading as a human. They tackled skrulls and it was the first time Carol saw one of them. Ron Frenz and Buscema’s art looks really old fashioned, which fits the story well. Back in the modern world, Carol is hunting AIM guys and makes a promise to herself that from now on, she starts to think things through before charging in. However, the AIM goons get way and Carol has just time to confer with her (quite pushy) publicist and then she sees her boyfriend, who dumps her. Later, Carol follows an AIM van but a Super Skrull sniffs her out (literally). When her now ex-boyfriend William appears to be in trouble, she hurries to his side, only to find him dead. But that’s not the end of the story, of course.

In issue 26, we finally see who agent Sum is. It was a bit strange that Carol just states that she has always known it but I guess as team leader she has to. I really like characters like Sum.

The first three issues deal with a skrull impersonating Carol. In turns out that William really isn’t who Carol thought he was and to top it off, the skrulls have kidnapped him. Carol goes out to look for him but doesn’t find him and we never hear from him again. Strange. Maybe this was resolved in the main Secret Invasion series? Also, the minicarrier is destroyed and Carol sleeps with Simon which might be a mistake.

The next three issues focus on the Carol defending Manhattan and its inhabitants from the skrulls. She even has to fight a Super skrull whom the other skrulls are afraid of. She clearly enjoys the fighting and kills the skrulls mercilessly. This isn’t shown often in superhero comics but I think it fits the story line and the character. I also really enjoyed how Carol shook off her insecurities and focused on the fight. However, the issues don’t really have much plot development. I haven’t read the Secret Invasion main story line.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed if that was the resolution to the William subplot but otherwise I quite liked the collection.

Oh, this is not a good volume to start reading about Carol.