snap judgments

This last issue of X-Factor ends their Secret Invasion tie-in and their She-Hulk tie-in and, I’ll be honest here, I can’t say it really thrilled me as much as an X-Factor/She-Hulk tie-in should have.  To be fair, I’ll admit my share of fandignance here and say that my expectations were probably really high and what I want to read in a She-Hulk book isn’t what Peter David wants to write, so hats off to the man anyway for putting some of my favorite characters in one big story plus throwing Skrulls in for good measure.

Anyways, I get ot the last page of the most recent issue with our heroes victorious and whatnot when I had to do a double take and re-read a word balloon for clarification:

last page of X-Factor #34

So here we are (in a very badly scanned picture, my apologies), bidding our guest-stars adieu when Madrox brings up the terrible idea that Tony Stark (the guy they’d normally turn in a Skrull villain into, seeing how he’s the director of SHIELD and whatnot) could very well be a Skrull himself.  After all, this is an invasion (says right there on the cover!), so what better a guy to invade through than possibly one of the highest laws in the land right now?  It certainly would explain a lot of his behavior, see Madrox’s laundry list below:

Yeah, that sounds to me like a nefarious plot to-

Wait.  What was that?  “Exiling your BROTHER”?  An easy mistake, sure, but at the same time… from Peter David?  He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to make a snafu on something like this, let alone a Hulk-related relation.  You can’t blame in-character knowledge as the idea that Madrox would know that Bruce Banner is She-Hulk’s cousin is a fair assumption.  Considering just how many Madroxes there are out there, I think one of them could have picked up that particular note of information.  It’s one line in a toss off word ballooon, but it shouldn’t exactly be written off.  Besides, no one’s really talked about Tony being a Skrull all along but…

Oh yeah, the Skrull Empress in the guise of Spider-Woman!  In fact, a Skrull disguising himself as a Madrox duplicate would be a pretty good cover, considering just how many of him there are and that they’re no longer as really ‘telepathically linked’ as they used to be.

So, editorial gaff or very clever ruse?  U DECIDE!