Secret Invasion #5 (2008)

Captain Marvel - or at least the Skrull impersonating him - has laid siege to Thunderbolts Mountain and laid out the majority of the Thunderbolts themselves. Seeing Captain Marvel hesitate to kill Swordsman, Thunderbolts director Norman Osborn talks him down, sharing that he knows what it’s like to hear voices pulling you in opposite directions. Filled with doubt and rage, the Skrull sleeper agent flies away and Osborn tells his recovering team that they are at war. Elsewhere, Cassie Lang awakens to the faces of her fellow Young Avengers, Kate Bishop, Vision, and Patriot, who tell her that they were saved by Nick Fury and his Secret Warriors. Fury and Quake are at a bank of monitors trying to connect with the outside world when a Skrull message begins to be broadcast across the globe. Skrulls in the guises of a number of high-profile celebrities and heroes - including Stephen Colbert, Magneto, Tony Stark, Barack Obama, and others - state that they have come to save the human race from themselves, and that Earth is now a part of the Skrull Empire. Aboard a Skrull warship, Abigail Brand who can speak Skrull (poorly) convinces two Skrulls that have cornered her that she is a Skrull herself. She uses the ruse to disarm one of the Skrulls and then proceeds to take control of the ship’s bridge, where she finds Mr. Fantastic strapped to a torture device. Brand then uses the bridge’s console to release the ship’s airlock and eject the remaining Skrulls into space, leaving just herself and Reed Richards alive on the ship. Brand releases Richards from his imprisonment and begins to explain the situation to him. However, before she can finish, an enraged Richards - believing this to be just another Skrull trick - wraps an arm around her throat and demands she give him his wife and children. When Brand does not shapeshift under duress, Richards releases her unconscious body and goes to the ship’s console to determine the situation for himself. On the downed Helicarrier, Maria Hill is being held at gunpoint by the Skrull posing as Jarvis and a cadre of Skrulls she believed, until recently, were fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. agents. Jarvis-Skrull demands Hill’s surrender on behalf of the human race, but she refuses. The Skrulls execute Hill for her insolence, but all this does is reveal that the bullet-ridden Hill is actually a Life-Model Decoy. The real Hill, perched above the group of Skrulls, levels a sniper rifle at the group before they open fire on her. She is able to escape on a jetpack and initiates the Helicarrier’s self-destruct sequence, seemingly killing all Skrulls aboard. Agent Brand regains consciousness to find the warship she and Reed Richards are on under attack. When the attacking ships are suddenly destroyed by Captain Marvel, Richards tells Brand - who he now trusts is not a Skrull - to pilot the ship to New York. Brand shares that they need to pick up a few people on the way. In the Savage Land, the New Avengers and Mighty Avengers are in a stand-off with the heroes that emerged from the crashed Skrull ship, each group claiming the other are Skrull impostors. Before the fight can continue, another Skrull ship appears above them and Mr. Fantastic shoots a beam of light into the ground from a device on his shoulder. The beam reveals the true forms of all Skrulls in the group and turns the tide in the real heroes’ favor. With the Avengers victorious and trust finally restored, they leave the Skrulls’ bodies behind and head to New York.