Comics Forum... the magazine that dares to ask the really big questions... questions like: Just how stupid are the Skrulls? By Guy Lawley

In 1995, Marvel were about to release Skrull Kill Krew, a five-issue miniseries written by Grant Morrison, with art by Mark Millar and Steve Yeowell. The three creators had been interviewed at the Glasgow Comics Art Convention in March 1995, and we published the interview, making Issue 8 a Skrull Kill Krew special, and expecting the comic to be the big hit of the year.

We were wrong. Boy, were we wrong! It’s possible that the best thing to come out of the SKK hype was this article: Guy Lawley’s survey of the mind-numbing stupidity of pretty-well every story that has involved the Skrulls.

Illo #1 from Fantastic Four 2
The Skrull: terrifying alien menace
or bunch of pathetic losers?
Readers, cast your votes...

The Skrulls... major players in the Marvel Universe; a deadly alien race, capable of transforming into any shape they desire. A race with evil designs on the planet Earth since the very roots of the Marvel superhero world were laid down—since they first menaced the Fantastic Four in the second issue of their groundbreaking comic, dated January 1962.

But now it’s 1995, and time for new ground-breaking events to rock the foundations of the Marvel firmament. Grant Morrison, Mark Millar and Steve Yeowell are doing their first comic for Marvel (a major event in itself) and bringing to it a violent new nemesis for the entire Skrull race... the Skrull Kill Krew.

Well, let’s face it, it really is about time the Skrulls were killed off. These ugly, green shape-changing little gits are a hangover from the early days of Marvel, when Stan Lee and his publisher/cousin Martin Goodman were trying out the costumed hero concept, and gently leading their old monster/mystery/SF readership into this new(ish) territory. The first two issues of The Fantastic Four featured Kirby monsters very prominently on their covers, and the FF didn’t actually get their long blue underwear until Issue 3. In No. 1 it was the Mole Man’s army of subterranean weirdies that provided the excuse to present a superhero book that looked like a monster book. In Issue 2 it was the turn of a bunch of clichéd green aliens from the Andromeda galaxy.

And what a bunch of sad losers they turned out to be. In their first encounter with the FF, they are scared away from their attempt to (surprise surprise) take over the Earth when Mr Fantastic shows them some panels from monster comics, and persuades them that the nasty-looking critters depicted therein will gobble them all up if they attempt to invade the planet. Sensibly, they decide to buzz off home immediately.

Illo #2 from FF2
That’s how stupid they are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The really sad losers in this deal were of course the readers who paid good money for this junk. Don’t believe me ? Then let’s take a closer look at this seminal masterwork in the brave new Marvel Universe of the 1960’s...

Just How Stupid is Fantastic Four No. 2?

The cover, as mentioned, shows the FF fighting a trio of big-eared, bug-eyed green critters—and pay attention, there are three of these buggers. Three as in 3, as in one more than two. Tricky business I know, this counting lark, but I’ll assume most of you have got the hang of it thus far.

Illo #3 from FF2
The Skrull considerately take
the time to explain to each other
 how they have used their shape-changing
abilities to impersonate the FF.

In the early pages of the yarn inside, we see the FF apparently carrying out a variety of criminal acts throughout the USA. By this time, seemingly on their second major case, the population of America seems to have a very good idea indeed who the Fantastic Four are. They are immediately recognised by everyone—in the Thing’s case even by a man in a lifeboat, hundreds of yards away, when the Thing is swimming rapidly away from a collapsing oil rig in “deepening twilight” and almost hidden by the waves.

Of course, it’s not the FF at all doing the dastardly deeds, but four—that’s 4, as in not three—Skrulls, who’ve been sent down from the mother ship to frame the FF, so that the authorities of Earth will lock up the real FF, so that they won’t be a threat to the forthcoming invasion.

Let’s pause here and consider the scenario. The aliens have done their homework. They’ve researched Earth’s defences, found out all about the FF, and learned enough to impersonate them—probably not too difficult, since the fledgling super-quartet do seem to have made quite a name for themselves in a very short time. Here’s story glitch No.l—the Skrulls are so worried about the FF defending the Earth, they want the Army to put the FF away for them. Then presumably they’ll get on and happily fight the Army which was powerful enough to lock up the FF.

Thing Number 2 is that since the Skrulls have clearly done their research into Earth’s defences, they ought to have a good idea what’s available to defend the Earth and what’s not. This will come up later.

So, to continue with the story—the Skrulls’ plan works and the FF are locked up by the Army. And they escape. It’s all a bit silly, but there isn’t room to consider every stupid aspect of this comic; anyway, you may want to save some frissons of delight for when you next read it yourself.

The FF now have the problem of tracking down the foursome who are impersonating them. Naturally, they decide that the Human Torch will have to commit an act of criminal damage, to attract the attention of the baddies. So he does. And thinks to himself, “It’s now or never! If those imitators are anywhere around...”

And by golly, wouldn’t you just just know it, two of them are driving by right at that moment ... And, by sheer good fortune, neither of them is the one impersonating the Torch. So they mistake him for one of them, and take him to their HQ. (Strangely, though they can imitate anything they want, the two Skrulls are still imitating the extremely well known Reed and Sue Richards of the famous Fantastic Four, even though they know that the FF are public enemy number one at that moment, which might put our alien pals in some danger—odd logic they work with, as we’ve seen before. Aliens... who can figure ‘em, eh ?)

Illo #4
The FF commit Grand Theft Rocket-Disguised-as-Water-Tower

So, the Torch alerts his team-mates as to the whereabouts of Skrull HQ, and the FF storm in (or richards in, or grimm in, as the case may be) and beat up the four nasty cowardly aliens. And mastering their technology in a jiffy, cos Reed’s a genius, innit, they flit up to the mothership in the Skrulls’ handy concealed rocket.

And pretending to be the four Skrulls who impersonated them (and luckily not being asked to prove it by changing back or anything—phew!!) the FF show the Skrull commander “actual photos” of what they will face if they attempt to invade Earth... i.e. some Kirby monsters, some space mines and some giant ants. In fact the “actual photos” are panels “clipped from Strange Tales and Journey Into Mystery” (two other mighty Marvel mags, doncha know). So the Skrulls laugh out loud and tear the FF into small pieces, right ?

Well, no, ‘cos luckily again, the Skrull commander—the guy they’ve entrusted their invasion of Earth to—is extremely dim. “Incredible!!” he cries (he got that right). “Unbelievable!” Yup. “We’ve got to leave this galaxy at once, before those terrifying creatures discover us !” Er... come again ? Those creatures in the comic book panels ?

Illo #5
See? We’re not making this nonsense up.

 

 

 

 

 

Ah well, it’s a kids’ comic, innit ? Or, if you want to get a bit sophisticated, maybe in a comic book universe such as what the FF inhabit, comic book panels are in fact “actual photos”. That’s how comics are made in a comic book world.

No, really, it won’t wash—this denouement is straight out of one of the twist-ending SF stories that formed one of the staples of the Marvel “mystery” books of the time, as Stan and Jack perversely acknowledge—only even dumber than usual.

Nor will this wash... the FF return to Earth and lead the cops to where the Skrulls are tied up. The Skrulls who can change into anything they like, like shrink down into lickle mices and get out of their ropes or ants and crawl under the door. Have they done this ? No. But they do change into big bad monsters when the FF and the fuzz arrive, so they can have another fight scene (and, incidentally, keep the book looking as much like a monster comic as possible).

And “the third one” turns into a bird and nearly gets away, but it’s OK ‘cos Reed grabs him in mid-air. Ah, yes, you’re still paying attention. The third one. As in, the third one of three. No mention of the fact that there should be four... no talk of the one that escaped to menace the Earth, that must be tracked down, or maybe saved for a future plotline (heh heh). Why, one might almost think that Jack Kirby laid out the art for this story in a very short time, and simply forgot about the fourth Skrull. Or it was too much like hard work to draw four. And that Stan the Man, when he came to script it, was paying so little attention that he just didn’t notice that one had disappeared.

But no, surely not! This is the beginning of the famous Marvel Age of Comics. These guys didn’t have complete contempt for their readership, and churn out this nonsense at breakneck speed at three in the morning. How could you even imagine such a thing, you naughty readers?

So, the three—ahem—baddies are beaten up again and it’s time for the last part of Mr Fantastic’s master plan. He reveals his previously unknown power of hypnosis, convinces the Skrulls that they are in fact harmless cows, and leaves them in a field munching contentedly on grass looking for all the world like an Anchor Butter ad (except not singing or dancing). Illustration #6

Marvel published another comic at this time called Amazing Adult Fantasy, billed as “the comic that doesn’t insult your intelligence”. Now we know which comic was the one that did, don’t we? And I’ve only given you the tip of the iceberg of silliness that lurks within this comic. I urge you to sail the Titanic of your senses in its direction at the soonest opportunity. (It’s reprinted in Marvel Masterworks Volume 2 if you haven’t got a copy elsewhere.)

Luckily, The Fantastic Four did get better—quite a bit better-and these early stories can now be looked back on as hugely entertaining pieces of crap rather than just the dismissively crappy cash-in crap that they were at the time. And, of course, if you’re Grant Morrison and Mark Millar et al, they can be looked back on as source material for some contemporary cash-in cra... er, contemporary masterpieces of the comic book art.

As Grant mentioned on the GlasCAC panel, the SkrullCowKrew have been revived twice before as plot devices, and Comics Forum is going to rub your noses in the pats of both appearances again, no matter how bad the stench may get. Yes, hold onto your nosegays, readers, cos there’s more to come...

Cowhood’s End

It’s Avengers 93 - 97, 1971, and the Kree-Skrull War is underway, thanks to Roy Thomas, writer, and Neal Adams, John Buscema and pals on art. Lovely stuff, collected in 1983 into two Baxter paper reprint volumes as The Kree-Skrull War starring The Avengers. This is the story in which Rick the Eternal Sidekick Jones manifests temporary super-powers-but not in a Jimmy Olsen chartreuse kryptonite kind of a way, oh no. He gets the power to materialise old comic book superheroes out of his mighty mind to beat up aliens, which shows why the Kree (another alien race invented by Jack Kirby in the 60s and exploited by Marvel ever since) and the Skrulls find the human race and its back-water plant so attractive/important. One day all humans will have the power to make old comic-book heroes appear out of their heads. This is Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke does into comics, you see. (The story’s called Godhood’s End, just in case anyone thinks rascally Roy was trying to sneak the plot theft—sorry, homage—through undetected !) Which proves how much comics had grown up in the decade since FF 2. No ultrasilly story devices here, no sirree.

Illo #7
Don’t blame us for the nightmares.
It was something you ate.

Apart from Skrulls doing Anchor Butter ads, of course. You see, at an early point in the Kree-Skrull shenanigans, the Vision (the Android Avenger) is zapped out of the sky by some rays. “It’s good that he landed amongst these harmless cattle...” opines his companion, the speedster Quicksilver. Alas, not so harmless, ‘cos the terrible trio have been de-hynotised, and are back to their old tricks of impersonating (3/4 of) the Fantastic Four. And cows, of course... though exactly why they prefer the bovine form to lurk around in is not revealed. (‘cos they live on a farm, dummy! Oh, of course.) Or how come through their years of cowish existence they have retained the special equipment which allowed them to fake the FF’s powers. (Er... ‘cos they live on a farm ... ?)

Anyway... the cows beat up the Avengers and then they have a war with the Kree, and then everyone goes home.

Illo #8
“Bigotry: we’re against it,”
say Thomas and Adams.

No, wait!! Twist in the tale! Rascally Roy has been teasing us earlier on about the three Skrulls, ‘cos HE noticed there should have been four of them, even if Stan and Jack didn’t. And he finds a place for that fourth Skrull in this story... told you comics had done some growing up since 1961! I won’t spoil the surprise, though. I hate it when people do that. But I will tell you that the fourth Skrull gets killed by an angry mob, and it’s a satisfyingly ironic lynch mob scene, which has a valid place in a story largely about bigotedness and racism and that. Not only that, but also it proves that even in 1971, despite their squeaky clean comics coded image, people could get killed in a Marvel comic... provided their skin was a sufficiently funny colour and their place of origin was sufficiently far away. (Er, that wouldn’t be bigoted or racist or anything like that, would it ? OK, good... just checking.)

And what of the original three SkrullCowKrew ? The last we see of them, they’ve been captured by the Avengers, and Captain America is having a chat with Reed Richards about them.

Which is kind of odd, because John Byrne has Reed state in Fantastic Four Annual 17 (1983) that the trio was “reported killed during the Kree-Skrull War”. No doubt Grant and Mark have got these continuity glitches covered. The department of Alien Affairs probably lied to Reed. So why did the Skrulls continue to live out their existence as cows, so as to end up in the burgers that start off the events of Skrull Kill Krew ? (‘cos they were sent back to the farm ??) No doubt Grant and Mark etc., etc...

Just How Stupid is John Byrne’s Skrull Cow Krew Story?

Meanwhile, back at John Byrne’s FF Annual 17... oh god, must we do this? Well, we’re sort of committed now. Let’s keep it brief.

In real time, it’s now 1983, though in Marvel Comics Time it’s anytime John Byrne says it is... Sue Invisible Woman Richards informs us in this very issue that the FF have been together six years since they dumped the SkrullCows on the farm. That’s the six years since 1961. Maybe things like this are what got Stan and jack so confused about numbers—in the Marvel Universe, arithmetic can be a very fluid phenomenon.

Anyway, it’s a 1983 of some kind, and a friend of the FF is caught with a flat, well how about that (actually it’s some kind of engine trouble) on a lonely road in upstate New York. Farming territory. She meets a town full of weirdoes, just like some old Twilight Zone episode. And, oh dearie me, it turns out they’re all drinking milk from the Skrull cows. Except that Reed Richards has to come up with some lengthy, baffling pseudo-scientific guff to explain howcome they’re drinking Skrull milk when the Skrulls wouldn’t have made milk really, and anyhow they’ve been missing presumed dead for years. (Not the twelve years since 1971, since it’s only six years since etc., etc.)

Illo #9
But... but... but... [but that’s exposition for you.]

 

 

 

So, the townspeople are all monstrous shape-changers and bonkers (that’s bonkers as in mad, rather than the plural of the singular) and the alien milk is replicating itself endlessly like something out of Mary Poppins (though just which part of Mary it may have come out of I am not prepared to speculate in this, a family-oriented magazine). Naturally there is a lot of fighting and running about and so on, and since this is a John Byrne comics-coded nice comic, the townsfolk are all back to normal by the end... in fact, they haven’t even lost six years of their lives, because “Some unexpected combination in the human and Skrull genes evidently retarded the aging process”. So they’re all just as young as what they were, and in fact healthier into the bargain, as Reed tells them (well, it’s all that milk you see; protein, vitamins and so on).

Illo #10
So, even the FF have
selective memories...

So, we find that dumbness hasn’t died out in superhero comics, it’s just got more sophisticated. In connection with which, what does John Sophistication Is My Middle Name Byrne make of the original dumb-to-the-power-n ending of FF 2? Ah, well, he lives up to his middle name alright, ‘cos he reveals that between the panels in that historic comic, Reed had done some “examinations” of the captured Skrulls, and found that “their eyes were much less complex than ours, rendering them incapable of more subtle visual perceptions”. This of course explains why the Skrull commander, whose race has built starships capable of travelling from another galaxy to our own, and spying on Earth sufficiently to impersonate its mightiest heroes etc., is fooled by a few comic-book panels into calling off an invasion that must have taken years to plan and execute.

Sure it does. Do you get the impression that comics may have actually got dumber from 1971 to 1983 ? Not all of them, of course, but certainly those featuring Skrulls who impersonate cows seem to have taken a distinct turn for the worse.

How Soon is Now?

Thank goodness that nasty little trend has been put firmly into reverse by the arrival of Skrull Kill Krew. At last the devious and polyvalent plotlines set into motion by Stan and Jack all those years ago are getting the treatment they deserve. So hats off to Grant and Mark and Steve, and not forgetting Brendan, for bringing us more dumb violent superhero comics for kids in which multiple bloodbaths are OK because they’re only aliens anyway, but done with wit, verve and panache. Because though there’s too much of the dumb violent etc. around these days, there’s nowhere near enough of the wit, verve and panache.

And because, even if they do steal ideas from an old John Byrne Annual (or is the similarity a fluke?), and even if their first issue does have some images straight out of John Carpenter’s (rather splendid) film They Live, these talented and perceptive creators have noticed one very important thing about the Skrulls... they don’t come any dumber, and they really really do deserve to die.

OK, that’s two things. I never claimed I was perfect at this counting business myself.

Goats???

And one—really, just one—last footnote to all this terminal dumbness... the Marvel comic which is regurgitating—beg pardon, retelling—old FF stories for the audience of the latest animated TV version, Marvel Action Hour featuring the Fantastic Four, has just finished retelling FF 2. They dragged it out over three issues and brought in the Skrull Emperor’s pretty daughter, inter-Skrull treachery etc. etc. (all old Lee/Kirby plots, and some very Jack Kirby spaceships too!)

As you might imagine, thousands of Skrull fans were on tenterhooks, waiting for that dumbest of dumb endings to arrive. Does Reed Richards whip out the old comic book panels this time around? No, for this is a sophisticated nineties audience of Saturday morning TV addicts writer Joey Cavalieri is addressing. This time it’s a holographic image projector, armed up with... a hologram of a dinosaur from Jurassic Park!! (Cultural studies boffins take note ... ) And also a glowing golden montage of all Earth’s superheroes... ‘cos it’s not just the FF these days, is it? It’s just that the FF seem to be the only ones the Skrull researchers notice and they bother to impersonate.

Oh, and at the end Reed hypnotises the four—count ‘em again, no loose ends this time—Skrull agents into... wait for it...

Illo #11
Farewell! Until the next time.

...mountain goats! Of course ! Far more nineties and sophis than dumb old cows.

And this time, Mr Fantastic uses a hypnosis ray gun which he just happens to have on him, which is of course far more credible than suddenly manifesting the power of hypnosis himself.

Marvel Comics... gotta love ‘em, eh? At least they’ve had the good sense to publish Skrull Kill Krew... so there should be one Marvel book worth buying every month. Keep it next to Invisibles and Swamp Thing for some light relief.

And next time you meet your head teacher or your bank manager, watch the tips of their ears carefully... if there’s any hint of pointy greenness, shoot first and ask questions later.

Skrull Kill Krew. You know it makes sense.

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