Thanks to their arrival to the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Captain Marvel, the alien race known as the Skrulls are about to become known to a lot more people. These aliens have been part of Marvel lore for some sixty years, and new fans might want learn more about these pointy-eared green aliens.
Maybe you’ve heard of things like the Kree-Skrull War in Avengers, or the villainous Super Skrull in the pages of Fantastic Four. Here are five Skrull-centric stories that shook the Marvel universe:
The X-Skrulls (Maximum Security: Dangerous Planet #1, 2000)
Marvel’s Skrull stories tend to be centered around the Fantastic Four or the Avengers. But one X-Men story has deep ties to the shape shifting alien race. Everyone knows mutants in the Marvel universe are beings born with powers; because of those powers, the human shuns and hates them. And when Skrulls start to develop mutations, their race treats them just as badly. Professor Charles Xavier decides he’s going to instruct these alien mutants just as he did the human ones, and Cadre K is born. Xavier goes to space to help them out, but eventually, the Skrulls settle as humans on a ranch in South Dakota.
Spider-Woman: Alien Queen (New Avengers #40, 2008)
Jessica Drew, a.k.a. Spider-Woman, was one of the most popular Marvel heroes of the ’70s and early ’80s, but she more or less disappeared from the scene for twenty years. Writer Brian Michael Bendis brought her back with much fanfare when he began his run on New Avengers in 2004. Then Marvel pulled the rug out from everyone, as New Avengers #40, which tied into Secret Invasion, confirmed that the Spider-Woman who had been an Avenger all this time was really a Skrull. Not just any Skrull either, but the Skrull Empress Veranke, who was behind the whole Secret Invasion thing! The real Jessica of course came back, but this reveal was one of the most memorable Skrull moments ever.
I Married A Skrull! (Fantastic Four vol. 1 #357, 1991)
In one of the weirder twists to the Fantastic Four saga, fans learned Johnny Storm, the Human Torch, had actually been married to a Skrull for years. Ben Grimm (the Thing) had a longtime girlfriend in blind sculptress Alicia Masters in the earliest days of the Fantastic Four comics. When Ben took off for deep space, his buddy Johnny started dating Alicia. He eventually married her! And no, Thing was not cool with it. But after several years, Marvel revealed Alicia was a Skrull named Lyja. Her alliance shifted and she became a good guy, but Johnny never got over the initial betrayal.
The First Invasion (Fantastic Four, vol. 1 #2, 1962)
Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced the Skrulls to the Marvel universe in the second ever issue of Fantastic Four. Skrulls planned to get the Fantastic Four out of the way by replacing them and destroying their reputation in hopes that the heroes would end up in prison. This all to make a Skrull invasion of Earth go more smoothly, so the aliens could infiltrate everywhere and look like anyone. Remember, this was very early in the Marvel Universe, when the Fantastic Four were the the only superheroes on Earth. Once Reed Richards outsmarts them, he uses hypnotic suggestion to have the Skrulls turn themselves into cows. Yes, you read that right. This crazy ending led to an even crazier story thirty years later, which brings us to the next entry.
The Craziest Skrull Story Ever (Skrull Kill Krew #1, 1995)
So about those Skrulls who thought they were cows. No one heard from them for decades—until writers Grant Morrison and Mark Millar, early in their careers of wild and surreal comics, came up with an instant classic sequel to that story. In Skrull Kill Krew, we discover milk from the Skrull cows infected any humans consuming it because it was contaminated with Skrull DNA.
This contamination resulted in a disease; survivors developed shape-shifting powers just like Skrulls, resulting in burning hatred for those green skinned invaders. Banding together as the “Skrull Kill Krew,” the infected took out an entire small town of Skrulls living as humans, wiping out a population of 3,678 people. They even killed a version of the Fantastic Four that (of course) turned out to be Skrulls. This is one of the wildest takes ever on the Skrull mythos.
Images: Marvel Comics
