The First Secret Invasion: Legacy

So who the heck water their crops with milk?

The Srull-Cows! The Skrull-Cows from Fantastic Four #2. It was their milk that the farmers of King's Crossing were using to water their crops. But why use milk?

So there you have it. The people of King's Crossing have been drinking "Skrull milk" and unknowingly swallowing Skrull DNA, turning themselves into shape-changing zombies. And now they want everyone to drink, eat and breathe good ol' Skrull DNA and be "One of Us. One of Us. One of Us." But they didn't count on the Fantastic Four foiling their plans like FF always do.

Legacy from Fantastic Four Annual #17 (also collected in Fantastic Four Visionaries: John Byrne vol. 3) is a nice coda to what happened to the first Skrull invasion of the Marvel Universe. Stan and Jack were still experimenting with writing superheroic sci-fi adventures when they wrote that issue of Fantastic Four in 1962 and it showed. Turn the bad guys into cows and never revisit that loose end again? Thankfully, a talented writer like John Byrne remembered that detail and wrote a fitting epilogue to that early adventure of the Fantastic Four.

The First Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #2 (Marvel, 1962)

So you think Secret Invasion is original, do you? Wrong! It's been done. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby wrote the Skrulls' first ever "Secret Invasion" in Fantastic Four #2 back in 1962. And it only took them a single issue to tell the story. How's that for compressed storytelling?

FF #2 opens with members of the Fantastic Four causing mischief all over New York. Sue Storm steals a gem, Thing destroys an oil rig (or a military installation, I can't tell which and Stan doesn't elaborate), the Torch melts down a solid marble monument and Mr. Fantastic cuts the power supply to the entire city, the cad. All this is done in front of the unbelieving eyes of the public and we soon find out why. It was a quartet of Skrulls who what done it!


So where are the real FF? They're hanging out in an "isolated hunting lodge" where they find out what happened from the radio.


Check that out: The Torch is packing heat. He knows how to take care of a threat...just shoot the buggers. Also, "the Torch is packing heat"? Ah-hah! Ah-hahaha! Oh, my ribs!

But young Master Storm also comes up with a plan. "Since there are four no-goodniks out there imitating us", he says, "why don't I create a ruckus around the city as the Human Torch to flush the other three out and I could infiltrate their secret headquarters." There is a flaw in this plan of course that any 5-year old can see. How can the FF be sure that only three bad guys will come out when they find out there's a Human Torch out there causing havoc? Won't the evildoers sit around together in their hideout and when they see the Torch in the sky, won't they say, "Well, all four of us are here. So that must be the real one. Leave him alone. The human soldiers will shoot him down."?

But introducing logic and common sense into a super hero comic book is a silly thing to do. In fact, it is to laugh. So Johnny's plan worked. He is soon picked up by his fake sister and her boyfriend and brought to their hideout...where he is immediately exposed.


The fake Torch manages to subdue the real one but not before Johnny alerted his teammates with the FF flare. The cavalry arrives, they fight the Skrulls, they win. But there is still the matter of the invasion fleet up in space. How to defeat them? Reed Richards comes up with a plan of his own. The mother ship doesn't know the advance unit has been defeated, so why don't we claim to be them, fly into the ship and convince the general to cancel the invasion. Simple, really. And exactly how does Richards plan to convince the Skrulls that the invasion is a no-go??



He shows the Skrull leader pages from a Marvel comic book!! I think I know why the Skrulls are invading the Marvel U. again now. It's to pay back for the humiliation they suffered back in FF #2. I mean, how dumb can you get? "Here, look! Earth's defenses are too strong. They have monsters and creatures from the Black Lagoon. There is no way we can defeat them. Run away! Run awaaaayy!! Hmmm? What? Who is this guy Jack Kirby who signed his name at the bottom of each page, you ask? Oh, no one. Just ignore it and abort mission!"

With that problem solved, the FF goes back to New York and have to figure out what to do with the three Skrulls from the advance unit that they captured. Again, Mr. Fantastic comes up with a plan:



Force them to change into cows, hypnotise them so they'll forget their true identites and then put them to pasture. Brilliant!

But wait...three Skrulls? Didn't they disguise themselves as the Fantastic Four? Where's the other one then? No one noticed this goof back in swinging '62 and the question was never answered until a decade later.

More on that soon.

Yet Another Gratuitous Ass Shot

Time to highlight another gratuitous ass shot in comics. Yay!



There is just so many ways the artist could have drawn Sue Richards without showing off her butt. It's a nice butt, admittedly, but just a tad gratuitous I feel. Still, a cover's job is to attract attention and I bet you Fantastic Four sold slightly more than usual that month thanks to that butt. So mission accomplished, Marvel.

Click on the link in the "Labels" section below to see more ass shots if you're so inclined.

Reed Richards, Super-Genius...Terrible Memory

Okay, what is wrong with this panel from issue #20 of Fantastic Four by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby? Give up?

By issue #20, the FF have met the Skrulls, Kurrgo, master of Planet X, Uatu the Watcher, the Impossible Man and a time-travelling Pharaoh....and Reed thinks a meteor that crash landed on a farm is proof that there is life in outer space???

Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four: Silver Rage

I have mentioned before my platonic man-love for Jeff Parker and everything that he writes. Just click on his name in the 'Labels' below to see me gush like a scary stalker fanboy on two previous reviews (I can link them in this here post but I'm lazy tonight). Anyway, Jeff Parker is known as the guy who writes those fun, not in continuity stories for Marvel and probably the only writer in comics right now whose stuff I have no problems giving to my kids to read without censoring them first. He does it again here with Spider-Man and the Fantastic Four: Silver Rage which collects the four issue limited series of the same name.

The plot: an alien race, the H'moj, has chosen Earth as their new home and the human population as their new host bodies. That is how these alien creatures survive and evolve -- by searching for an inhabited planet and grafting themselves onto the planet's population until they decide the planet is no longer suitable and they move on. The H'moj see their actions as a favour to the local inhabitants of each planet they colonise since they're oh, so advance and just need bodies, that's all.

So naturally the heroes beat the crap out of them. Or at least try to.

Silver Rage is a lighter version of a typical Galactus vs. FF story. The H'moj even have an alien who volunteered to be the H'moj's advance scout in return for sparing his planet but this guy doesn't soliloquise like the Silver Surfer. YAY! There's nothing like a self pitying alien on a surfboard to bore the kids to sleep.

Jeff Parker gives us what we expect from a good Spidey-Fantastic Four team up. Ben Grimm clobberin'? Check. Spider-Man and Johnny Storm interacting with each other? Check. Reed Richards trying to figure things out? Of course. Sue putting up force fields? Yup, it's all there.

And the Impossible Man pops up (heh) early on in the story but gets killed fighting the aliens. To say anything more would be spoilerish....oh, all right...it's the Impossible Man, he can't die. He doesn't turn up again until the last page but his DNA help resolve the crisis.

This is a straightforward action adventure story with aliens and guys in spandex hitting each other. It's fun and a quick read and you don't need to know anything about the characters to enjoy it. Perfect for the kids. Pencils by the late Mike Weiringo is perfect for this book. I was never a big fan of 'Ringo but that's only because I think his style is more suited to fun, breezy stories such as Silver Rage. The first time I saw his stuff was when he debuted in DC's Flash and they were putting Wally West through the meat grinder at the time. Dark, brooding stories and Weiringo's drawing style do not mix. My opinion.

Also, Doom has a cameo and the best two lines in the entire comic:

"The Four! Wretched Curs!"

He doesn't care what century he's in. Doom will always speak like he's in a Renaissance Faire.

Martha Stewart IS Sue Storm

What? Yeah, like Jessica Alba nailed the Sue Storm likeness. C'mon, look at that photo. Should have cast Martha Stewart instead. I believe it was a wasted opportunity by the studio not to offer her the role of the Invisible Woman. Or was she in prison at the time? I would have loved to see Martha Stewart in a Fantastic Four spandex.


Perhaps I've revealed too much about myself.

In case you are dangling upside down...

What I want to know is...what kind of super-starch does Alicia use on her skirt?

Panel from Fantastic Four #255. Scan from Fantastic Four Visionaries: John Byrne vol. 3