Fantastic Four #2

The Fantastic Four meet the Skrulls from outer space

By Stan Lee, Jack Kirby and George Klein

Villains: The Skrulls

So, What Happens?

The Fantastic Four appear to be committing a crime wave, Sue Storm steals a priceless diamond, the Thing topples an oil rig, Johnny melts a statue and Reed turns off the city’s power. As the media whips up a storm of anti-FF hysteria the team hide out in an out of the way cabin and ponder how to counter their unknown adversaries.

Said adversaries turn out to be shape changing aliens called Skrulls who are using a mixture of their own powers and alien technology to fake the Fantastic Four’s abilities.

While the FF argue over the best method to flush out their enemies they are surrounded by the army and after surrendering are taken to specially prepared cells. Despite surrendering without a fight the team soon use their powers to quickly escape from their individual jail cells and regroup.

They take a chance on their enemies planning to disrupt an upcoming rocket test and have Johnny interfere with it himself. He does so successfully and is soon recruited by their alien foes who think he must be their own Human Torch stand in.

Johnny signals for the others and they arrive and make easy work of the Skrull warriors. Stealing the Skrull space craft the team flies into orbit to dock with the Skrull mother-ship.

Thinking they are his team of impersonators still in disguise the Skrull leader takes in Reed’s evidence of how dangerous the Earth is (clippings from monster comics) and calls off the invasion. He gratefully allows his four infiltrators to return to Earth to clear up any evidence and gives them all a medal for their self sacrifice.

The menace averted the Four return to Earth, their latest trip through the cosmic rays causing the Thing to temporarily return to normal. This momentarily gives him false hope that he could again live a normal life but he is soon back in his rocky form. The team is confronted by the Police but convince them that the crime wave was down to the Skrulls.

The Police come with them to capture the Skrulls who have escaped and put up a brief fight before throwing themselves on the Fantastic Four’s mercy. To keep them out of trouble Reed hypnotises the Skrulls into believing they are cows and leaves them happily in a field.

So is it any good?:

There are huge plot holes, other than the Skrulls attempts to discredit the Fantastic Four almost nothing holds up to any scrutiny at all.

Even ignoring the specific plot holes this is at best a mixture of a DC style ‘why is the hero doing unexpected things’ super hero story and a twist ending Marvel monster/sci-fi tale that Lee and Kirby had done countless times. Despite the heroes powers the two groups of Skrulls are either dealt with by being tricked in a corny fashion or being hypnotised. Neither depends on the FF’s powers or personalities and neither would have been out of place in a pre-hero story. The team don’t even wear costumes.

That said there is something different in the way the Thing interacts with his team mates and the way the authorities turn on the team that do suggest there is something of the nascent Marvel super hero style about the story.

The Skrulls are stereotypically (and literally) Little Green Men and the idea of a small cell of them fitting in as Humans and working against the Earth is a staple of paranoid cold war science fiction. Lee and Kirby could work with those tropes in their sleep and they manage to build a story that entertains despite its clear failings of logic and originality.

In fact there is something quite interesting in seeing something that is clearly a hold over from the previous era of comics being nominally done as a super hero tale.

The characterisation largely follows the previous issue. Reed is shown as resourceful but not some super genius. The Torch is a hot headed kid who despite his powers largely stands back while Reed talks down the bad guys. Sue does at least get to trip up a Skrull and isn’t just protected by the others but receives little characterisation and largely uses her powers to escape things.

The Thing on the other hand is yet again extremely belligerent, happily coming to blows with his team mates and wishing the Torch didn’t have his powers so he could really hurt him. The rest of the team talk about him behind his back, and indeed with him there next to them as if he is a real threat about to blow at any time.

Their responses to him and his own dialogue are much closer to the classic Hulk than to the later established Thing. I guess when the Hulk debuted a few months later Lee found a better subject for that style of story. In the scenes where the Thing briefly regains his humanity Lee hit upon a far more fertile source of characterisation and pathos for the character.

I did enjoy it, the scene of the Thing toppling an oil rig is classic early 60s Kirby, I’ve always quite liked the pathos in the individual Skrulls once they get beat, despite their nastiness they just don’t seem like a match for any Marvel hero and the cow ending is a classic. The issue as a whole isn’t but it’s still fun.

Are there any goofy moments?

Skrull Reed blacks out the entire city to a standstill by extending his hand through an open window and flipping a single switch. In front of a janitor. He then hangs around outside in the dark laughing evilly. No idea why the janitor didn’t just flip it back on.

The army prepares cells for each of the FF tailoring them to their powers. Then send guards to Sue’s cell with food, only for them to be totally shocked by the empty cell after she has used her powers to disappear.

The Skrulls make a big deal of explaining how they didn’t actually duplicate the FF’s powers. Skrull Sue didn’t become invisible but merely shrank, this somehow caused the huge diamond she was holding to also shrink despite it now being too big for the Skrull to hold.

Reed claims at one point that they had taken the fourth skrull into space with them when they clearly hadn’t was probably Lee trying to cover up for an art mistake but it still makes no sense.

The Skrulls are convinced by drawn pictures of Monsters Reed has grabbed from comic books. Says a lot for the reconnaissance the Skrulls must have done in order to identify the FF themselves as threats. Reed and the team had encountered actual monsters the previous issue but he is still worried that the Skrulls will see through their ruse about their being monsters on Earth.

Trivia:

It’s only a throwaway mention amongst other papers but this issue features the first appearance of the Daily Bugle. It was probably a coincidence that it would return in the Spider-Man books but there it is.

For the second issue in a row the villains of this issue would eventually be explained by tying them in to Jack Kirby’s Eternals series. The Skrulls were revealed to in fact be the Deviant off shoot of a non-shape changing race and like Earths Deviants were created by the Celestials. There were even apparently Skrull Eternals although almost every story have concentrated on the Deviant branch.

Despite claiming they hate being Skrulls and begging to be something else the Skrulls do not stay content as cows for ever more. They would resurface in the pages of Avengers. Their time spent as cows would lead to complications in Fantastic Four Annual 17 and Skrull Kill Krew

Is it a landmark?:

Of course.

Where can I read it?:

Countless places including the first Fantastic Four Essentials and Masterworks and Omnibus volumes.