Friday Night Fights: Let's Play Wac-A-Skrull®
As the heroes of the Marvel universe begin to uncover a Secret Invasion by the shape-shifting Skrulls, it's as good a time as any to recall the first big event involving that treacherous alien race.
Five years before the original Star Wars blew out our brain pans, the Kree-Skrull War was a sprawling space epic written by Roy Thomas and (mostly) illustrated by Neal Adams. Against this cosmic backdrop, it's revealed that the android Avenger named The Vision had romantic feelings toward his human teammate the Scarlet Witch, who had recently been captured by the Super Skrull and taken to the Skrull Throneworld. During a spectacular space battle, the Vision learned the fate of the Scarlet Witch, which caused the normally cold and logical android to pop a bolt and take matters into his own diamond-hard hands.
Few fight scenes in my memory are quite as chilling as the Vision's matter-of-fact assessment that he is, indeed, fully aware he's killing his hapless Skrull punching bag. Click on the panels for the full effect of the face-mashing violence...the same violence that feeds the very soul of Bahlactus!
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You know how to push my comic "buttons," Mark! The K-S War is one of my fave all-time epics, and the whole scene where the Avengers blast into that Skrull starship is one of the best sequences in all comics history. Neal Adams' art on this run is awe-inspiring.
Posted by: Hube | January 19, 2008 at 08:14 AM
Agreed. This is one of the all-time classic Marvel stories. It's sagas like this which keep Marvel ahead of DC for me.
Posted by: Matthew Rees | January 19, 2008 at 11:40 AM
Hube-
I plan on posting that very sequence at some point for my "Highlight Reel" feature. You're right...it's simply one of the most thrilling sequences ever...mainly due to Adams' cinematic staging. It's really quite amazing to see that level of "visual vocabulary" before the Star Wars era fully kicked in. I mean, what did Adams have to base this on? "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Eh...I don't think so. Granted, Star Wars itself took most of its visual vocabulary from old WWII air battle movies...and maybe this is what also inspired Neal Adams...but man, that stuff was slick.
Matthew-
Yup....Marvel really does seems to have an edge over DC is so many areas....primarily the visual realm. DC jumped ahead during the 1980's, it seemed, but Marvel always seems to have been the trailblazer when it comes to art.
Posted by: Mark Engblom | January 19, 2008 at 12:01 PM
Did you notice that "green eyes", as Iron Man calls him, has a red eye? Otherwise, I do love these outbursts of emotion from Viz.
Posted by: Captain Average | January 19, 2008 at 03:55 PM
Maybe his iris is bleeding from the beating. Yeah, it's always great seeing allegedly "emotionless" beings flip out like that. The things you do for love!
Posted by: Mark Engblom | January 19, 2008 at 04:06 PM
Capt. Ave.: Trivia note: In 1983, Marvel put out a special edition two-issue reprint of the K-S War, and the Skrulls were all given red eyes. The word balloons were even modified to accommodate the coloring. The original issues seem to be just a coloring error.
Posted by: Hube | January 20, 2008 at 09:51 AM
Duly noted! Thanx!
Posted by: Captain Average | January 21, 2008 at 03:13 PM
I'm old enough to remember how Adams blew the comic book world's mind back then. I think I was 13 when the Kree/Skrull war happened.
It contains what is to this day my favorite moment in Marvel history; Captain America sending Clint Barton on the suicide mission to stop the Skrull ship from destroying Earth.
Posted by: The Mutt | January 03, 2009 at 08:03 PM