Random Happenstance

Let's call it, 'Skrullduggery.'

With Marvel Comic's recent revelations about the shapechanging Skrulls being up to no good, opinion is torn: on the one hand, it's an out towards fixing Iron Man (among others), in what is seen by many as the character's slide toward villainy, or just being a total dick. On the other hand, it's a total copout, and no one wants to find out the last year's worth of comics they dropped thirty-six bucks on didn't feature their favorite character, but instead have been the adventures of Skyppi the Skrull. (Skyppi the Skrull appears courtesy Bob Layton's Hercules, and I like to think most if not all Skrulls have names that sound like Caarrl, L'nee, etc.)

That may seem far-fetched, but it's happened before. In Uncanny/Adjectiveless X-Men, after a trip back in time to the Skrull Throneworld right before Galactus destroyed it...the fact that this sentence made sense in context is why comics are awesome, really. Anyway, Wolverine was replaced by a Skrull, and his Skrull replacement was the lead of Wolvie's comic for several issues. Without it being hinted or mentioned anywhere, I believe. The Skrull may have even been thinking in Wolverine's caption boxes. (Edit: actually, no. The issue I was thinking of was Wolverine #140, and Logan had no captions or thought balloons, so maybe it was part of the plan.) I only caught the issue with Nightcrawler, and the crossover issues after the whole mess came to light; so I don't know if there was a big stink about it, which I would expect.

Skrull Wolverine was killed by Apocalypse's new Horseman, Death; and Death turned out to be the real Wolverine, brainwashed and stuffed full of adamantium again. Or something, I'm a little fuzzy on the details. There was also some in-story reason why only Wolverine was replaced and not everyone, which I'll get back to if I find the issues in question. Still, fairly shortly after this Chris Claremont returned to the X-Books and resumed his pet storylines, and this was never spoken of again. For a book that can be so mired in continuity, there's years of X-Men stories that are ignored, missing like a reel in Grindhouse: this scene was supercool, but we don't have it, and we're moving on.

And it's like the Chuck Austen stuff gets mentioned more than the Grant Morrison. Granted, Austen's always referenced in the sense of 'that story was so awful I have to fix it away right now,' but nobody wants to get into Xorn or secondary mutations at all now.

Great Goulessarian, I was headed for a point on Iron Man, but as usual got completely distracted by another comic. It's why I'm so disorganized, by the way: I have a hard time straightening my comics without stopping to take a peek at one. Still, I could almost get a week's worth of posts on Skrulls, so why not? It's Skrullduggery week!

Hercules page by Bob Layton, from Hercules vol. 2, #1. X-Men page from X-Men #90, "Eve of Destruction" Story and art by Alan Davis, script by Terry Kavanagh, inks by Mark Farmer.