The Kree-Skrull War is appropriately celebrated by most as one of Marvel's great early epics of storytelling. It is a story which has its oldest roots in the earliest days of a budding Marvel and a story which at once closes story lines and opens others. And it might just be my all-time favorite comic saga of all time. This time I read it in the handsome oversized Gallery edition, and the larger format did give the work a fresh feel.
But what is often overlooked when this epic is showcased is the significant role that "Our Pal" Sal Buscema played in the early chapters. With inks by himself and longtime ally Sam Grainger as well as veteran George Russos he drew nearly half of the story, but is often forgotten because of the later blockbuster work Neal Adams did when he famously debuted on the series.
The story by Roy Thomas begins in
Avengers eighty-nine in Miami where the Avengers are hunting down the Kree Captain Mar-Vell. After a quick slugfest he is shot by Rick Jones who surprisingly is no longer connected to the Captain by dint of the Nega-Bands. Mar-Vell is swiftly taken to a lab to extract deadly excess radiation which is soon to prove fatal to those around him. This radiation had come about when Captain Marvel was able to finally find a way out of the Negative Zone thanks in no small part to Reed Richards who had himself been trapped there in the pages of
Fantastic Four and who Cap had seen escape through a portal to the Baxter Building.
Avoiding the deadly threat of Annihilus Cap makes good his escape but then runs afoul of the Avengers who have answered an intruder alert. They follow Cap to the Cape in Florida where they capture him. Thanks to the Vision his deadly radiation is dispersed. But the story shifts to the distant home world of the Kree and we see Ronan the Accuser defy the Supreme Intelligence and activate Sentry 459 who attacks as the story closes.
In
Avengers ninety the Sentry takes Captain Marvel and disappears with him as the Avengers get a rundown on the Kree on Earth as well as Mar-Vell's long career.
When they return to the Avengers Mansion they find a distress call from the Wasp saying that her husband Hank Pym, the Yellowjacket is lost in a mysterious green area of the Arctic. The Avengers head north to follow Goliath who had gone earlier to assist, and find a world where time seems to have been lost and ancient pre-historic beasts roam. There they find both Goliath and the Sentry protecting a Kree experiment run by Ronan which will devolve the humans of Earth and remove them as a threat to the Kree Empire. As the story closes we see Yellowjacket himself has been turned into a ferocious caveman.
As the next chapter opens in
Avengers ninety-one, Yellowjacket kidnaps his wife Wasp showing more tenderness in his transformed state than Ronan expected.
The Avengers meanwhile battle the Sentry and a mind-controlled Goliath and defeat the latter. The latter captures them all and the Vision and Scarlet Witch are held prisoner, and we get a hint of the romance which will blossom between the two. While Yellowjacket battles other scientists turned cavemen for the Wasp, Ronan reveals his scheme to use the atavistic radiation of the Kree outpost to devolve all of humanity into dust. But Quicksilver and Rick Jones are able to bring an attack which stifles that plan while Ronan gets an urgent message that the ages-long Kree-Skrull conflict has broken out again. He leaves to serve and the Senry without instructions shuts down as the transforming radiation disperses and the changed humans return to normal. The Avengers seem to know more is coming soon.
In the next chapter in issue ninety-two the Avengers recover at the Mansion and are shocked to learn that the technicians they saved have taken the story to the authorities. The result is a congressional investigation headed up by a unscrupulous fame-seeking politician named H. Warren Craddock. The Avengers are called to testify before his committee as is Captain Marvel. SHIELD is called upon to see to it that the Avengers and especially Mar-Vell do not elude the public. When Captain Marvel saves Carol Danvers public attention is somewhat more positive to him, but she quickly indicates he should come with her to find some measure of isolation from the media. He agrees and Nick Fury allows them unofficially to elude capture.
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(This is a strange array: In addition to Sub-Mariner, Captain America, and the Human Torch, we have Catman, Fighting Yank, Fantoman, the Green Lama and the Heap. They come from several defunct Golden Age companies.)
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As the Avengers head off to testify Rick Jones reveals that he has been having some incredibly potent dreams populated with the four-color heroes of his comic book drenched youth. The Avengers refuse to cooperate with Craddock's committee and when they return to the Mansion they find Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man there who voice their disapproval and disband the team effective immediately.
Outstanding stuff, a real nifty blend of adventure and social commentary. Clearly Thomas is attempting to evoke the infamous McCarthy hearings of the 1950's when he creates the loathsome Craddock and the Avengers are the noble types who stand up to the browbeating. But this does call into question the nature of the team as they are officially sanctioned by the United States government. Given the situation one is forced to agree that while it is a strong reaction, the behavior of Cap, Thor, and Shellhead is not totally without merit. We shall of course see that more is at play there, but the uncomfortable nature of the Avengers, a team of vigilantes and ex-criminals who become agents of the government is a sticky wicket indeed.
It's great to see Sentry 459 back in action. Sal does a great job drawing him and his oddball nature of being something more than robot and less than a fully-realized living entity is developed a bit when he's compared to the Vision, another more fully developed enigmatic artificial being.
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| (Mister Fantastic first enters the Negative Zone in Fantastic Four #51 1966) |
As for Captain Marvel, splitting him from Rick was a crucial step in setting up this story. The two of them had evoked the classic Billy Batson-Big Red Cheese combo in the last issues of Cap's magazine and it's nice to see that thread untied going forward. The tie-in to
Fantastic Four was also neat and the weird landscape of the Negative Zone did become a bit more fully realized. We'd seen it had some really dark and dangerous denizens in the pages of the FF and now that becomes more fully realized in the larger Marvel Universe.
The great Kree-Skrull War is a remarkable story by Roy Thomas and a team of artists such as Sal Buscema and his brother John. But the name almost everyone thinks of first is the great Neal Adams.
Apparently after all these decades Roy and Neal disagree about who did what sometimes on this epic, but there's no denying it was exciting at the time and still bristles even all these many, many moons later. Neal Adams actually started his run on the title (fresh from his stint on the defunct
X-Men) with the cover to issue ninety-two, an issue actually drawn by Sal Buscema.
It is issue ninety-three that's the blockbuster of his series. For a brief moment Marvel toyed with the tantalizing notion to make all of their comics larger twenty-five cent comics. This move lasted a month maybe a little more and then the switch was made to a regular size comic with a nickel increase of for twenty cents total. DC had followed Marvel's lead but stayed with the quarter price longer and many say this is the move that finally once and for all put Marvel into the sales lead in the great contest between the Big Two. I for one loved DC's quarter comics and still regard them as great, but apparently at the time I was a minority opinion.
Whatever the case "This Beach-Head Earth!" is a robust and raucous tale picking up the threads of the story after the apparent dissolution of the Avengers by the Big Three (Cap, Iron Man, Thor) who seem not to be award they have done this. The sudden arrival of the Vision who immediately collapses adds more mystery but then suddenly Hank Pym arrives in his Ant-Man guise and he takes one of comics great journeys into the innards of the Vision to help diagnose and repair him. He does just than and flits away leaving the Big Three to discover how the Vision came to be there.
He tells them of their seemingly to have disbanded the team who went to find Mar-Vell but only find creepy cows who attack them in the weird forms of three of the members of the Fantastic Four. The Vision is able to escape leaving Goliath, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver behind.
The scene shifts to a spaceship on which are the captured Avengers and Captain Marvel himself. They have all been captured by Skrulls who attempt to get Mar-Vell to reveal the secret of the Omni-Wave which will allow the Skrulls a profound advantage in their war. But while the suddenly arrived Avengers battle the three Skrulls in the FF forms Captain Marvel uncovers the ruse of Carol Danvers really being his old enemy the Super-Skrull and destroys his Omini-Wave device. Switching schemes the Skrulls then make off with Mar-Vell and the two mutant Avengers leaving Goliath behind, his growing serum having worn off.
In the next issue (ninety-four) the Avengers consult the Fantastic Four to investigate the Skrulls who have deceived them. They realize that the Vision is missing, having slipped aboard the ship of the Super-Skrull who is on his way to unleash a deadly bomb against the Inhumans in their Great Refuge. But a force field protects the Inhumans homeland. The Super-Skrull is incensed and he and the Vision reach a stalemate as the latter resigns himself to Wanda's capture and leaves to get reinforcements.
In a chapter drawn by John Buscema the Super-Skrull heads to his home world where he is met with resistance by the Emperor's forces who himself takes the hostages Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Captain Marvel. The two mutants are sent to a bizarre environment occupied by deadly fuzzball aliens and used to force Mar-Vell to capitulate and give the Skrulls the secret of the Omni-Wave. Meanwhile the Avengers themselves come under direct assault from the government, specifically SHIELD who use agents in high-tech armor, the Mandroids to attempt to subdue the Assemblers. As that battle breaks out, Triton appears out of sewers of NYC.
After the Avengers are finally able to end the threat of the Mandroids they learn from Triton of the threat to the Inhumans and go with him to find Black Bolt who is dealing with other issues in the slums of San Francisco.
They find him and after he bids farewell to Roscoe, the young boy he was helping, Black Bolt remembers how his brother Maximus became mad long ago, it was when Black Bolt himself discovered his treacherous brother helping the Kree to take command of the Inhumans and in a last-ditch effort Bolt used his powerful voice which ended the threat but drove his brother mad and resulted in the death of their parents. Finding the Great Refuge at last the Avengers gain access and Black Bolt destroys the force field with his great voice and then commands the Inhumans to stand down. Once again, the Kree are plotting with Maximus and as they flee, they kidnap Rick Jones leaving the Inhumans relatively safe but the Avengers declaring that they will carry the war to the stars themselves.
This story by Thomas and Adams ignored the Gerry Conway and Mike Sekowsky tale in
Amazing Adventures nine and ten, which followed on after their departure in which Black Bolt and the Royal Family are in conflict with Magneto and his minions. The conflict between these two narratives appears impossible to make coherent. And what's stranger, the two titles appeared on the stands in the same month.
In the ninety-sixth issue the Avengers commandeer a spaceship from SHIELD (Nick Fury is of two minds about their criminal behavior) and head into space. They quickly find the "Andromeda Swarm" (Michael Crichton spins), a vast fleet of Skrull warships headed to Earth. They engage the lead craft and using deception and their array of superpowers attempt to forestall the invasion.
The emperor of the Skrulls shows them his prisoners Scarlet Witch, Quicksilver and Captain Marvel who once again deceives his captors. The Avengers vow to go to the Skrull home world and save their allies.
Meanwhile Rick Jones is taken to the Kree home world and confronts Ronan the Accuser who puts him in a locked room with the deposed Supreme Intelligence, who itself tells Rick that he is the source of some great power and sends him into the Negative Zone again where Annihilus appears.
And finally at long last the finale. In issue ninety-seven Neal Adams steps aside and John Buscema takes up the last chapter in this grand tale. Rick Jones evades the threat of Annihilus and then is informed by the Supreme Intelligence that he is the source of a great power which can end the war. He sees the Avengers fighting the Skrull armada on the outer reaches of the Earth's solar system, he sees Captain Marvel and the twin mutants held captive by the Emperor of the Skrulls, and then he is pulled from the Negative Zone itself. He is then able to produce from the depths of his memory and imagination palpable dopple-gangers of the four-color heroes of his youth and seemingly the Golden Age heroes (Captain America, Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, Blazing Skull, Vision, Fin, The Angel, and the Patriot) battle the Kree.
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| (Rick conjures Captain America, the Human Torch, the Sub-Mariner, the Fin, the Vision, the Angel, the Patriot and the Blazing Skull.) |
Then Rick unleashes an incredible mental bolt which flies across the universe and stops all the actors in their tracks, effectively ending the war. On Earth the Congressman Craddock is revealed to be the forgotten fourth Skrull who first attack the Fab 4 so many years before. The Supreme Intelligence reveals that the reason the Kree and Skrulls fight over Earth is a recognition of the potential of the human race while they are at an evolutionary dead end. Rick Jones collapses but Captain Marvel is summoned and agrees to merge his lifeforce with the teenager once again reestablishing their cosmic partnership.
With the war mostly all wrapped up, the Avengers are sent to Earth and there they then realize that Goliath, the former Avengers known as Goliath is MIA.
Clint Barton would return soon enough dropping the Goliath identity for his old Hawkeye monicker, in a trilogy which reintroduced Hercules and led to the Assemblers' one hundredth issue. But that's another story.
The story has been reprinted many times, beginning with two Baxter issues in the 80's. At the turn of the century Neal Adams returned to add one more cover image to his contribution to the epic tale. It's reverse view of the classic scene when the Vision breaks in and collapses. It was later used to great effect on an Essential volume. And so it goes, volume after volume.
In 1992 Marvel revisited the concept of the Avengers getting involved in an interplanetary war, this time between the Kree and the Shi'ar. "Galactic Storm" as it was called to evoke the militaristic fervor of "Desert Storm" from the time period. This was a sprawling crossover bringing in all of the Avengers related titles of the time.
We've learned that war is and always has been a curse on mankind. Violence has been used by men and women forever to get what they need and what they want. That animus was on full display in these fables from Marvel. And Neal Adams was the right artist to bring those themes home with power and grit. It's too bad didn't finish the job.
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