Tell Me About Skrulls, Kree, and the Avengers

Which are the ones who look vaguely like Green Goblins?

They're the Skrulls. The Kree are blue-skinned human-looking types led by a gigantic dumpling.

Can't help Tep with his qns though - my knowledge of Marvel Space Stat.Quo is pretty much stuck back at Operation: Galactic Storm.

Those are the Skrulls -- shapechangers, defeated in early FF (#2? #3?) by being tricked into turning into cows, but brought back because freaky-looking weird shapeshifters are cool.

(Also related to the Dire Wraiths from ROM, who were creepy-looking non-humanoid shapeshifters.)

The Kree are the ones who look human (Captain Marvel) unless they're blue-skinned (Ronan the Accuser), and created the Inhumans while experimenting on humans.

xpost; Tom beats me by mentioning the Supreme Intelligence potato! I wish the Kree-Skrull War aged better.

Potato, dumpling ... some kind of starch, anyway, possibly found in soup.

Dire Wraiths! Pink reptilian sub-Gigerian life-stealing marshmellow peeps probably named after a classic rock band I can live without ever hearing again!

The Skrulls lost their shape-shifting powers in some Avengers / FF annual x-over back in the 80s, I thought. I think there were some plays made @ regaining their shape-shifting prowess (as Tep alludes to), but darned if I can remember when or how.

The Supreme Intelligence was a dumpling made of seaweed.

Skrulss vs. Durlans!

Are Durlans the orange My-Favorite-Martian retreads, or the cloaked tentacled folk?

yes.
I've read some stories where it's been suggested that the Durlans themselves don't even know what their true form is.

Lots of stuff about the recent Kree here, to answer part of my own question.

[Huk xpost]

Well, that's gotta be a bummer (& could probably serve as the basis for Identity Crisis ... In Space!!!

When the hell was the last time Marvel did any sort of story involving aliens? I can't recall how much extra-terrestrial action there was in Busiek's big honkin' Kang War, but I don't think there was much @ all (aside from Kang chillin' in his space fortress orbiting Earth). The most cosmic moments in recent Marvel books have come from She-Hulk!!!! (Well, yeah, and FF, too, but that's to be expected, &, really, Galactus is like an honorary Earthling the number of times he visits & breaks the coffee table / New York; also "Galactus + random nondescript alien folk" doesn't equal "cosmic" for me - I have HIGH standards.)

GrantMo's psychic Xavier twin takes over Shi'Ar empire plot not enough for you, Daver?

(Actually that was 4 years or so ago wasnt it)

PS Shi'Ar = THE WORST.

(I'm doing my best to turn this into Cosmic Whatevers in ALL Comics, since I'm not up to snuff on my Marvel)

So, are you ready for the Rann/Thanagar War then, Dr. Diva?

(also, I'm going to give all ILCers cutesy anagram nicknames until I get bored with the concept, which might be two seconds ago)

From the sound of it, the alien action's been in PAD's Captain Marvel (or had been) and, kinda sorta, the recent Silver Surfer series. Conventional wisdom as relayed by PAD on the rac groups when Captain Marvel was struggling was that cosmic books don't sell -- maybe that extends to cosmic storylines in otherwise Earthbound books, too.

I can kind of see why -- that recent Silver Surfer is a good example of how to put together a cosmic book that will never have broad appeal -- but it's a shame. Crazy aliens and Ego the Living Planet and interstellar wars are all part of what Marvel's got to offer, in breadth and depth that you don't find in sci fi TV shows (and with a wackiness quotient you don't find in many novels).

Skrulls vs. DC Martians

What was the name of that strange Morrison/Millar series with Yeowell art - Skrull Thrill Kill Crew? Something like that. Anybody read that? I have the first issue somewhere but remember absolutely nothing about it. Except maybe a scene on a beach.

It always bugged me that people - normal, non-spandex citizens, I mean - who lived in the MU had absolutely no sense of mystery about Alien Races and Space and all that. If Galactus appeared in NY in the 60s, the Silver Surfer popped up on earth every week for 30 years or so, etc - then it was common public knowledge that alien races exist.
Damn.
Somehow my brain could always get around the conceit that the MU could be just like our world despite the existence of superhumans, but never around the fact that man could have encountered aliens and stayed...the same.
But then again, this is a world with the knowledge that Atlantis exists and people live there...

Skrulls win vs Martians -- there's more of em.

The Kree gaining "adapt to the situation, make wings, whatever" powers as the Ruul is what I was thinking of in the initial question, I think. Except I could've sworn there was something about Skrulls regaining their abilities, and I can't find anything about it on rac.

Skrull Kill Krew, I think, was the Morrison series, and I can't remember a thing about it either. I know I liked it at the time, but I don't remember a single detail of plot or premise. Weird.

Tep

Pardon my ignorance, but what's this "rac" you mention above?

David A

Oh, rec.arts.comics [.marvel.universe] -- since you can search through it on Google Groups now, I figure most major events are going to come up in a search, cause people would talk about them.

Skrull Kill Krew: Morrison at his loopiest. The premise was that the Skrulls (which iirc were the ones who were impersonating the FF)that Reed Richards had conned into assuming the forms of cows(!) [not only has he got those handy stretching powers he also has a fiendish sense of humour, no wonder Sue Storm married him] were eventually slaughtered and found their way into the food chain. They were, apparently, carrying a Skrull analogue of BSE and thus infected a group of group of people with the combination of shapeshifting powers and a degenerative neurological disorder. Much hilarity ensues. These people now can tell wen someone is a Skrull masquerading as a human and have vowed to kill this fifth column before they take over the world.
On the whole I preferred Marvel Boy. (who was iirc a Kree from an alternate universe)

Holy crap! That's like Soylent Green meets Strikeforce: Morituri (or one of those "I WILL DIE" types of things) via EC Comics! Bless you GM!

Ironically (if you ask me) the bit that Morrison didn't originate - (Reed Richards conning/compelling Skrulls into the form of cows) is the most Morrisonesque bit of the whole thing.

I don't know if it's that ironic - GM seems to make a habit of taking the mundane lunacy of comic conventions & just extrapolating logically-derived stories from that. (cf. asking questions like, "What would happen if a Skrull cow was turned into burger meat?" or "How would MTV-generation mutants act?" or, um, "How would Batman deal w/ a talking gorilla?") (Also, I don't want to go & slight Mark Millar's possible contribution to the SkrullBurger.)

Byrne did a story from the same premise decades ago, where the locals who were drinking Skrull milk were going through similar things.

I started rereading Operation: Galactic Storm last night. It's as good as I remember. In hindsight it's almost kind of bittersweet; it's like one last great gasp of classic Avengers[1] glory before encroaching X-Spidey-Imagism and Heroes Reborn and then "comics are for adults" ruined everything.

[1]: and thus what I considered mainstream Marvel U[1a] stuff, meaning the longstanding non-mutant, non-Spidey, non-Daredevil books.
[1a]: "Mainstream Marvel" being a blanket term for all old-fashioned, popular-within-the-MU heroes whose own books were unpopular at the time, as opposed to those who were popular in our real world but hated, feared, scorned, etc., within the Marvel Universe.