themovielord's Blog

Skrulls invade the Marvel Universe

(Mon 06/18/2007 02:29pm)

Spoilers on Avengers #31

Brian Michael Bendis at Wizard Philly announced his plans for Marvels next big universe shaping epic. In short: The Skrulls invade!

This weekend at the Wizard Convention in Philadelphia, Brian Michael Bendis addressed his loyal readers on the final panels of this week's “New Avengers” #31. The issue revealed that Elektra, who had now been in charge of the Hand and ruling Japan’s underworld was in fact a Skrull. What is a Skrull? Well, for those of you like me, who rarely read Marvel’s space stories, the Skrulls are a race of shape shifting aliens that have long been the proverbial thorn in the Fantastic Four’s side when it comes to being the pesky aliens who want to take over things. They recently have been at war with the Skree Empire and lost their entire world (it blew up). So here is a whole race of star travelers that need a home and believe that Earth maybe their new promised land.

Bendis stated that this opens a whole new set of questions and fear that will affect the entire Marvel Universe and really stir things up even further in the wake of the Civil War. So now readers are on the road to the Skrull invasion and the New Avengers will have to ask “Have we been invaded?” So last year Marvel asked us the question, “Whose side are you on?” next year they will ask, “Who can you trust?” 

Assuring us that this has been in the works since “New Avengers” #1, Bendis said if we all go back and reread the early days of the “New Avengers” there are hints of the invasion already happening. So this isn’t something he came up with out of the blue and Bendis stated that he has been working with Andy Schmidt ,who has been coordinating “Annihilation” (which is a huge story about the Skrull/ Skree War), and their story will encompass the better parts, minus the goofiness, of what the Skrulls have been involved with over the last 40 years comics at Marvel. The story will also have ramifications on characters such as Marvel Boy, Hulkling from the “Young Avengers”, and Xavin from the “Runaways”

To further get the room buzzing and asking questions Bendis stated that anyone (except maybe Tony Stark, that would be too easy) could be a Skrull and that we should turn our attention to those heroes who recently have had wobbly resurrections. Hawkeye being a key suspect or player was mentioned but Bendis refused to give away anything else. This makes one wonder because Captain America also shriveled up when he was laying on the slab in the Shield Helicarrier… hmmm.

So the Skrulls are going to be shaping the Marvel Universe for the next year. A bit of a departure from how heavy the issues were during the Civil War but personally something I am looking forward to.

The Movie Lord reporting from Wizard Convention in Philly.