Atlas Came In Peace, And Actually Meant It

I mentioned it in passing yesterday, but I was pleased to see Jimmy Woo and the Atlas crew solve the problem with the Echo World without resorting to potentially lethal violence. Not that I'm necessarily opposed to the heroes killing their foes, depending on the circumstances and the hero. But Marvel (and maybe DC, I'm not sure) seems to have this attitude where killing by heroes is generally frowned upon - as long as the foe looks reasonably human (X-Force would be the obvious exception, but we're aren't supposed to see them as heroes are we?). Ms. Marvel will kill Super-Skrulls like she's in a video game. but not Norman Osborn*.

Jimmy's not immune from that himself. During Secret Invasion, he had Venus singing to Skrull soldiers to lure them into the ocean where they would drown amidst a lovestruck stupor. Venus couldn't bring herself to do it**, and while Jimmy said her understood, he then told M-11 to death ray the Skrulls instead, which M-11 did. Granted, Jimmy's looking at things from a 1950s perspective, and from the monster comics I've seen from back then, invading creatures were shown no mercy.

Then there's the inhabitants of Echo World. On the one hand, you could consider them worse than the invading Skrulls. The Skrulls were supposedly offering to share the world with Earthlings, it was just the Skrulls would be in charge. But it's not as though they were Annihilus, out to exterminate all indigenous life. The Echo Worlders don't actually want to live on Atlas' Earth, but they do try and manipulate people so that they'd kill large quantities of themselves and render portions of Earth uninhabitable, which is a bit more malicious.

At the same time, the people of Echo World have their lives constantly disrupted by these impressions or echoes of the people on the other Earths. It's not a situation they caused or asked for, and it makes their lives more difficult and terrifying, since they don't know when some ghostly looking tank is going to suddenly appear in the middle of their homes during dinner. They don't wish to conquer Earth, only to have it stop wrecking their lives on their world. You could argue the Skrulls still had it worse since they had no homeworld, but I'd think there have to be planets out there somewhere the Skrulls could settle and thrive on that aren't already inhabited. It's a big universe***, though knowing the Skrulls' luck, they'd just get settled and Galactus would show up.

It is nice to see Jimmy take that approach, and it fits, since he isn't like the past rulers of Atlas. He wasn't raised as a ruler, or a conqueror, he was raised as a regular kid who made himself into a law enforcement agent, then a secret agent. Someone whose purpose is to protect others from those who would do do them harm, rather than the person inflicting the harm (until the people agree to follow him). With the Skrulls, he handled things the way most of the previous leaders of Atlas would have. He fought the Skrulls, and killed them. So this is perhaps the point where Woo really comes into his own as leader, starts keeping his promise to Master Plan to do things his own way, rather than mimic how his predecessors handled things. And Jimmy's way is to try and help, so there's no need for conflict, rather than destroy the potential threat.

* Though I think it was her reason for not killing him that bothered me most. Namely, that she 'was better than he was'. Not that I disagree with her self-assessment, but it didn't seem like a line of reasoning she'd follow. If she had abstained from killing Osborn because she needed to get back and help her teammates, and couldn't spare the time to kill him, I'd have bought that. Or if she worried that killing Norman - a duly appointed official of the government - would make things worse for a superhero community already mistrusted by the public and the government, sure. Carol Danvers strikes me as a pragmatic sort.

** And thumbs down to Jimmy for trying to get her to do that. It's the exact sort of thing she used to do back when she was just a siren. Sure she's come to grips with her past, but that doesn't mean he should encourage her to reenact it.

*** And it would suit the Skrulls sometimes preference for sneaky. It's a sometimes preference because they prefer big splashy battles when the story dictates they stop being sneaky so the heroes can punch them a lot. Anyway, quiet, out of the way world they could rebuild on, where no one would be looking for them. As opposed to Earth, which I think every sentient species in the universe keeps one eye on, since you can never tell what those crazy Earthlings are gonna get up to.

Separated At Birth?

So, I'm done with the review posts until the end of the month, which means it's time to get back to what this blog does best - raise silly questions based on observations made about comics.


So, what's up with Thanos' Skrull chin? By reading his Nova Corps file in Annihilation: Prologue - and various Internet resources - I know Thanos is a mutated Eternal, and that he more closely resembles a Deviant. I don't have any images of Deviants in front of me, so I don't remember if they have the bumpy chins as well. The pictures I'm seeing on Google seem to say "no", but maybe you can help.

Eternals and Deviants are the result of Celestial tampering with humans, who have also been known to tamper with the Skrulls. So, there is the possibility that the bumpy chins are just something that Celestials like to code into their experiments' genetics, like a practical joke. Can't put it past those Coffee Mug Heads (as Len called them today).

Of course, Thanos also spent some of his youth augmenting his body through bionic implementation, which is suppose could be shorthand for "harvesting Skrull organs", which in turn might provide him with similar traits to those fellows.

I'm kind of fond of the last idea, but it leads me to wonder, would Thanos have the ability to shape-shift in that scenario? Or would he even need Skrull organs to do that? Thanos can use cosmic energy to alter the state of matter, make it shift or change. How hard would it be for him to apply something like that to himself?

I suppose this boils down to me trying to figure what Thanos' "out" was in Annihilation #4. Like he said: 'I am Thanos. I prepare for every eventuality, however improbable.' So I wouldn't be hugely surprised if he altered the location of some of his organs before Drax struck, or altered a less vital organ to take the place of what Drax punched out (I'm guessing his heart).

Of course, on the off chance he really did bite the dust (again), I'm going to start preparing a eulogy for him, to use sometime after Annihilation #6.

Never hurts to be prepared.

When He Appears, Well Something Is Bound To Happen

I'd kind of like to see The Stranger pop up in Annihilation. He may not usually give a crap about the politics and the conflicts of the universe at large, but he's stepped in when all life was threatened before.

In the interest of honesty, I don't really want to see The Stranger save the day, but I do want to know what he's up to. That's always been the mystery it seems. The Stranger shows up, grabs people of unusual capabilities, and either gets away from them, or gets thwarted by the heroes and leaves, making cryptic pronouncements all along.

He tried to abduct a Skrull Empress because she could restore the ability to shift form to all the Skrulls that had lost it, but ultimately traded her for Captain Reptyl's entire crew, which included a mutant with a remarkable ability for navigation. It did save him the trouble of slugging it out with Reptyl and the Silver Surfer, so probably a wise decision. (Silver Surfer #27)

And there was the time Quasar found the Stranger's world, and it was kind of a composite, with all sorts of different habitats, occupied by all kinds of different people, including Ego-Prime(?!), who tried to eat Quasar (that would have had to have been his most embarassing death, had it continued). (Quasar #14ish)

It suggests a geneticist, or maybe an anthropologist of some sort. But what's he trying to accomplish? My best guess is a galactic-scale Mr. Sinister, running all sorts of experiments to see what happens, and then using the results for... something. I don't know what. We need someone to look into this. Mr. Giffen you got any free time coming up after Annihilation ends?

Things I Think About #36

So the Skrulls aren't presenting a united front. They're a bunch of rival warlords, all trying to get as much land and power as they can, with no intention of working together. Seems like this has been going on since the early '90s. Wasn't there a formation of rival factions sometime after the Kree/Skrull War? They had an Emperess, one who was giving them back their shape-shifting abilities (I think the Kree used some weapon that took that away from the Skrulls, leaving them trapped in whatever form they were in, including one Skrull masquerading as the Silver Surfer). Anyway, something happened to her, and the Skrulls have been squabbling amongst themselves ever since.

I kind of wonder if that's ever going to be resolved, or if Marvel will just leave them in a state of disarray. Hmm, maybe Emperor Super Skrull?

On another topic, I was thinking about spider-tracers. I always thought that was so cool, that Peter made this device attuned to his spider-sense so he could track people with it. But he never uses them anymore. He even said as much during Hudlin's run on Marvel Knights Spider-Man.

I suppose part of the problem is that he used his webshooters to launch them, and maybe that doesn't work as well with organic webs. Of course, that was something he'd figured out later, originally he just threw them (I'm not sure how accurate something like that would really be), so that shouldn't be a problem. Then I figured it out.

He tended to use his spider-tracers to follow villains. You know how it goes: Electro steals something, Spidey shows up, they fight, Electro endangers civilians, Spidey rescues them, but Electro escapes, civilians throw things at Spidey and call him a menace, Spidey misses class, etc. Fortunately, Spidey tossed a handy-dandy tracer on Sparky, so now he can find him later and stop him.

Unfortunately, Spidey's enemies no longer commit crimes. Everything they do is some grandiose revenge scheme against Spidey. He doesn't need to track them down because they always come to him. Something Marvel definitely needs to look into fixing. You know, as soon as they finish having Peter fight other heroes.

I noticed the August cover for Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man has Mysterio on the cover. I hope that it's Quentin Beck, and not that guy that bought the costume at the end of Spider-Man and the Black Cat. Man, that story needs to be wiped out of existence immediately.

Things I Think About #26

'Whoever you are - you so much as look at me the wrong way and the last thing you will ever see will be your spinal cord in my clutched fist - do we understand each other?' - Super Skrull

Do Skrulls have spines? I guess I really mean, do they have backbones? Not in the sense of "You cowards need to grow some backbones", I mean do they actually possess a vertebral column, similar to humans?

Based on what we know, they descended from what are described as 'reptilian ancestors'. Using the term "reptilian" tends to suggest similarities with Earth reptiles, which do possess a backbone. Skrulls are also large bipeds (or at least have the appearance of large bipeds), with no evidence of an exo-skeleton, unlike the forces of the Annihilation Wave or the Brood. That would suggest they have an internal skeleton of some sort.

Except that they're shape-shifters. It would seem that having a solid skeleton would interfere with shape-shifting. Under normal circumstances bone isn't as flexible as muscle, which makes me believe it would take more effort to shift it to accommodate what the Skrulls want.

Maybe the Skrulls are simply in such fine control of their bodies, down to the cellular level, that they can maintain a form that suggests a skeleton by sheer will. So they're like sentient gelatin.

Do we know anything about skeletons in shape-shifters, Skrullian or otherwise? I'm pretty sure Plastic Man doesn't have a skeleton, given that he survived being scattered into millions of pieces over the ocean floor during "Obsidian Age". That fact that he could reform just seems to point to him being someone with no internal structural system to speak of.

Any thoughts, insights into this?