The Fantastic Four Meet the Skrulls from Outer Space!

The Thing attacks an oil platform off the Texas shore. The Invisible Girl steals a valuable gem from a jewelry store. The Human Torch melts a statue when a town unveils it. Mister Fantastic shuts down a power plant. These impostors meet afterward and reveal how they used their shape-shifting abilities and alien technology to perpetrate their misdeeds. They are Skrulls, and they plan on invading Earth. Fearing the Fantastic Four will stand in their way, these four agents want to ruin their reputation. The real Fantastic Four, in "an isolated hunting lodge," hear the news with dismay.

The United States Army surrounds the lodge. Wanted for the Skrulls' crimes, the Fantastic Four surrender.They escape from cells specifically designed to hold them and hole up in one of their "many secret apartment hideouts", in order to clear their names. They set a trap for the Skrulls by sending Johnny to sabotage a rocket launch, hoping it will draw them out. He melts through an unused gantry, avoids the army's artillery and flames off behind a hangar. "Reed" and "Susan" pick him up and take him back to their hideout. A Fantasti-Flare out the window brings the rest of the team.

A fight ensues and the Skrulls are taken, prisoner. The Fantastic Four steal the Skrulls' rocket ship and find their mother-ship in Earth orbit. Posing as the Skrull agents, they trick the captain into believing that Earth is too dangerous to invade by passing off images from Journey into Mystery and Strange Tales as real. Reed volunteers to stay behind and remove any trace of the Skrulls' presence on Earth. Convinced his army would be slaughtered, the captain calls off the invasion and awards Reed a medal for bravery. On the way home the Fantastic Four passes through the cosmic rays again, causing the Thing to briefly return to human form.

Once back on Earth the Fantastic Four clear their names by proving the existence of Skrulls to the military. The remaining three Skrulls transform into cows at Reed's instructions, and Reed hypnotizes them into believing they are real cows. They are left in a field where they can live out their lives.

Recurring Characters

Fantastic Four (Mister Fantastic, Invisible Girl, Human Torch, Thing), Skrulls

Continuity Notes

• In a flashback to the FF's origin, Reed specifically states that the rocket in Fantastic Four #1 was meant to go to Mars. As Marvel has continued to publish stories eventually they had to institute a Sliding Timescale as a means of slowing down the advance of time in the Marvel Universe over the length of publications in real time. This was to prevent aging their characters quickly as well as updating dated plot concepts, generalizing real-life events or dates that are mentioned in various stories. Most recently, in History of the Marvel Universe #3, the specifics of the mission has been generalized to avoid constantly updating this origin.

• This is not the first time Reed has encountered the Skrulls. A few years previous he exposed a Skrull spy on Earth, as seen in Marvel: The Lost Generation #11.

• The disappearance of the fourth Skrull in this story is explained in Avengers #94 which states that Reed Richards allowed that Skrull to return home.

• This story does not give a specific location for where Reed left the cows. Fantastic Four Annual #17, however, places them in King's Crossing, New York, and looks at the consequences of transforming the Skrulls into cows and their effect on the town. Also during this period the Skrull cows bred with normal cows producing a Skrull/Cow hybrid as revealed in Skrull Kill Krew (vol. 2) #1

• The Skrull cows return as major players during the Kree-Skrull War depicted in Avengers #89-97.

• Years later Mister Fantastic repeats the "Skrull Cow" solution to deal with Skrull invaders during a trip back in time to the year 1776 in Fantastic Four (vol 4) #10.

• New Avengers #40 revealed that one of these Skrulls was a relative to Emperor Dorrek VII, who considered this an insult. This was partial motivation for Dorrek to begin the Super-Skrull program that eventually led to the Secret Invasion of Earth many years later.