SKRULL KILL KREW

Membership: Catwalk, Dice, Moonstomp, Riot, Ryder

PURPOSE: Death to all Skrulls, and anyone near a Skrull, or who might befriend a Skrull at some point in the future, or someone who might have been a Skrull but turned out not to be

Affiliations: None really, although they bumped into Captain America (Steve Rogers)

Enemies: Skrulls, baby!

Base of Operations: Mobile across the USA, anywhere you can find Skrulls

First Appearance: Skrull Kill Krew#1 (September, 1996)

History: (Fantastic Four I#2-BTS) - After the Fantastic Four's first encounter with and defeat of the Skrulls, Reed Richards hypnotized the four invaders to turn themselves into cows, and to believe that they really were cows. He left them in a field in King's Crossing, Vermont.

(Avengers I#89-97-BTS) - During the Kree/Skrull War, the Skrulls regained their memories and impersonated some of original Avengers, in an effort to force them to disband. Another of the Skrulls took the form of H. Warren Craddock, who was running for office. The Craddock-skrull was slain after being exposed.

(Skrull Kill Krew#2(fb)-BTS) - The remaining three former cow-Skrulls were handed over to the Alien Activities Commission, who forced them to become cows again. This time, however, they sent the Skrulls to the slaughterhouse, along with the rest of the beef. The Skrulls were slaughtered and mixed with other, real beef, meat and distributed across the country. In the form of hamburgers, the Skrull meat was consumed by an unknown number of Americans. Some of the people who ate the beef proved immune to the Skrull DNA. Some died horrible deaths. A small number, were "infected" and developed metamorphic powers, along with progressive and terminal neurologic disease.

BTS-Ryder began recruiting others with the same affliction, to join together and wipe the Skrull menace from the Earth, so that they could never again turn into cows and let others slaughter and eat them again.

(Skrull Kill Krew#1) - Ryder and Moonstomp burst into a history classroom and blew away Mrs. O'Shea, who was really a Skrull in disguise. They then located and recruited Dice and Riot to join them.

(Skrull Kill Krew#2) - The SKK headed to the Dulles Airport in Washington, D. C. to recruit Kimberly Dee. Her plane was hijacked by agents of Hydra.

(Skrull Kill Krew#3) - The SKK took out the Hydra group, although innocent civilians suffered as well. By the time they reached Kimberly Dee, she had already morphed into her Catwalk form and slain the hijackers. They recruited her to the Krew.

(Skrull Kill Krew#4) - After taking out a group of Skrulls posing as the Fantastic Four (complete with artificially generated powers), they encountered a town where every single person had been replaced by a Skrull.

(Skrull Kill Krew#5) - In Pleasant Valley, aka Skrullsville, the Krew had a ball blowing away the Skrulls, who had been mentally programmed by their superiors to pose as innocent people. Eventually the command center learned what was going on and activated the "sleeper Skrulls", sending them into battleforms against the Krew. As a result, it took a few minutes longer to wipe out all 3, 678 Skrulls in the town, effectively ending their takeover plans.

COMMENTS: Believe it or not, created by Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, and Steve Yeowall.

The Skrull Kill Krew's viral affliction, Skrullovoria Induced Skrullophobia (SIS), perhaps better known as Mad Skrull-Cow Disease (MSCD), differs from the natives of King's Crossing (where the Skrulls lived briefly as cows), who drank the milk from Skrulls, and suffered from Pseudo-Milk Induced Skrullophilia (PMIS). Sufferers of PMIS (not to be confused with PMS, although the two are not mutually exclusive), also gained shape-changing powers, but rather than wanting to kill the Skrulls, they took on Skrull personality traits, such as xenophobia and military-type organization. This was documented in Fantastic Four I Annual#17.

As described in F4 An17, the milk-induced changes were less of an actual virus, than the Skrull DNA attempting take over and remake the body of its host. This type of infection would be closer to a Prion, than a virus, which is actually along the same lines as BSE, or Mad Cow Disease.

Cary theorizes: "In fact, I'll bet all that Skrullified beef was made from the bovine DESCENDANTS of that trio! Just like it was their bovine descendants who produced all that Skrullified milk. As for Riot's preference for an insectoid shape, during super-fights? Well, she could be the maternal granddaughter of August Hopper (alias the Locust)! That, of course, would mean she was born Heidi Hickman. But, her punk-oriented lifestyle probably resulted in some "tough love" (=thrown out of the house), so she took to using her maternal grandmother's maiden name. *She was probably afraid of being the butt of stupid hat-jokes if she called herself "Heidi Hopper."

Also, he mentions: "Could the Hydra agents that hijacked Catwalk's flight have been working for the Skrull that was impersonating the Supreme Hydra, in CAPTAIN AMERICA, a couple years back? For that matter, weren't he and his top two adjutants those three remaining Skrulls from FFV1#2?

Before there was the Marvel Knights, there was Marvel Edge. Say no more.

Riot's insectoid form could imply that she is being mentally influenced by the Scarlet Beetle, or other members of the Cockroach Conspiracy.

Cary again: "Given the resemblance of her insectoid-self to one of the Brood, I have a feeling that she might have been captured by the Slig Examiner and subjected to a little gene-splicing! The genes, in question, being donated by some Brood queen (probably, one of the Badoon hybrids). As for the Slig II's? They are probably a renegade warrior-caste of the more honorable Sligs encountered by the Fantastic Four. Some of them, not willing to give up the dream of subjugating Earth, were telepathically contacted by the Cockroach Conspiracy via the Scarlet Beetle. The Locust, hearing of his granddaughter being on her own, "volunteered" her as a human guinea pig! But, they were--of course--unaware of her already-Skrullified DNA. Hence, the Hurler Syndrome fit at the airport! The reason Heidi doesn't remember what the Slig II's did to her is simple. The Scarlet Beetle, aided by Dragonfly I, mind-wiped that part of her memory.

The Skrull Kill Krew has an entry in Marvel Legacy: The 1990s Handbook.

CLARIFICATIONS:
Not to be confused with:
Gwen Stacy. They're nothing alike. Why would you confuse them?

Catwalk has no known connections to any other model or non-model Cat-somethings that don't go around blowing a Skrulls.

Dice, aka Cowboy, has no known connection to:

• Cowboy, Luke Merriweather, of Team America/Thunderiders, @ Team America#2