Issue(s): Captain Marvel #2, Captain Marvel #3
Cover Date: Jun-Jul 68
Title: "From the void of space comes... the Super Skrull" / "From the ashes of defeat!"
Credits:
Roy Thomas - Writer
Gene Colan - Penciler
Vincent Colletta - Inker

Review/plot:
These two issues hinge on an incredibly stupid plot point: that Captain Marvel's briefcase is equipped with a nuclear bomb powerful enough to destroy the whole planet as a safety precaution to someone opening it who doesn't know how to deactivate it. That is stupid for at least two reasons: 1) It doesn't help you much if your briefcase is stolen and it blows up, destroying the person who stole it, you, and the entire planet. 2) If the Kree had such powerful ordinance laying around just to throw into suitcase security, it doesn't seem like they'd really have too much trouble fighting the Skrulls.

Also, i wanted to mention that the original concept of the Kree Sentry has been turned on its head here. A sentry is one who watches or guards. Yes, the one that fought the Fantastic Four was a tough cookie, but that was just meant to show how powerful the ancient Kree race was - so powerful that even a sentinel left on some remote planet was more than a match for Earth's premiere super-hero team. The Kree Sentries are redefined here as the most powerful weapons in the Kree arsenal (except maybe for their suitcases!), meaning they aren't sentries at all. The scene below is from a video tape of the events of the previous arc; i just wanted to get the above off my chest.

In general, the Kree are a major disappointment. After all the set-up in FF, with evidence of an ancient, highly technological, race, seeing the Sentry, and our initial glimpses at Ronan and the Supreme Intelligence, they turn out to just be ordinary people who happen to have space ships.

Judging by the letters, it seems that Mar-vell was originally presented as a potentially villainous character, at least in the Sub-Mariner/Hulk vein, but in these issues he is your standard heroic sort. Another missed opportunity.

Oh well. These two issues are a fight between Captain Marvel and the Super-Skrull, and i suppose it's fine for what it is.

Marvel is initially overpowered, but in the end the Skrull is defeated in a manner that requires him to be a complete idiot.

These issues are the first (to my knowledge) to depict a Kree-Skrull rivalry. The Skrull king says "So... after all these millennia the infernal Kree have sent another emissary to the world called Earth!..." and "I must learn what part the long-forgotten Earth is to play in our centuries old intergalactic rivalry with the Kree!"

And that's why the Super-Skrull is sent to Earth.

Quality Rating: C-

Historical Significance Rating: 5 - formative Captain Marvel stories, first Kree-Skrull rivalry

Chronological Placement Considerations: This takes place the same night as Captain Marvel #1.

References:

• The Super-Skrull is given a chance to redeem himself for his defeats at the hands of Thor and the Fantastic Four (Footnote: You tell us when these bombastic battle occurred! We've kinda forgotten! - Stan, Roy, and Gene). OK! The Super-Skrull fought the FF in Fantastic Four #18, Fantastic Four #32, (and also sorta in Fantastic Four annual #3) and he fought Thor in Thor #142.
  
• The Skrull princess Anelle was introduced in Fantastic Four #37 ("Her we do remember! - Skirt Watcher Stan").
  
• Captain Marvel fought the Kree Sentry in Marvel Super-Heroes #13.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

As Fred Hembeck put it, the Kree Captain Marvel was Marvel's "first successful foray into sustained tedium". The series gets lower in quality through the Silver Age until Archie Goodwin gives it an intelligent sendoff(for a while, anyway).

There's a strange dialogue flub on page 14 of #3: one balloon reads "Luckily, I found the cylinder with no trouble!" and in the SAME PANEL: "Luckily, I found it with no delay!"

I liked the appearance of Super Skrull and the revelation of the enmity between the Kree and the Skrull as it progresses the development of the Marvel Universe.

Brilliant SMM-GURU "Ordinary People with Spaceships" This is an incredible piece of insight that gives us an existential view as to how the Pyramids, Naxca Lines, Machu Pichu, The Heliopolis and many other unexplainables came to pass on Planet Earth! It was Ordinary people with Spaceships that did it! You may think I'm attempting sardonic humor but I am serious.

It arguably takes all the way until Grant Morrison's Marvel Boy miniseries for someone to pick up on the idea of an emissary of an ancient alien race that genuinely regards itself as technologically and socially more advanced than the dominant species of other planets.

A big part of the problem is that no one but Kirby seems to have "gotten" his intentions to use the Kree as a more morally neutral or morally "different" alien race. Instead, other writers try to slot them into the "hostile aliens" role of the Skrulls, but the Kree really just seem like generic evil spacemen in that role. Eventually, in the late 1970s, the Kree get a distinct characterization -- they're space fascists with an unfounded superiority complex and a society riven by racial issues, in comparison to the Skrulls as an empire built on infiltration -- but this is far less interesting than the original glimpses in Fantastic Four.

It's telling that most Kree-focused stories are about shakeups within the empire's power structure or dispense with most of the Kree and just play up the Supreme Intelligence's Byzantine scheming. No one likes the Kree's status quo because it's boring, and they lack even the visual appeal of the shapeshifting Skrulls.

Chester Fenton, a cab driver, appears in #'s 2,4,5,8,and 9.