Issue(s): Fantastic Four annual #17
Cover Date: 1983
Title: "Legacy"
Credits:
John Byrne - Writer
John Byrne - Penciler
John Byrne - Inker
Carl Potts - Editor

Review/plot:
About half this book is dedicated to Julie Angel's roomate Sharon Selleck getting stranded near a small town where things increasingly turn out to be creepy.

She manages to get a call out to Johnny Storm. (There's a little love triangle going on between Johnny, Julie, and Sharon. Sharon likes Johnny, Johnny likes Julie, and Julie isn't really interested in Johnny. I guess that's not a triangle, but you get the idea.)

The town turns out to be near King's Crossing, which is where Reed Richards hypnotized those Skrulls into thinking they were cows way back in Fantastic Four #2. The people of the town have been drinking their "milk" (actually living unstable molecules of the Skrulls), and it's been affecting their DNA, turning them into monstrous shape-shifters.

Luckily, Richards has an inhibitor enzyme that can restore their DNA and original forms.

The plus side to all of this Skrull milk was retarding the human aging process, so none of the townspeople have lost any years to being Skrull-ish.

The issue ends with one last shipment of milk being delivered to a nearby army base. A cute horror movie type ending that was never followed up on.

The cow-hypnotism story from FF #2 was a bizarre concept that's fun to revisit, and this is the second of three times that someone's come back to it. The first was Avengers #93 during the Kree-Skrull War, where the Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Quicksilver were ambushed by the three cows, who had recently been revived by the Skrull Empire. But Byrne makes it clear here that while they were cows, they "mingled" with a local herd, so the result is that there was a whole herd that was producing Skrull milk even after the original Skrulls had left. And the third time will be Grant Morrison's Skrull Kill Krew, which, in a metaphor for mad cow's disease, kills or mutates people who have eaten Skrull-cow beef. I guess the assumption is that after the events of this issue, the cows weren't destroyed, and a few years later someone decided that they might as well send them to the slaughterhouse.

Byrne has been drawing Reed as more of an older man (and less muscular) than past artists. It's a look that helps distinguish Reed as more of a scientist than a typical super-hero.

Quality Rating: A

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - Skrull-cow history!

Chronological Placement Considerations: This is a tight fit. This has to take place before the end of Fantastic Four #257 because Mr. Fantastic is pulled into space at the end of that issue. But this issue references the events of issue #257, so it actually has to take place during #257. For reading order purposes, i've put it before Thing #2 (which runs semi-concurrently with FF #257) since it's more incongruous to see Reed still around after he's been abducted than to read about events at the hospital here before they happen in issue #257.

References:

• The Human Torch says that it's been "the best coupla days in a long, long time" after having heard in Fantastic Four #257 that both Franklin and Alicia are going to be ok.
  
• Reed hypnotized Skrulls into thinking they were cows in Fantastic Four #2.
  
• Reed uses Skrull detection technology last used during the team's second encounter with the Super-Skrull in Fantastic Four #32.

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: N/A

@fnord12: The ending was in fact followed up on in Morrison & Millar's Skrull Kill Crew:)

The story gets around the deaths of the three Skrulls by showing that the milk can "grow" on its own once it exists.

"King's Crossing" is probably a reference to a writer who was moderately popular at the time.

This story immediately brought to mind H. P. Lovecraft's "The Shadow Over Innsmouth."