<span class="SFPTagline"> From SCIFIPEDIA </span>

The Skrulls are fictional comic book extraterrestrial race owned by Marvel Comics.

The Skrulls are a reptilian humanoid race that exists as one of the oldest empires in the Andromeda Galaxy. The Skrulls are militaristic and aggressive, and always seek to expand their empire. Their most frightening characteristic is the ability to change shape, so that they can take human form and secretly invade us.

As you can probably tell, the Skrulls were created as your stereotypical alien invaders, reminiscent of the old pulp fiction and horror science fiction stories of the 1950s. They were invented by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby way back in Fantastic Four #2 (January, 1962). They began as recurring villains of the Fantastic Four. The Skrulls began to hate the Fantastic Four so much that they genetically engineered a character they called the Super-Skrull who had all the combined powers of the Fantastic Four. Still, they were always defeated in the end. The Skrull Empire has had its ups and downs over the years. Their on-going hostilities with their rivals, the Kree Empire, as well as their hatred for Earth, have made for many cosmic tales over the years that have been featured in various Marvel Comics titles. The "Kree/Skrull War", a storyline that appeared in the superhero team book The Avengers and was written by Roy Thomas and drawn by Neal Adams, Sal Buscema and John Buscema, is considered one of the great Marvel Comics classics of the early Bronze Age of Comics and has been collected in trade paperback.

One of the weaknesses of the Skrulls has always been that Marvel heroes with enhanced senses, like Wolverine and Daredevil, can usually detect them. Of late, a factions of Skrulls have used human DNA to develop methods of disguise that can even fool these heavy hitters. As such, they have been secretly replacing key members of Earth's supehero community with undetectable Skrulls, in a master plan to take over the Earth. This is the basis for the Secret Invasion limited crossover series that has begun in April and will play out over the summer of 2008.