Ahead of Marvel's biggest book of the year, Brian Michael Bendis and Leinil Yu dive into a Skrull sketchbook for 'Secret Invasion'
By Kiel Phlegley
Posted 03/28/08
Brian Michael Bendis isn’t afraid to fight for an artist…at least not anymore.
It's become a common theme in the writer's career. He breaks an artist (Olivier Coipel on House of M, David Finch on Ultimate X-Men, Steve McNiven on New Avengers) and then another writer woos them away. (Coipel flew to Thor, Finch to Moon Knight and McNiven was whisked away to work on Civil War.)
"I believe when this is over I will have to arm wrestle Mark Millar to keep you," Bendis says on a cross-continental phone call to his artist Leinil Yu in the Philippines. "I feel like there are a pack of wolves ready to attack you once this is over."
But for now, Bendis is happy keeping Yu drawing at a furious pace on Secret Invasion—Marvel's latest event that sees its entire universe embroiled in a full-on Skrull invasion of Earth. Already, it's been revealed that the shape-shifting aliens have taken out and replaced a number of high-profile characters.
In order to lock in the right feel for the Invasion, Yu limbered up with a set of digitally painted sketches. Here, the creative team looks over his earliest efforts as well as snapshots from Secret Invasion #1 in order to explain how an army of Super-Skrulls will work, which of Marvel's biggest heroes have the most to fear and why Skrullektra seems to get better looking the longer she's dead.
PRE-INVASION SECRECY
It took Bendis over five years to set up in virtually every Marvel Universe title he penned. Keeping the Skrull invasion secret was vital, even if that meant hiding it from his artist.
YU: Out of the blue [Marvel] told me that they were going to give me this. I think that Joe Quesada said, "Didn't they tell you that we're going to give you the best project? Here it is. It's a crossover book." I never saw it coming actually. That's what I keep telling people.
BENDIS: Back in the day you would be surprised when something happened in a comic book. You would read your comic and be like, "Oh, my God! Elektra is dead!" You try as best you can to retain that genuine awe and surprise. Leinil and I didn’t really know each other that well, and you don't know if he's one of the guys you can trust. So I remember him getting the Elektra scripts and going, "Oh, okay."
YU: Actually, with the Elektra [reveal in New Avengers #32], I didn't know that until the time I was going to draw them.
THE WARRIORS
Armed to the teeth and ugly as sin, the Skrull shock troops pack a new kind of heat once the battle is under way.
YU: The scripts themselves don't contain descriptions of how the Skrulls should look. It's just an amalgam of all the visuals that I've been exposed to. Am I correct in that, Brian?
BENDIS: Yeah. All I said to Leinil was that these weren't goofy, bottle-headed aliens. These are warriors. These are very dark and very complex characters. The bee in my bonnet is when an alien race all just looks the same. Don't draw them all with the same face on different bodies. There's been a lot of silly Skrull stories in the past and I just wanted to push past that. You see these sketches and you see that these are warriors. Those are serious dudes.
THE MAJOR PLAYERS
With an all-star lineup in both New and Mighty Avengers and more Marvel teams from the X-Men to the Fantastic Four promising to play a role, Secret Invasion won't skimp on the Marvel heroes, but which ones are truly themselves remains in doubt.
BENDIS: Wolverine's a hunter. He's like, "Okay, you're going to give me something I can't smell? I'm going to find you." There is a very special Wolverine issue of New Avengers that deals with the connections of all this stuff.
But when the invasion hits, the story shifts more towards the Illuminati because as we've hinted there's a strong connection between them. You've got to remember that to the Skrull empire, Reed Richards is Saddam Hussein. [This particular Skrull faction] is more or less declaring jihad on earth and Reed Richards in particular. When asked why they're doing this, the answer could easily be, "Well, next time don't try to turn us into cows, you f---er."
SUPER-SOLDIER STRIKE
Secret Invasion introduces a new type of Super-Skrull.
BENDIS: The ground assault is an army of literally thousands of Super-Skrulls of all different mixtures of power sets. The original Super-Skrull has the Fantastic Four's [abilities], so imagine one that has the Defenders and the Champions and Power Pack and the X-Men—any mixture. We’ve already seen the first one in the Illuminati miniseries, the Illuminati Skrull. So that was the first. So Leinil was just working some stuff out [with this sketch], but by the end of issue #2 he will want to slap me.
YU: Don’t worry about it. After a double-sized issue I don't think that I'm going to be overwhelmed anymore.
THE '70S HEROES RETURN?
The central question of Secret Invasion may not so much be "Who is a Skrull?" as it is "Who’s coming back?"
BENDIS: This is the shape-shifting plan at its zenith. Are we saying that all or some or one of the characters that we've been reading about all this time has been a Skrull for decades and maybe they didn’t even know it? All of these things can be possible. We're going to reveal a lot of Skrulls in issue #1 and #2, but you really won’t know who is who until the end of issue #7. [The '70s heroes' arrival] is to instill fear and hysteria and craziness. This image represents our collective childhood pouring out in front of what Marvel has become, for better or for worse. It’s about what is perceived as the Golden Age of Marvel pouring out onto the modern day. That image alone is worth a lot of thought and interest.
THE DRASTIC AND THE FANTASTIC
While this sketch was completed before Yu had read the script to Secret Invasion #1, both creators acknowledge that danger lies ahead for Marvel's first family as the meanest mothers in the Skrull armada have it out bad for their longest-standing foes, the Fantastic Four.
BENDIS: In the very first issue, the Skrulls take their strike at the Fantastic Four, and that scene is one of Leinil's best scenes. I don't want to spoil it, but there's a Baxter Building shot that I've shown to everyone in comics. I say, "Look at that." That's the one that I thought I lost you to Mark [Millar] on because Mark's actually writing Fantastic Four, and he has a Fantastic Four brain, and he's already gunning for you I know. It's literally like someone trying to steal your girlfriend. It's not pleasant and you know they're going to try. It's gross.
YU: I'm your bitch, Brian. So don't worry about it. [Laughs]
BENDIS: Well, at least until November.
YU: I intend to [make these aliens monstrous]. I'm just going to wait for Marvel editorial to stop me. I'm just going to wait for Marvel to tell me, "Hold on. They're not that monstrous. They can't be that big." But I intend to, if it's okay with Brian, give them some personality.
HIDDEN AGENTS, HIDDEN AGENDAS
Since Bendis has been threading Skrulls into his comics for years, the writer is taking time in Secret Invasion tie-in books to explain the whys and wherefores of the infiltration, meaning that every major Marvel franchise is going to be experiencing a little bit of time warp.
BENDIS: You're actually going to be meeting [the Skrull infiltrators] more directly in the Jimmy Cheung issues of New Avengers. When we see most of them in Secret Invasion, they're either in the form that they've chosen as an agent, whoever's posing as either a hero or villain is in that form for most of the time—except for the Super-Skrulls, which will be in that form. So that's basically how you're going to meet them. It'll be creepier and I think more intriguing for the reader if, let's say, Rocket Racoon is a Skrull and never leaves that shape up until maybe the very end or until they die. That’s one of the key things too. Very few actual Skrulls are being drawn unless they keel over. I think that Leinil will catch that too. He didn't draw any Skrulls in that first issue, right?
YU: Yeah. I think that I've just about drawn all the characters that I wanted to when I got New Avengers—Spider-Man is there, and the Avengers are there, and I did the X-Men. To top it all off I'm now doing the Fantastic Four in Secret Invasion. I think that I've pretty much drawn all my main characters, and I'm glad that people have liked my renditions of these characters so far.
DEAD SEXY
From her reveal in New Avengers #32, the Elektra Skrull has provided the through line for the entire Secret Invasion storyline, but to hear Bendis and Yu tell it, their character has taken on a significance in comics culture that they weren't ready for.
YU: I think that she got cuter [in Secret Invasion #1] compared to the first time that I drew her.
BENDIS: You draw her naked in issue #1 and there's a segment of the audience, albeit a small segment, that when they released the Skrull autopsy scene from issue #1 as the big sneak preview, I was thrilled to post the first official art from it. Even though it's not much of a spoiler we show it and the first two comments on my board were, "Oh, Skrull boobies!" and "I don't care what you guys think. Dead Skrull Elektra is hot." I was like, "You guys are creepy on numerous levels." [Laughs]
YU: Actually, it’s a crosspollination of some—I initially just drew her as a nasty looking person in Elektra's body with an ugly Skrull face. Then I started seeing these promos. I'm not sure if it's Greg Horn doing this cute Elektra Skrull. It's basically Elektra with the color green and with that chin.
BENDIS: Oh, that was on the cover of Wizard! I love that cover. [EDITOR'S NOTE: Greg Horn painted a sexier Skrull Elektra on the cover to Wizard #190.]
YU: How come I can't draw a cute Skrull? I must be doing something differently. I kind of retrofitted the autopsy scene, just a little bit. She's not that beautiful, but she's not like a brute at the same time.
