Fantastic Four #18
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeFantastic Four #18 introduces Kl'rt, the Super-Skrull — one of Marvel's most durable Silver Age villains — and with him a concept that would ripple through decades of storytelling: a single enemy engineered to exceed the combined power of the entire team he was built to destroy. The issue deepens the Skrull mythology established in Fantastic Four #2 by transforming the shapeshifting aliens from a defeated nuisance into an empire capable of long-term revenge, laying the ideological groundwork for event storylines from the Kree-Skrull War all the way through Secret Invasion. Lee and Kirby also embed a satisfying science-fiction resolution — the FF win not by brute force but by intellect, jamming the satellite beam that grants Kl'rt his powers — modeling the title's recurring theme that curiosity and reason are the team's greatest weapons. Kl'rt himself proved flexible enough to evolve from a straightforward conqueror into a morally complex antihero, a trajectory that speaks to the richness of the original concept.
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We Buy Collections ▸History
The issue was produced during the white-hot peak of the Lee–Kirby collaboration, just as the series was hitting a monthly publication cadence and building the interconnected Marvel Universe issue by issue. By Fantastic Four #18, the credit box had settled on 'written by Stan Lee' and 'drawn by Jack Kirby,' reflecting the period's evolving — and later contested — division of creative labor between the two. The story functions as a direct sequel to the Skrull debut in Fantastic Four #2, with Emperor Dorrek VII's revenge plot giving Kirby room to design an imposing new physical threat while Lee constructed a plot whose resolution hinged on Reed Richards's scientific ingenuity rather than a fistfight. Dick Ayers provided the inks, and Artie Simek the lettering, with Paul Reinman also credited on the cover.
Trivia · 8 facts
- First appearance and origin of Kl'rt, the Super-Skrull (Earth-616), created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.
- Story title: 'The All-Powerful Super-Skrull!' (also solicited in some indices as 'A Skrull Walks Among Us!'); cover-dated September 1963, with an on-sale date of June 11, 1963.
- Credits: Writer/Editor — Stan Lee; Penciler — Jack Kirby; Inker — Dick Ayers; Letterer — Artie Simek; Cover Inks — Paul Reinman.
- Kl'rt is established as possessing all four of the Fantastic Four's powers simultaneously — and exceeding each member individually — with his abilities fed by a satellite relay on the Skrull homeworld Tarnax IV; the FF defeat him by jamming that signal.
- The issue also serves as the first return of the Skrulls as an active antagonist force since Fantastic Four #2 (1962), escalating them from a defeated invasion party to a vengeful interstellar empire under Emperor Dorrek VII.
- Super-Skrull went on to appear in multiple animated series beginning with The Marvel Super Heroes (1966) and the 1967 Fantastic Four animated episode 'Invasion of the Super-Skrull,' and has since appeared in numerous video games including Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.
- The story was reprinted in Marvel Collectors' Item Classics (the series that later became Marvel's Greatest Comics), giving a new generation of readers access to Kl'rt's debut before the direct-market era.
- Kl'rt's debut directly inspired Marvel's concept of the Super-Skrull program — Skrulls bio-engineered to replicate other heroes' powers — a concept that became central to the 2008 Secret Invasion event and the 2023 Disney+ Secret Invasion series.
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