31 Years Ago, Two Of the Greatest Comics Creators Teamed Up For a Book You’ve Never Heard Of

Grant Morrison and Mark Millar are two of the most well-known writers in the history of the comic industry. Morrison was one of the writers brought over to the American comic industry in the late ’80s, part of the British Invasion that changed comics forever. Morrison would make a huge splash right away with Animal Man and Doom Patrol, and would soon become known for their wildly imaginative stories and love of classic DC Comics. Morrison would end up bringing Millar into the American comic industry, the two of them working together throughout the late ’90s. The two ended up at Marvel in the year 2000 and became key parts of the House of Ideas’s success in the ’00s and beyond.

Millar would help establish the Ultimate line and soon became one of the hottest writers in the industry at Marvel. Meanwhile, Morrison’s run on New X-Men would end out of nowhere, with the scribe going back to DC. The relationship between the two writers also soured at this point, with little to no hope of getting any new collaborations from the two of them. They made for a pretty great team (their year-long runs on The Flash (Vol. 2) and Swamp Thing (Vol. 2) were really cool), but there’s one collab of theirs that most of their fans know nothing about it. It’s a piece of lost Marvel ephemera, spawned by a Lee/Kirby issue of Fantastic Four, and it hasn’t seen the light of day in decades – Skrull Kill Krew.

Morrison and Millar Dug Into Marvel Lore with Skrull Kill Krew

So, the origin of Skrull Kill Krew goes back to the very beginning of the modern Marvel Universe, back in 1961. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced the Skrulls in Fantastic Four #2, with the First Family of the Marvel Universe having to deal with a group of three shapeshifting aliens, sent to Earth as an advance party for the extraterrestrial empire. The team was able to defeat the aliens and decided to do something rather novel with them – brainwash them into thinking they were cows and letting them live their lives out on a farm. It was certainly an idea, and it’s one that would have consequences down the road.

Morrison and Millar’s series would posit that those cows, and their offspring, would be chock full of Skrull DNA, which people would end up consuming. The tainted meat and milk gave some of them shapeshifting powers and transformed some of them into monsters, but it was mostly known for killing the people who ate it. Eventually, a group of survivors would learn the truth about the whole situation and form the Skrull Kill Krew as a way to get revenge against the aliens (and not the Fantastic Four, who really caused it all). That was the premise for the book, and it was one that was seemingly perfect for readers in 1995.

Image Comics had debuted three years before and there was an undercurrent of rebellion to the industry, especially among younger creators. They were pushing the envelope, taking everything to the extreme, and Marvel and DC were often being left behind. While DC didn’t really worry about this – their books sold fine and they had Vertigo, actual mature readers comics – but Marvel was constantly chasing Image and trying to put out books that would appeal to those who went over to the newer publisher because their books were more “extreme” and violent.

Skrull Kill Krew is what would happen if Morrison and Millar decided to write a stereotypical ’90s comic. The two of them created a ridiculous premise – Skrull-tainted meat create superhumans who want revenge against Skrulls – and went to town. In a lot of ways, it’s kind of the opposite of their work at DC. It’s low brow superhero thrills for teenage boys, but it came at a time when Marvel was at their lowest ebb. The publisher was in the midst of their bankruptcy, and had split into numerous “publishing houses”. Skrull Kill Krew was part of Marvel Edge, which was the home of the Image rip-off/faux mature readers comics the House of Ideas was peddling at the time. I remember seeing one ad for the book in Wizard Magazine, but that was the extent of the marketing for it.

In 1995, Millar was basically a no name and Morrison was still what amounted to a B-lister, mostly known for their work on Vertigo books and C-list DC titles. It wouldn’t be until 1996’s JLA that they would gain their reputation as a superhero wunderkind, which explains why this book went nowhere; it was a year too early. Morrison was a name, but they weren’t a star yet, Millar was nobody at this point, and the book’s artist, Steve Yeowell, was skilled but not well-known in the US. The ’90s were when the X-Men reigned supreme; no one was interested in a book about a plot point from over 30 years ago, from Fantastic Four comics no less (the FF were not at all popular in the ’90s, despite everything Marvel tried), from a bunch of DC creators that were mostly known for weird Vertigo books. Marvel was circling the drain in a lot of ways in 1995 and most readers weren’t interested in their stuff (outside the X-Men and Spider-Man).

Skrull Kill Krew Is an Interesting Piece of Comic History

I think the best way to describe Skrull Kill Krew in 2026 is that it’s what happened when three Vertigo guys took a weird bit of Marvel lore and tried to create something modern with it. In a lot of ways, it was basically the equivalent of something like Animal Man in 1989; a Silver Age idea filtered through a more modern sensibility. However, Marvel Comics in 1995 wasn’t DC in 1989. Fans wanted mutants, guns, and pin-up art, they didn’t want a tongue in cheek look at extreme superhero comics.

I think one of the most interesting things about the Morrison/Millar collaboration is that it’s full of projects like this. I mentioned their yearlong runs on The Flash and Swamp Thing, but have you ever heard of them before? Did you know they introduced the Black Flash? I’ll be honest, I can’t even name anything from their Swamp Thing run. The two also tried to create something new at DC with Aztek the Ultimate Man, a book that didn’t even last a year, even though it was linked to JLA. Apart, their work is much better received (there’s long been rumors that Millar’s Superman: Red Son was ghost-written by Morrison) than it is together. Skrull Kill Krew is a fun piece of Marvel ephemera that has rarely been thought about since Secret Invasion and “Dark Reign”. Maybe we can get another reprint one day so modern readers can experience Morrison and Millar’s only official Marvel collab.

10 Best Grant Morrison Stories in Comic Book History, Ranked