The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Shape-shifting aliens living in comic Connecticut
STAMFORD — The last time Stamford played host to a comic book storyline, a school was destroyed and hundreds lost their lives.
So far, the City That Works is fully intact after one issue of Marvel’s new “Meet The Skrulls” series, but a family of shape-shifting aliens now call the city home.
“It is pretty cool,” said Dave Kruseski, owner of Heroes Comics & Cards in Norwalk. “It’s always cool when something like that is a little more local.”
On page six of the first issue, released this month, one of the main characters who has transformed into a butterfly is shown flying back home over a “Welcome to Stamford” sign.
The sign is not based on any in the city, and certainly bears no resemblance to the “Welcome to Stamford” signs near Interstate 95. The landscape behind it, however, suggests North Stamford, with its residential homes and trees, and no hint of the downtown skyline.
Stamford readers of the comic book will recognize one landmark in a future issue.
Robbie Thompson, the writer of “Meet The Skrulls,” said Avon Theatre will be featured in an upcoming issue.
“We do have a scene that takes place outside a movie theater,” he said, in an email.
“When artist Niko Henrichon was laying out that issue, (editor) Nick (Lowe) and assistant editor Kathleen Wisneski suggested using the beautiful Avon theater, which was perfect for the scene we have.”
Thompson said Stamford was selected as the Skrull family’s home mostly due to its proximity to New York.
“In the original pitch for the series, we knew we wanted to set (it) in the suburbs,” he wrote. “And because we were going to include Tony Stark (Iron Man) and his company, we wanted the suburbs to be close to New York City. There was some talk of creating a small town, but the editor, Nick Lowe, suggested Stamford due to its connections to ‘Civil War’ and it was the perfect fit. It evokes a clear sense of Marvel’s stories’ history and helps establish that the story has huge stakes.”
The Skrulls, who first appeared in 1962, have historically been portrayed as villains, and their inclusion in the new “Captain Marvel” movie has provided them a bit of a renaissance.
“I think there’s a reason they brought the Skrulls out now, and it all kind of ties into (‘Captain Marvel’),” Kruseski said.
The inaugural issue focuses mostly on the family dynamics of the protagonist Skrull family — father Carl, mother Gloria, and daughters Madison and Alice — who appear in public as humans but revert to their green-skinned Skrull form once sitting around a dinner table at home.
During dinner, each member divulges what they accomplished during the day to help advance a top-secret initiative called Project Blossom, and everything seems to be going to plan until the youngest, Alice, reveals she broke one of the group’s main rules. (If you want to know what it is, however, you’ll have to pick up a copy of the comic.)
Stamford’s biggest claim to fame in the comic book world is being the location of the incident that kicked off Marvel’s epic “Civil War” storyline in 2006, which was later adapted for the big screen as the blockbuster hit “Captain America: Civil War” in 2014, which changed many of the details, including the Stamford setting.
“Civil War,” a major crossover narrative that included practically every major character in the Marvel Universe, and many of the company’s comic book lines, was a 9/11 allegory that began with a faceoff between superheroes and villains that lead to a giant explosion, leveling much of Stamford and killing hundreds of innocent civilians, including children. The incident leads to a push to register and regulate superheroes, which divided heroes into two factions, those opposed and those in favor.
One issue even depicted a sign from A Timeless Journey, a now-defunct comic book store that was in Stamford at the time, amid the post-explosion rubble.
The suggestion to use Stamford in the “Civil War” story came from Marvel writer Jeph Loeb, who grew up near Riverbank Road and attended Riverbank Elementary School in the mid-1990s. A fictional school, Stamford Elementary School, is blown up in the story. The school was modeled after Loeb’s alma mater, now known as Mead School.
Thompson said the new Skrulls-focused story won’t be tied into the events of Civil War.
Nonetheless, the city will seemingly have its hands full as the homebase for a family of shape-shifting intergalactic visitors. Thompson shared advice for Stamford residents who may come face-to-face with a Skrull next door.
“The Skrulls have a history of alien invasion so I would proceed with caution if they find one in the wild,” he said.