User blog:Nausiated/Project 11/61: Big Time Skrull

Just completed my next run of additions. I've done complete chronologies of both Emperor Dorrek VII and Super-Skrull. Both had few enough appearances that they did not require expanded history pages so the additions have all been put on the main page. Here are some quick notes:

Dorrek VII

 * In regards to Dorrek VII, Not really much can be said or added. The character has been dead since the 1970s. However I did add the "Flashback" stuff regarding the Illuminati and the things that he did that made Secret Invasion happen. There was some mention in the previous versions of the profile, contributors were too lazy to go into detail or provided references. This has been fixed.


 * I also added a Legacy heading. Because its one thing to abruptly stop a profile with "And then the character died", especially when you're dealing with a character that --- no matter how minor --- left an impact on things, and Dorrek fits that bill: He laid the groundwork for Secret Invasion, he's the grandfather of Dorrek VIII, and he had successors. This is important information for those who are not well versed on the characters history and his relations. Why would someone care about looking into those things while reading the Dorrek VII profile unless you explain why those were important events or people to read up on?

Super-Skrull
In terms of the Super-Skrull, his page suffers from what a lot of profiles on this wiki suffer from, something I call "bottom heavy". In that there has been the body of information that was probably added when this Wiki first started years ago when putting in reference tags were not crucial and everyone new just adds whatever the character is currently doing. Which makes things look sloppy and drives me bat-sh** crazy. If you care enough about a character to update their profile, do your homework and research their past. Find out when key events in their past happened. If you look hard enough you can find the information, even without the comics to read.

One of the most convoluted parts of Kl'rt's history had to do with the whole Bobby Wright/Captain Hero thing. It all started in published in 1977. That story by Chris Claremont and John Byrne that ended with Super-Skrull being trapped in hyper space. What happened was this: In and  (published in April/May 1984) Byrne wrote a story and had it the Skrull return to Earth but was inflicted with a terminal form of cancer and was trapped in hyperspace again by Sasquatch. In published in November of that same year was the first appearance of Bobby Wright/Captain Hero. This story was by Jim Owsley and Greg LaRocque. The way Captain Hero/Bobby Wright were presented in the handful of stories there was not a single clue that he was secretly the Super-Skrull in disguise. Whatever they were planning on doing with Captain Hero at the time was never fully fleshed out because the series was cancelled with issue. Iron Fist was killed in that issue and remained "dead" until he was brought back by John Byrne during his run of Namor the Sub-Mariner from 1990-1992. In issues through  he unfolded the entire Super-Skrull posing as Iron Fist charade. Then in through  he brought back Iron Fist and explained the entire deception created by Master Khan.

Which begs the question, why? Well that's a good question. There isn't a whole lot the reasoning behind it that you can hunt up on the internet. But, if I were to speculate... Byrne (who did both the Alpha Flight stories and the Namor stories) also pencilled the majority of the run of Iron Fist back in the 70s. Particularly with Chris Claremont. Byrne must have had a strong love for Iron Fist. Back during the original run, Iron Fist regularly met with the X-Men, this was also during the period in which Byrne and Claremont were working on Uncanny X-Men. When Iron Fist was cancelled, he worked on finishing the running plot line in the pages of and. Then both Claremont and Byrne brought Power Man and Iron Fist together in until the series was renamed. Byrne spent a lot of his career in the 70s and 80s trying to establish Iron Fist and his relationships. Unfortunately, Byrne's work with Power Man and Iron Fist stopped with issue #50 and the series was taken over by others. Now looking at Byrne's work shows that he loves to revisit past story lines, and is not above revisiting his own. If I were to speculate, I would have to think that Byrne was not a fan of what other writers did with Iron Fist -- particularly killing him off -- and came up with this whole Super-Skrull plot line. It was a massive stretch, and even reading the story in (Byrne's second last issue in the series) this explanation was completely rushed, explained away in a handful of panels. The series shifted directions and Byrne moved on to other work. But you have to wonder how much more exposition would have been done to explain it all.

Coming Up Next
I am moving on to the next issue of Fantastic Four, which is which is a story about Atlantis. So here's what I'm pulling out of this issue:


 * Leonard McKenize - Although he appears in a flashback only in this story, its time I finish up his profile and make it complete. Under 30 appearances this will all be documented on his main page.


 * Warlord Krang - Doing a complete history since he's only appeared in some 60 titles. No expanded history page needed.


 * Lady Dorma - Going to finish off this profile, I've already done her appearances from the 1940s. Going to do the rest of the appearances. She only appeared in 140 odd books, again no need for an expanded history.


 * Princess Fen - I think I covered most of this stuff by doing my work on comics from the 40s and 50s. Going to go through and add the new stuff. Shouldn't take too long. Again I can add all this to the main page.


 * Emperor Thakorr - Going to add all the new stuff since he came back from the dead as a vampire, since the person who "added" that information did a half-a**ed job. Probably going to dig around for whatever else I can find that has been published about him since the 40s and 50s.


 * Atlantis/Atlanteans: I'll be adding things to these pages, but if there is something I learned from the Skrulls... Its going to be very difficult to track down *everything* about these specific pages. Because while I can find plenty of sources that track appearances of characters, tracking the appearances of groups, places, and races is a little more difficult sometimes as they are not always tracked. As such, I'm just going to stick with stuff about Atlantis/Atlanteans that were published in the 60s, like I did with everything I picked up doing my run of comics from the 40s and 50s. This will make it easier to go back and add things later (hopefully).