TAKE THAT received a video this morning, emailed from a mirror satellite that sent it directly to every email provider, blog and news site throughout the internet. In our efforts to warn the world, we’ve transcribed the contents of that video here. Please read and pass along. Warn the world. They’re coming.

“Hi, Super Skrull here.”

“I left my last battle with the Fantastic Four, supercharged with hate for you Earthlings and your heroes, and so I made this video. It’s a little ramble filled in places and just for clarity’s sake I’d like to simplify things a little. I think there’s a way for the glorious Skrull Empire to invade Earth, conquer it, kill your heroes and make everyone happy doing it. I don’t claim to be right, but I think there could be something to this.”

“The question I’m sure I’ll be asked the most is “why should we do it? Why let the Skrulls invade our world, destroy our heroes and generally become slaves to their shape-shifting superiority?” and aside from a thousand other reasons the main reason, the one that I want to talk about now is, you should do it because you want to be like us, you want to embrace change because we’re better than you. Hey – I’m your entire Fantastic Four IN ONE BODY and how cool is that? How cool would it be if you could do that… or, you know, a Skrull who’s killed and replace you. Semantics, really. But we ARE better than you. And I know that sounds a little arrogant, a little goofball and that’s fine but, uh, this is very serious and, uh, I’m gonna tell you what I’m thinking.

“Right now Earthlings are backwards. No one watches a movie, decides that they wanna be an action star and only aspires to ever be Rambo or Die Hard or that dude from the Transporter movies. No one reads a novel and decides they wanna be a writer and only aspires to ever be Stephen King or Ernest Hemingway or that guy that writes those gift books you buy in Borders – you know, those bathroom reader things with the dirty jokes? People want difference, they want options, yes? With superheroes, y’know, the way it works right now is guys come into some powers like Spider-Man, like Hulk, like Captain America, like the Human Torch… they come into powers or a magic shield or a freak accident and join the Avengers and maybe change their costumes every now and then but that’s the end of the story, They work their way up the pecking order and sometimes they get to be Iron Man and sometimes they get to be Darkhawk and sometimes they have to be that dude who used to be Speedball and, uh, you know, they make a good living and it’s excellent, excellent work. It’s fun to do. I had a great time pretending to be Reed Richards, super brilliant man. But at the end of the day when you’re hot, you’re hot and when you wanna be the Human Torch you can’t and you’re stuck as Reed Richards and that’s bad for creativity and karma. Why not be the Torch when you want and the Thing when you want? Like me, ‘cause I’m awesome. Well, now you can.

“The thing you need to do is embrace change. It’s been proven, y’know, that when you can change your shape, hide who you are, your life turns out to be a little longer, y’know, as long as it’s good. Remember way back, in Fantastic Four #2, when my Uncle Sal and his drinking buddies invaded Earth and got turned into cows? That was it for them. The only thing they could change into after that was all a couple of beef patties with special sauce, pickle and cheese. When you embrace change and the total and complete Skrull domination of your world, you may eat little but you’ll be happy when we re-engineer your body and turn you into a mindless shape-shifting Skrulloid slave because you won’t be slaving for a corporation anymore and will be working to rid the universe of the filthy Kree, and everyone can get behind that, no? I’ve got re-engineered Skrull slaves that are happy just cleaning out my bitchin’ starship and they live a swell existence morphing between all-purpose starship buffers and cans of Space Wax. I’m here to say that it can be done and that it should be done because, seriously – aren’t you bored with just being you?

“The way that the invasion should work, uh, is that we start out replacing low profile heroes like Spider Woman and low profile supporting characters like Jarvis, and eventually graduate up over long, drawn out years to Captain America and work our way up and when we hit a certain level when we can take over S.H.I.E.L.D. or infiltrate, kill and replace the Avengers, we strike. The problem is, and this is where it gets into why you should do it, is I fight a ton of Marvel heroes like the Fantastic Four and I hate them because they are fantastic and because I am a huge target for them. Uh, hello? Super Skrull. All the powers of the FF and more? But they’re gonna be 70 years old soon, uh, y’know, and they’re just gonna get older and older and older but that won’t stop them from coming up with better weapons that are tailor made for me. They’re the heroes I grew up hating, they’re doing things that are more mature and complex, um, and they’re all excellent, excellent heroes, sure. But Mister Fantastic becomes Mister Sort of Fantastic becomes Old Man Fantastic becomes the Fantastic Corpse and once he’s gone we Skrulls are gonna take over the Earth anyway. There are not enough new heroes coming into the world as it is. If all those people who are going to lose the freedom to do whatever they want become the complex and entertaining slaves they will be, just give up and embrace change now, the heroes that you have now – like Mister Fantastic - would be able to relax, read books, catch a flick and enjoy their last, final days before we Skrulls wipe them off the planet and replace them with original heroes, younger heroes, and that then opens up a whole new door for Earthlings to adapt and change and save themselves decades of infiltration and bloodshed.

“I know that people are watching this, y’know, and are saying, “what the hell is wrong with this dude? This is the worst thing for Earth. He should not be telling Earth’s heroes to embrace Skrull domination, let green aliens with weird chins take over the world,” but I’m telling you right now, in the long run, uh, it would help because our crack spies are shadowing the top guys’ lives anyway, researching their histories because we plan to kill them and take their place. The selfish heroes don’t care about the Earthlings, though appealing to their sense of preservation is what they should be doing. Washington and the UN should be appealing to the Avengers - and I hate them almost as much as the Fantastic Four - because in 20 or 40, 50, 60 years if they’re still trying to stop us it’s just gonna get bloodier and bloodier – and there’s nothing wrong with fighting off an alien invasion… I fight the Kree on a monthly basis. Invasions are better than wars and the more races that do that, the better off and more interesting this universe would be. But, y’know, we can’t put a beat down on Marvel heroes because they’re all over the freaking place. They recruit children and children look up to them. And, y’know, there are sidekicks and the Young Avengers and stuff like that but we’ll take down those kids too and that’s not what you want because they’ll embrace our invasion quickly and easily. Kids want to be someone else, you know, someone that’s not necessarily them but appropriate for them. Bucky wants to be Cap. Young Avengers Hulk wants to be actual Hulk. The kids from Runaways want to be the kids from Gossip Girl. And we’ll help them – we’ll replace them, help them embrace change and use them to replace the heroes and then the world. And that’s what we need to do and that destroys your world. And that makes our work easier because we’re appealing to a large audience and we’re sure they want to save themselves instead of having to die with their heroes, like dogs in the streets. I mean, the heroes WILL die like dogs, but we’ll do that privately in dark warehouses and in the Savage Land and stuff so that when the change occurs, Earthlings like you will never know. Until we come for you, of course. But if you embrace the fact that we WILL come for you, won’t it save you a lot of time, planning, complex stories and anticipation?

“The more people that embrace change, the easier change will be. I’m one Skrull, I’m out there, I’m taking your heroes and making new ones. I’m making a new Wolverine. Um, y’know, and if there were two of Wolverine it’d be even better. And if there were six of him, we’d be huge, and if there were twenty of Wolverine, y’know, X-Men fans would come along and embrace what we’re doing… and it could happen. Change would be selling better, Marvel heroes would be better because you’d have Skrull heroes like the 1970s ‘Sweet Christmas” Luke Cage and a kickass Dazzler and Howard the freaking Duck, Marvel heroes would still be number one and they’d all be Skrulls and you’d be Skrulls (slaves, but Skrulls) and everyone would be happier. Well, we would anyway. Me and my Skrull Bro’s.

“We’re doing great right now, um, the replacing is going great, numbers are up, Skrull spies are killing folks like Elektra, you know. S.H.I.E.L.D. agents are the new growth department. It’s just, you know, it’s a good time for a Skrull invasion. People just, people just aren’t expecting Skrulls as much as they used to be. We’re not like, I dunno, we’re not Doctor Doom or the Red Skull. The usual, popular bad guys. And it’s not time to rest on our laurels. It’s not time for us to go, “Welp, at least we’re not being eaten by Galactus these days – that’s great.” There’s more that can be done. And I think that this is a discussion. This isn’t the final, final say and I’m sure I’ve said things that are completely wrong but I think, y’know, that we should consider thinking about this and talking about this and we shouldn’t be afraid about having such an open discussion about such things.

“I propose a peaceful change. The heads of the Earthling heroes should get together on a cruise, who knows, whatever, and just let us kill them, replace them. Dr. Strange, Reed Richards, the bald guy, Aquaman. All of them. There’s no way that through intimidation, infiltration and communication we Skrulls can’t do huge, huge things we never thought we could do. And there’s no, there’s no – I mean, we can still fight, and fighting is excellent and we still should fight — but there’s no reason we can’t work together to make your Earth what it can be and what it is meant to be: the new Skrull Throneworld.

“I love changing my shape. I love everything about it. I love everyone who wants to do it and I love everyone who does it… except Reed Richards. And, it’s, you know, it’s a special part of my life and I want to make sure that my Great-Great GrandSkrulls can still change their shape the same way that I grew up loving. And I don’t care if they’re morphing a television screen in their wrist with old episodes of that shitty nineties Iron Man cartoon on it, as long as they’re still embracing change. We will survive. The glorious Skrull Empire will survive. And I will do whatever it takes to make that happen.

“And so, I hope this didn’t infuriate too many Earthlings. I hope that you see the intent and why you and all your heroes must die, embracing change. Um, and I think that’s enough from me. I’ll sign off, But yeah. You’re all dead.

“All of you Earthlings, you’re the walking dead.

“Embrace change.”

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Xeric winning cartoonist Neil Kleid authored Ninety Candles, a novella about life, legacy and comics and Brownsville, a book about Jewish mobsters for NBM Publishing. His webcomic, Action, Ohio, was a competitor at DC Comics’ online competition, Zudacomics.com and he’s written X-Men for Marvel, The Intimidators for Shadowline, Ursa Minors! for Slave Labor Graphics and Tales from the Crypt for Papercutz. He co-founded the Chemistry Set webcomic collective where he wrote Todt Hill. He lives in New York with his wife and is working on four graphic novels, two mini-series, two webcomics, a trade paperback and no sleep. Pray for him at www.rantcomics.com

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