Fantastic Four Annual #17 (1983)

While driving out to a gig with her band the Rolling Dead, Sharon Selleck's car breaks down on a stretch of country road in the town of King's Crossing. Cursing her roommate Julie Angel for loaning her the vehicle, Selleck gives up and tries to flag down a passing truck, but the driver ignores her and keeps on going. Deciding to huff it into town, she comes across a chain link fence surrounding a local farm and decides to climb over it in order to cut across the field. Along the way she spots some strange crops growing in the yard. Curious she sees that they are being watered with -- of all things -- milk. Disgusted at the taste of the dairy product and concerned about her allergies, Sharon decides to continue on not noticing that roots are beginning to rise out of the ground. She runs headlong into a massive farm hand who demands to know what she is doing beyond the fence. Selleck explains herself, but the farm hand turns her over to his employer, a man named Emmett. Emmett also hears her story, and is almost convinced she is not some kind of spy, but still decides to take her into town to Chet Rollins, the town sheriff. At the local police station, she explains her story yet again and when the sheriff tells her that he will arrange to have her car fixed and have her on her way the next day, Sharon is delighted as she does not want to spend anymore time in this town than she has to. She is sent over to the Lord's Hotel across the street where she will be set up with a room for the night. As she leaves, Chet assures Emmett that she is not leaving town alive and puts a call in to Barney White at the hotel. Barney finishes his phone call just as Sharon enters the hotel and she is soon given a room. With time to kill, she decides to check out the town. As she walks through King's Crossing she is more than a little disturbed with how nobody seems to notice her at all. As she passes by a young boy, she is unaware that he suddenly shape-shifts into a dog and begins to follow her. Getting hungry, Sharon pops into a nearby café, she finds most of the items are not on the menu except for eggs, toast, and milk. After her disappointing meal, she decides to go to the local garage to check on her car. There she is told by the mechanic that her car can be fixed by tomorrow when he can get the missing part that needs to be replaced. That night as she tries to sleep, Sharon becomes violently ill, as though she has been drinking milk. The following morning, Sharon goes to the garage to find that it's closed with a sign informing people that the owner has gone fishing. Furious, she pays a visit to the sheriff, who reminds her to keep a civil tongue and be patient. Back out on the street, Sharon goes back to the diner for another unsatisfying meal of eggs and another night of sickness. Waking up from a horrible nightmare, Sharon decides to call Julie for help. As Sharon begins trying to explain to her roommate what happened, the phone connection dies before Selleck can tell her what town she is in. Having had enough of the strange town, Sharon decides to slip out in the night. At first the town is deserted, but as she reaches the farmland she soon discovers that the locals are following after her and she makes a run for it. Hit by more illness, Sharon quickly gets cover in a drainage pipe and continues on her way. Down the road she come across a phone booth and puts in a frantic call to the Fantastic Four. As she tries to get a hold of the Human Torch, the FF's robotic receptionist Roberta tells her that Johnny Storm is not in. Before she can leave a complete message, Sharon is attacked by plants that have sprouted out of the ground, leaving the phone off the hook. Seven hours later, Johnny is flying over New York City happy to hear that his nephew Franklin and Alicia Masters are expected to make a full recovery and that the Fantastic Four are going to be remaining together. He decides to pay a visit to Julie Angel, who tells him of the strange phone call she had gotten from Sharon earlier and her concerns that something might be wrong. Deciding to look into it further, Johnny takes Julie to the Baxter Building to use the Fantastic Four's resources to try and track Miss Selleck down. En route, they spot the Fantasti-Flare and arrive to find Reed and Sue trying to summon Johnny and Ben. The couple play back the Sharon's recording from earlier and agree to try and find out what happened. Using Reed's instruments they are able to trace the call back to King's Crossing, a town that Reed finds very familiar. They suddenly remember that is where they placed the Skrulls that they turned into cows after they were defeated. Reed also mentions how he believed they were killed in the Kree-Skrull War. With a mystery on their hands, the Fantastic Four go to King's Crossing incognito to investigate what is going on there. Arriving in a moving van, Reed and Johnny try to get a room at the Lord's Hotel, pretending to be doing a long haul move. At first Barney refuses to put them up, but Sheriff Rollins enters and tells Barney to put them up in the "special" room. Inside the room, Sue turns visible. Having staked out the hotel, she has located the room where Sharon is being held. While Reed begins using scanning equipment he developed after their second encounter with the Super-Skrull, he sends Johnny out to find Sharon. While the trio work in the motel, the Thing leaves the U-Haul truck and begins looking around. He eventually arrives at a milk processing plant and forces his way in. Inside he finds a very strange operation: milk being processed and placed in jugs, and massive processing units that seem to refill themselves almost magically. However before he can slip away, Ben accidentally causes the floor to creak, alerting the plant workers to his presence. To his surprise, the apparently normal looking humans begin to change shape into horrifying monsters. Back at the hotel, Johnny finds the room where they are keeping Sharon prisoner and uses his flame powers to melt through the lock. There he finds her tied to the bed where the locals have been trying to force feed her milk. He frees the girl and brings her back to their room, where Reed and Sue explain what's going on. They recall how during the early days of the Fantastic Four, the team were framed for a series of attacks that were really carried out by a quartet of Skrulls. At the end of their battle with their impostors, Reed hypnotized three of them into thinking they were cows and left them in King's Crossing to live seemingly inconspicuous lives as cattle. Reed goes on to explain that the "milk" from the cows was really Skrull DNA, which is incredible invasive and that by ingesting it the locals of King's Crossing have begun mutating into strange Skrull hybrids along with everything else that had been explode to the "milk." Suddenly, some vines come crashing through the window and pulls Reed outside, while some of the mutated locals come crashing through the hotel room door. While the Thing subdues the farmers at the milk processing plant, the rest of the Fantastic Four also quickly defeat their attackers as well. Having suspected this exact scenario, Reed is able to get a special spray out of the U-Haul and uses it on the infected plants. The chemical compound removes all traces of Skrull DNA and causes the plants to return to normal. He then uses it on the locals that were attacking the team causing them to return to normal as well. Having proven his compound works, Reed begins spraying the entire town and sends Johnny out to destroy the crops and milk just to be safe. In the aftermath of the purge, Reed and the sheriff talk about the horrible events that happened there. When the sheriff explains that they have lost a few years of their lives, Reed explains that due to the Skrull DNA in their bodies, their metabolisms had slowed and the virtually did not age while under the thrall of the invasive DNA. Conceding that nothing much changes in their town, the sheriff thanks the Fantastic Four for their help. As the team returns home, Reed muses of the danger that could have happened if invasive Skrull DNA spread enough to get out of the insular facility and the catastrophe it could create, unaware that a shipment of the Skrull milk is being delivered to the nearby Camp Merlo US Army Depot.