Invaders (WWII) (Earth-616)

Invaders
Name	Invaders
Editorial Name(s)	All-New Invaders
Members
Team Leader(s)	Formerly Commander Steve Rogers
Current Member(s)	Iron Cross, Radiance, Toro
Former Member(s)	Blazing Skull, Bucky, Captain America (Sam Wilson, Captain America (William Nasland), Destroyer, Human Torch, Miss America, Namor, Silver Scorpion (honorary member), Spitfire, Union Jack (Brian Falsworth), Union Jack (Montgomery Falsworth), Vision, Winter Soldier, Whizzer
Affiliation and Identity
Identity	Secret
Allies	All-Winners Squad; Liberty Legion; Franklin Delano Roosevelt; Winston Churchill
Enemies	The Third Reich, Red Skull, Baron Blood, Master Man, Iron Cross (Helmut Gruler), Firebrand Squadron, Battle-Axis, Dogs of War
Origin and Status
Origin	Formed on September 22nd, 1941 to defeat Master Man, encouraged to remain active by Winston Churchill.
Status	Active
Reality	Earth-616
Base of Operations	Times Tower in New York City, Clock Tower in Palace of Westminster, London, England
Place of Formation	(Originally) Hampton Roads, Virginia; (Officially) London, England
Creators and Appearances
Creators	Roy Thomas, Sal Buscema, Frank Robbins
First	Avengers #71 (December, 1969)
First	Avengers #71 (December, 1969)

 Okay, Axis—Here we come! 

—Invaders' battle cry

History

Formation

Originally, Captain America, his sidekick Bucky, the original android Human Torch, the Torch's sidekick Toro, and Namor the Sub-Mariner were together as heroes opposing the forces of Nazism. When these superheroes saved the life of Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill from Master Man, the thankful Churchill suggested that they should become a team, known as the Invaders.

The Invaders fought the Axis Powers, saving Churchill once again from an attack by U-Man and were brain-washed by the Red Skull into attacking the allies. Eventually they found themselves in England, where they met Lord James Montgomery Falsworth, the original WWI-era Union Jack. He joined the team and provided them with a base of operations in England. However, his legs were crushed during their first mission to stop Baron Blood. Eventually Falsworth's children Brian (the second Union Jack) and Jacqueline (Spitfire) became members. The team later added Miss America and super-speedster the Whizzer, during a battle with the Super-Axis. Later, against the threat of the Battle-Axis, the team added the Blazing Skull and the Silver Scorpion to its roster.

During a mission in which they allied themselves with Major Liberty as Captain America was busy with another assignment and Toro had appendicitis, the Invaders (Bucky, Human Torch and Namor) discovered Baron Strucker had acquired a powerful artifact named the Gods' Whisperer which let him control Asgardian gods, and used it to make Hela fight the Allies. Strucker was defeated, and Hela returned to her realm, and the Invaders were left with the Whisperer. They decided the artifact was too powerful to be in control of anyone, and decided to break it into three pieces each of them would hide from anyone. With the help of The Vision, they forgot said events.

In December of 1943, the Invaders were sent to Monte Cassino in Italy in order to retrieve a highly coveted weapon known as the Ordnung Zeitgeist before Hitler's forces could lay claim to it. They encountered a strange green mist that propelled them sixty years into the future where they encountered their modern day successors, the Avengers. Note: The events surrounding this incident have not yet been fully revealed.

The Invaders killed an entire village of civilians in the Netherlands, where they burned and killed a civilian populace, having no other choice, since the civilians became deformed, mindless monsters that turned anything they bit into one of them.

The team continued to fight against several threats, and faced an emotional trauma with the apparent deaths of Captain America and Bucky in a drone aircraft's explosion near the end of World War II. After the war's end, several members—including the second Bucky and Captain America (respectively, Fred Davis and William Nasland, formerly the superhero Spirit of '76)—created a new team, the All-Winners Squad.

All-New Invaders

Years later, after Namor was kidnapped by the Kree to obtain the location of his piece of the Gods' Whisperer, Jimmy Hammond and the Winter Soldier were attacked by Kree soldiers, who used a special device in each of them to obtain the information of the location of each one of their pieces. With the help of Captain America, the Winter Soldier managed to save the Human Torch from his attackers, and decided to reform the Invaders in order to rescue Namor from Hala, the Kree homeworld, and prevent the aliens from using the Whisperer.

As soon as they got to Hala with the help of the original Vision, the Invaders were ambushed by the Pursuer Corps and later forced to fight the Whisperer-controlled Ikaris. By faking his death, the Winter Soldier managed to get to and free the captured Vision and distract Tanalth long enough for Captain America and the Human Torch to subdue the Kree soldiers present in the battle while Namor fought Ikaris. The Vision teleported to get help from the Eternals and recover the Whisperer. After that, the Invaders returned to Earth and later disbanded.

The Winter Soldier, Namor and the Human Torch reformed the Invaders in order to rescue their former teammate, Toro. Iron Cross, Radiance, Captain America (Sam Wilson), and Toro would later join the team.

The Invaders

• Initial roster:
  • Captain America (Steve Rogers)
  • Bucky/Winter Soldier (James Barnes)
  • Human Torch (Jim Hammond / Android)
  • Toro (Thomas Raymond)
  • Namor the Sub-Mariner (Namor McKenzie)

• Later WWII recruits:
  • Union Jack I (Lord James Montgomery Falsworth)
  • Union Jack II (Lord Brian Falsworth)
  • Spitfire (Lady Jacqueline Falsworth)
  • Miss America (Madeline Joyce)
  • Whizzer (Robert Frank)
  • Vision (Aarkus)
  • Blazing Skull (Mark Todd)
  • Silver Scorpion (Elizabeth Barstow)
  • Spirit of '76 / Captain America II (William Nasland)
  • Bucky II (Fred Davis)

• Modern recruits:
  • Destroyer (Roger Aubrey)
  • Iron Cross (Carrie Gruler)
  • Radiance (Ryoko Sabuki)
  • Captain America (Sam Wilson)

Notes

• Their rallying cry is "Okay, Axis, here we come!"

Trivia

• The concept of a team called "the Invaders" was originally conceived by Stan Lee for the name of a team comprised by Namor and the Hulk, when he considered merging their solo features in Tales to Astonish, but the idea was eventually dropped. When Roy Thomas pitched the idea of a team of superheroes set during World War II, he remembered that Stan Lee liked the name "Invaders," and worked it into his pitch of the book.
• The real world prototype for the Invaders, the All-Winners Squad, was an actual historic Golden Age comic book feature with only two appearances in All Winners Comics #19 (Fall 1946) and #21 (Winter 1946; there was no issue #20). This team had much of the same membership as the Invaders, but had its adventures in the post-World War II era, the time that their adventures were published.
• After the Invaders' introduction in the pages of Avengers, the team appeared in its own try-out title, Giant-Size Invaders #1 in 1975, followed by the ongoing series Invaders later that year, and a single annual in 1977. Issues #5–6 of the series introduced another retcon World War II team, the Liberty Legion, in two parts of a story arc, "The Red Skull Strikes", interlaced with another two parts in Marvel Premiere #29–30.

See Also

• 159 appearance(s) of Invaders (WWII) (Earth-616)
• 27 minor appearance(s) of Invaders (WWII) (Earth-616)
• 23 mention(s) of Invaders (WWII) (Earth-616)
• 139 image(s) of Invaders (WWII) (Earth-616)
• 1 quotation(s) by or about Invaders (WWII) (Earth-616)
• 23 member(s) of Invaders (WWII) (Earth-616)
• 1 item(s) used/owned by Invaders (WWII) (Earth-616)

Links and References

• Invaders on Marvel.com
• All-Star Squadron, A DC Comics counterpart to the Invaders
• Invaders article on Wikipedia

Footnotes

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