Current Roster

• Captain America
• Peggy Carter
• Sharon Carter
• Nicky Fury Jr.
• Redacted

Origin

During the opening days of World War II, before the United States had formally entered the conflict, an elite fighting unit was formed at the suggestion of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to halt the growing Nazi aggression. The first great gathering of superhuman champions and heroes, the team consisted of Captain America (Steve Rogers) and James "Bucky" Barnes, Namor the Sub-Mariner, the Human Torch and Toro , Union Jack , Spitfire, Miss America and the superfast Whizzer - These heroes and this alliance became the Superhero team known as the Invaders, cutting a swath through enemy forces until the Axis powers were defeated.

Okay, Axis, Here we come...

Creation

The Invaders were created by Roy Thomas and Sal Buscema in Avengers #71. Thomas continued to write their own self-titled book, while Frank Robbins was the first artist.

Team Evolution

The Invaders originally consisted of Namor, Captain America, and the Original Human Torch and were retconned as a WWII team. They were partially inspired by the real post-WWII, Golden Age team, the All Winners Squad, and shared a few members. Bucky and Toro were added to the team in the first issue of the book.

The next members to join the Invaders were Union Jack and Spitfire. Later, Miss America and the Whizzer would join. Following that the Invaders would dissolve and become the All-Winners Squad following the war.

The name would be revitalized in the present by Red Skull in a long con to put both the surviving members and legacy members in the path of a doomsday weapon. Ever since, the name would be dusted off for any team-up between the original four: Cap, Bucky, Namor, and Torch, who would occasionally be joined by original members or legacy heroes of those members.

Major Story Arcs

Once an Invader

In a bid to replace The Avengers, Secretary of Defense, Dell Rusk (who was actually Red Skull in disguise), gave John Walker the greenlight to unite an Invaders team. With the help of the present day Union Jack and Spitfire, Walker went into the Middle East and saved Blazing Skull, a right wing advocate of American intervention who was being held prisoner. He also recruited Tara, a female counterpart to Jim Hammond, and Namor.

Rusk’s order included a plan to overthrow the oil-producing country, Mazikhandar. Walker claimed to care about their many human rights violations, but Namor knew it was more about the United States getting their hands on their oil reserves, as Namor was only interested in ending the pollution their oil production caused on nearby Atlantis. Walker’s strategy was for him, Blazing Skull, and some of Namor’s troops raid the capital city in a show of force to draw out The Avengers. While The Avengers were distracted, Namor, Union Jack, and Spitfire brought the handpicked successor, General Rafiq, to secede the current dictator.

Unfortunately, Rafiq did this by publicly assassinating the dictator, ruining the plans of the Thin Man. He had been supervising the new Invaders from sub-dimensional space and ensured Walker’s escape from Avengers custody. While Thin Man took on the Avengers with Walker and the other Invaders, Namor took Rafiq into his custody and entered into an alliance with Mazikhandar, granting them Atlantean protection. With that, the Avengers were forced to stand down and leave Atlantis to its work.

New Invaders

As an Atlantean protectorate, Mazikhandar became the temporary headquarters for the Invaders. Calling in a favor from former Invader, Jim Hammond, the V-Battalion entered an alliance with the Invaders against a new threat called Axis Mundi. It was a splinter group from the Nazis that was using the same synthezoid tech that created Hammond to make replicas of world leaders. They would use these doubles to replace current leaders and control those countries. They had succeeded with Mazikhandar, but Gen. Rafiq destroyed the evidence when he assassinated the leader. Thin Man felt particularly responsible because he was manipulated by Red Skull (as Sec. Rusk) into creating a sub-dimensional warship to aid Axis Mundi. Luckily, he still has possession of it, so the Invaders made it their permanent mobile headquarters against Axis Mundi.

While a splinter team was sent to London to deal with a vampire cell, the rest of the team returned to Mazikhandar to weed out Axis Mundi operatives. They specifically shut down their production of synthezoid henchmen, the Pterorists, and the necromancer, Jonas Eckhardt, who was imbuing the Pterorists with the spirit of dead operative, Agent Axis. Interrogating the spirit within the body of one of the henchmen, Thin Man was able to learn that Axis Mundi was attempting to fulfill an Atlantean prophecy, raising the sea levels and drowning the world. So, Thin Man set a course for the Arctic.

However, members grew weary of Thin Man’s tactics. They were losing trust in him and called in Captain America. Cap intended to shut down the Invaders, but, thinking Thin Man’s intel was good, he decided to lead them on one more operation. During their raid on U-Man and his Atlantean soldiers, Invader Tara was revealed to be a sleeper cell, programmed to power the doomsday device the Invaders just arrived to stop. While Hammond attempts to convince Tara to go against her programming, Thin Man scuttles his warship into the device, destroying it before it could be used.

Unfortunately, Tara could not control her energy levels. Hammond tried to spare her by absorbing her powers only to explode, killing himself. The Invaders broke up after his memorial.

Marvel Now!

Many years later, after Jim Hammond's resurrection, Jim was lying low as a small town mechanic after being brainwashed by the Descendants. His quiet life was upended when he was hunted down by Tanalth the Pursuer. She was looking for a Kree device called God’s Whisper that was stolen from the Nazis during the war by Jim, along with Bucky and Namor. Captain America and Bucky came to his rescue after Bucky had been attacked by Kree, as well. Bucky learned that the Kree had Namor on Hala. So, the team heads to Hala with the help of Aarkus’ teleportation powers. They were immediately apprehended, and to escape, Jim would take out the Kree army with his control over his radioactivity.

Once back on Earth, Jim accepted Cap’s invitation to join SHIELD. As an agent, Jim investigated the kidnapping of his old sidekick, Toro, with the help of his Invader friends. Toro had been held in a SHIELD facility since experiencing terrigenesis. He was taken by an alien posing as a German terrorist in control of a Deathlok army, but his real target was Jim. He used the same nanotech he was using to control the Deathlok’s on Jim, but when the alien was killed in crossfire, Jim went mad and fell off the grid.

With the help of their new friends, Radiance and Iron Cross, the Invaders search for Jim. According to Iron Cross, Jim presents a difficult situation as a synthetic man rather than a cybernetic one. The nanotech never took hold of his body but is causing the “noise” that is driving him crazy. In order to drive them out, Jim is forced to fly high and burn the tech out of himself.

Secret Empire

After Hydra attempted to take over the US with a brainwashed Captain America, Jim and Toro ended up on a list of political dissidents. They went to Atlantis to get sanctuary from their old friend, Namor. Unfortunately, Namor had decided to work with Hydra in order to keep Atlantis safe, so he had his men imprison Jim and Toro.

They fell in with Namora's rebellion. She disagreed with Namor’s collaboration with Hydra. She convinced Jim and Toro to accompany her and her defectors to the armory so they could take advantage of the same weapon that could make Namor a threat to Hydra. However, Jim destroyed it so no one could use it, leading to the capture of the rebellion, including Jim again.

During the public execution of Namora for treason, Jim and Toro were freed by Bucky, who had been posing as an Atlantean the whole time. During their escape, they saw that Namora loyalists had interrupted the execution and overpowered Namor’s loyalists, proving that Atlantis as a whole was against the collaboration with Hydra. Namor admitted that the collaboration was questionable, but he still refused sanctuary to Jim and his Invader teammates.

War Against Namor

Jim Hammond was reminiscing with Captain America about their Invaders days for a book Jim was writing. He mentioned he wanted to portray Namor as he was: heroic. Jim was concerned with his current actions. Namor had recruited a group of aquatic based superhumans, the Defenders of the Deep, and murdered employees of Roxxon. Cap was holding a grudge, but Jim convinced him that Namor needed to be confronted by the Invaders, not the Avengers.

With Bucky, the trio did recon on Namor. They went to an old war buddy of Namor’s, Randall, on his deathbed, and got the full story from his daughter, Nay. Namor was like family to them. He left one day with Xavier who was trying to ease his rage. Xavier was overpowered by Namor's emotions and caused damage to his psyche.

Now, Nay’s son, Roman, was his mole in the Navy. He planned to attack Atlantis so Namor had a reason to counterattack. Upon learning this information, Jim rushed to the naval base to try and stop him. However, Namor attacked Jim on the way there, beheading him.

With his body beyond repair, Jim’s head was given to Tony Stark. While the other Invaders tried to fight and reason with Namor, Stark was rebuilding a body for Jim out of old Iron Man armor parts. Once completed, he re-entered the battlefield where Namor defected to the Invaders against Machan, Namor’s psychic trauma at the hands of Xavier personified. The fully assembled Invaders were enough to stop Machan from submerging the whole world in water.

Sentinel of Liberty

After Captain America assembled some friends to inform them of the Outer Circle, they passed out and woke up five days later scattered across America. With the help of Aaron Fischer, they organized on Cap's location. Emma Frost lent her telepathy to uncover their hidden memories, revealing that they were taken hostage by a new version of MODOK, called MODOC (Mental Organism Designed Only for Control). According to Redacted, he is one of the Starpoints, field operatives of the Outer Circle. To get back at them, Cap believes they need to fall off the grid. Rather than be superheroes, he dubbed them "Invaders."

With a lead that MODOC was leading an AIM task force into New York to raid an old Armin Zola underground lab. After slipping into AIM's exclusion zone, the Invaders split up. Cap and Peggy made their way to their drill site, while Sharon and Destroyer take out the command tower. Meanwhile, Fury and Redacted work to rescue hostages from the neighborhood. Unfortunately, when they got too close to succeeding, MODOC psychically attacked them again. He forced to them re-live some of their worst memories, but Destroyer, the oldest of the team, has made peace with those memories. He was able to break through the psychic barriers and free his teammates at the cost of his own life. This gave them the opportunity to take down MODOC, as well as, The Power, a member of the Outer Circle.

Variants

Time Lost

The Cosmic Cube draws the Invaders from the past to face the Avengers in the present. Can they work together to return the Invaders to the past without changing history?

Secret Invaders

A supernatural version of the Invaders was covertly active during WWII on Earth-616 at the same time as the public Invaders. The team consisted of a Man-Thing, a Spirit of Vengeance that drove a tank, a young Blade, and Soldier Supreme.

In Other Media

Television

• In the 1990s TV series Spider-Man, during the "Six Forgotten Warriors" story arc, an ensemble of Invaders were introduced: Captain America, Miss America, Whizzer, Thunderer, Black Marvel.
• In episode 203, "World War Witch," a mishap with Thanos' Time Gem and Scarlet Witch's hex powers sends her back to WWII, where she teams up with the Invaders.