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For years, Hydra has lurked in the shadows of the Marvel Universe, a corrupting influence that taxed even the greatest of heroes. With the group scoring their greatest victory in Secret Empire, we take a look back at the History of Hydra…
Turmoil gripped what once stood as the world’s most fearsome terror group when its creator, Baron Wolfgang von Strucker, seemed dead and gone for good. In his wake, some of the worst villains in history lined up to take their turn at trying to forge a Hydra that might withstand any assault, and any inner strife.
First came the Hydra Queen, who rallied former members to join with new soldiers and wash away the taint of the old failures. Captain America put down her insurrection, and though she appeared to be defeated, the Queen rose up again to grasp at the organization’s reins, but to no avail.
Baron Zemo, son of the World War II despot, took up the leadership of Hydra again and schemed to not only infiltrate Earth’s Mightiest Heroes and attack them from within, but to do what once ranked as an unthinkable thing in Hydra: recruit lowly Inhumans to do his bidding. After creating a toxin that would sterilize human beings, Zemo suffered defeat at the hands of the new Captain America, Sam Wilson, and Steve Rogers’ son Nomad.
With no leader, Hydra lost valuable intel on its workings to a deal between Sam Wilson and a genius hacker. This information led Captain America and S.H.I.E.L.D, to nearly completely eliminate the group from the face of the planet. The Gorgon, once a high-ranking Hydra leader, directed a cell to kill all super heroes, but he too fell beneath S.H.I.E.L.D.’s unstoppable drive to sever every head and every limb they could uncover.
Enter The Red Skull, arguably one of the catalysts of Strucker’s original impetus to create Hydra. With a wish to re-embrace his former Nazi beliefs, the villain began to assemble yet another new Hydra from white supremacists and other like-minded individuals and instituted outgoing assaults on civilians in public, both in the United States and Europe. Though as heinous a program as ever for the group, the Skull’s real evil manifested in his most devious operation ever: the complete rewriting of Steve Rogers’ personal history to place him not as the world’s greatest champion, but a Hydra agent bent on bringing its goals and tenets to the people of the world.
Whether or not the Red Skull—and Captain America—will finally succeed in the ultimate win for Hydra remains to be seen.
Check Out: CAPTAIN AMERICA #5, ALL-NEW CAPTAIN AMERICA #1–6, CAPTAIN AMERICA: SAM WILSON #4, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. #5–6, CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE ROGERS #1–12
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