'Hail, HYDRA!
Immortal HYDRA! Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place!”
Sounds like the chanted mantra of a cult, doesn’t it? You
wouldn’t be too far off. For all its appearance of corporate structure, the
super-terrorist organization known as HYDRA surprisingly has its roots in the
Marvel Universe’s most infamous ninja cult - - the Hand. See, near the end of
World War II, Nazi super-villain Baron von Strucker fled from Germany to Japan
and usurped leadership of an ultra-nationalistic underground outfit that had
high-ranking Hand members in its upper echelons. After killing the group’s “Supreme
Hydra” and assuming his role, von Strucker repurposed the nationally-focused cabal
into an organization with global schemes.
domination agenda, but with iconography inspired by Greek mythology instead of Asian
mysticism and ancient Roman regalia. The thinking behind their mantra is that
their ranks are so great, if an enemy were to kill one member, there’d be at
least two other members available to avenge him. That would more-or-less evoke
the nature of the Lernaean Hydra that Hercules famously fought during his Twelve Great Labors. If one of the serpentine beasts’ heads were ever cleaved, two
more sprout out instantaneously from the stump.
Throughout the decades of Marvel continuity, HYDRA has been up to
countless, over-the-top schemes that have ranged from unleashing
death spore bombs to ringing an “Overkill Horn” that would detonate all nuclear
weapons on Earth at once. In addition to
Baron von Strucker, its high council includes such rogues as Viper, Madame
Hydra, Commander Kraken and the Gorgon who have done battle with Nick Fury
and S.H.I.E.L.D. for years on end. Though it has no short supply of green
jump-suit wearing footsoldiers, HYDRA’s ranks are more remarkable
for at times including otherwise unrelated supervillains like the Kingpin,
Man-Killer, Mentallo, the Fixer, the Grim Reaper and even Spider-Woman (prior to
her reformation.)
Rather than being a terroristic organization founded to continue fascistic world
domination plans after the war, it’s been reimagined as a secret special
weapons division of the German army. It’s the Red Skull who founds this version
of HYRDA - - not von Strucker - - and he apparently intends to use it as his own personal army for a
coup that would wrest control of the Nazi empire from Hitler.
The focus on
special weapons has a few interesting links to continuity.
For one, it effectively combines HYDRA with its splinter group AIM - - the
Advanced Idea Mechanics who engineered the Cosmic Cube that'll appear in THE
FIRST AVENGER from a decidedly-less-scientific source. Secondly, HYDRA possesses substantially-advanced weaponry in the comics as a result of von
Strucker stealing technology from aliens at the end of the war. And finally, it’s
HYDRA’s activity in the comics which leads the American government to establish
S.H.I.E.L.D. as a direct counter-measure, so THE FIRST AVENGER may also be an origin story for that mysterious organization we’ve seen in every
Marvel movie so far.
organization from G.I. JOE. Such observers are
partly right, but they’ve actually got it backwards. G.I. JOE, the cartoon so
many are so familiar, was actually developed from an unused proposal for a
comic about the next generation of S.H.I.E.L.D. that would’ve been led by Nick
Fury’s son in the 80s. Swap Duke for that son, General Hawk for Fury, the
Baroness for Viper, Destro for Baron von Strucker and then Cobra Commander for the Red Skull, and the parallels are unmistakable.
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