An
alien race who appear in the comics of
Marvel Comics. The
Kree first appeared in
Fantastic Four #64 in 1967.
The Kree are a race of humanoid aliens who appear very much like humans with the exception
that some have blue skin. They breath an atmosphere with a higher content of nitrogen than
humans and possess greater strength due to their home planet having a higher gravity. The
Kree are divided into two groups, the blue-skinned and the pink-skinned. The blue-skinned
Kree are the minority though they are considered the "pure blooded" Kree and possess
the positions of power and authority in the Kree society. The pink-skinned
Kree are greater in number, but they hold lower positions in government and society. These
racial differences were played for all they are worth by the the comics writers of the sixties
and seventies as a tableau for the racial issues that being played out in America at that time.
The issue for the Kree is that their race has reached its maximum genetic potential and
will no longer evolve. This has caused the Kree to undertake a number of plans to jumpstart
their race's genetic future. (As a side note, it is interesting that their race has even
considered looking at their genetic potential and one wonders what raised the alarm that it might
have run out. What were the warning signs? Kree versions of reality television?
Piers Anthony? The Ketchup Song? Carrot Top?)
The Kree are ruled by an artificial being known as the Supremor or Supreme Intelligence.
It was created by taking the brains of the great Kree intellectuals and scientists and
hooking them together to act as a single collective (and insuring that Kree school children
would all shoot for the middle of the grading curve after the one brainy kid had his brain cut
out after scoring really high on his math test in third grade). The Supreme Intelligence,
in a gutsy public relations move, appears on a viewscreen as a huge, disembodied green head with tentacles coming
out the top. His machinations are what drive the Kree race though he has been challenged
for power on a few occasions.
The Kree's history is one filled with conflict. They began as a simple race though war-like in
nature. Their home world in the Greater Magellanic Cloud was the planet Hala which
circled the star Pama. They shared their homeworld with the intelligent plant race known
as the Cotati. The Kree and Cotati were approached by the reptilian race known as
the Skrulls, who were peaceful and interested in establishing a trading empire. The
Skrull decided to set up trading relations with one of the races and intended to give that
race great technological advances in exchange, but they could not decide which group to give
the technology to.
The Skrull transported representitives from both races to an area on the Earth's moon millions
of years ago and set up an artificial atmosphere there. The two groups were instructed to create something that
represented the best their race had to offer. The Skrulls would then come back and judge
which race was most worthy based upon their efforts. The Kree constructed a magnificent
city full of wonderous buildings and technology. The Cotati created a beautiful, breath-taking
garden. When the Skrulls returned, they judged the Cotati's efforts superior and awarded
them the victory. In response, the Kree rose up and killed all of the Skrulls present
and stole their ship. Within two generations, the Kree had mastered all of the Skrull
technology, but gained the emnity of the Skrulls, creating a dynamic that would plague the two
races for years.
The Kree set up an outpost on the planet Uranus during their protracted war with the
Skrulls to keep an eye on the planet Earth. Their interest was due to a visitation to
Earth by the Celestials. The Celestials interest in Earth caused the Kree some interest
as well, since they did not know what the Celestials found interesting about this planet. They found
out years later when a group of the Eternals, a race created by the Celestials traveled to
their outpost on Uranus. The intrusion was noted and a squad of soldiers was sent to discover
what had happened. The Eternals were killed with the exception of one of them who was
dissected. The result was that the Kree scientists saw the enormous potential of the
human race genetically and how it might help in their genetic dilemma. The Kree sent
scientists to Earth where they too tinkered with the genetics of a group of humans, creating
the race that would later be known as the Inhumans.
Having found a potential solution for their genetic problem, the Kree sent a ship to Earth
years later to monitor the Earth, after one of their agents Ronan the Accuser was defeated
by the human heroes the Fantastic Four. One of the officers on that ship, the Hala,
was a Kree hero known as Captain Marv-Ell. Marv-Ell eventually had a crisis of conscience
and sided with the humans, eventually finding himself one of their champions. He was bonded
for a time with the human teen Rick Jones which the Supreme Intelligence hoped would
allow for the genetic potential of the humans to bleed into the Kree. This hope was crushed when
Marv-Ell died from cancer.