7 Longest Running Secrets in Marvel (Including the Hidden Heroes the MCU Failed)

Marvel Comics has created one of the greatest fictional universes ever. While I’m personally happier with DC and how they do things, there’s still something about the Marvel Universe that just won’t let me go. While DC is technically the original superhero universe, it took years to coalesce into the form it is today, and the only reason it did so was because of the popularity of the Marvel Universe. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby creating a shared universe of ideas, characters, and events hooked readers like never before, to the point that the universe itself was just as much a draw as the heroes. It was amazing seeing the way everyone interacted with each other and the way an event in a Spider-Man book would echo in an Avengers one.

On top of all that, the Marvel Universe has one of the most interesting histories of any fictional universe ever created. Some of the best writers of all time have refined it, populating it with aliens, monsters, gods, devils, cosmic forces, and a timeline of events that put it all into focus. Over its long history, there have been various secrets hinted at, ones that have influenced the course of the universe and the heroes that defend it. Some of these secrets stretch back to the dawn of time itself, among the oldest in any fictional property. These are the Marvel Universe’s seven longest running secrets, mysteries that greedily held their answers to their chest as long as possible.

7) The True Origin of Wolverine

Wolverine is Marvel’s most storied berserker, with the mysteries of his origins revealed slowly from 1974 to 2001. The secret of James Howlett was one that stretched back over two hundred years. James was a sickly young scion of the wealthy Howlett family, the child of an affair that would tear the family to pieces on the night his mutant powers manifested. When Tom Logan, the family groundskeeper and James’ true father, killed John Howlett, who he thought was his dad, James went into a blind rage, killing the family’s attacker and scarring the face of the boy who was his half-brother, Dog. His mother, already mentally fragile, went mad seeing the carnage and would commit suicide not long after. His nursemaid Rose was able to get him out of there but he immediately forgot this event, his healing factor scabbing over the traumatizing memory to protect him. His grandfather allowed the two of to leave, eventually finding a logging camp to start a life in. After the death of Rose and his half-brother Dog being sent to the future, no one remembered the truth about James Howlett until House of M, nearly two hundred years later.

6) Okkara

The Krakoa Era changed mutant history, taking the mutant race to the living mutant island Krakoa to create a nation. When Apocalypse stepped foot on the island, he began speaking to it and readers soon realized that En Sabah Nur and it had some kind of relationship. We would find out about this relationship over the run of X-Men (Vol. 5), with “X of Swords” revealing the whole truth. Once upon a time, Okkara was born. It was a massive living mutant supercontinent and eventually, mutants made their home there. After his defeat of Rama-Tat and discovery of Celestial technology, the Egyptian mutant found his way there, where he met Genesis. While he was already on the road to being the Darwinist we all know and love, the Okkaran leader helped steer him more in that direction, especially once they were attacked by the demons of Amenth. The Twilight Sword sundered the continent, creating Krakoa and Arakko, and Genesis took the Okkarans on Arakko to take the war to Amenth, making Apocalypse promise to create the most powerful army he could in case they failed. For thousands of years, he kept this secret, only revealing it when Arakkii reappeared on the side of Amenth.

5) The Discovery of the Inhumans

The Inhumans first appeared in Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #45, which would be considered the early days of what is often referred to as the Age of Marvels (when the Silver Age heroes started appearing), but they existed for much longer than that. It all began with the Kree, who were in the midst of their millennia long war with the Skrull. Both races had long since reached their genetic potential and the Kree had decided to begin experimenting on human stock, hoping that they could use what they learned to jumpstart their evolution. They began hundreds of thousands years ago and at some point three hundred thousand years ago abandoned their newly created human offshoot on the order of the Supreme Intelligence. The Inhumans hid themselves, creating their own hidden nation, where they they kept their secret from Homo sapiens until the modern day, a secret hundred of thousands of years in the making.

4) The Eternals’ Existence

The Kree weren’t the first beings to come to the Earth to experiment on the people therein, with the Celestials showing up between long intervals, allowing their creations to flourish and diversify, spreading across the planet. About a million years ago, they took the ancestors of Homo sapiens and began to experiment on them, pushing 100 of them to their most perfect evolutionary form. They gave them vast power and built them a city, connecting them to the Machine – a computer that was basically what happened if you made the planet sentient, and charged them with protecting the world and allowing humanity to reach their potential. This was the birth of the Eternals. Over the next million years, they did just that, protecting humankind from the Deviants, twisted failed experiments. They became the origin of many human myths and it wouldn’t be until the modern age that they would finally become known to the world at large, almost a million years after they were born.

3) The Builders

The Celestials weren’t the only race traveling the universe, creating life. There was also the Builders. They claimed to be the oldest race in the multiverse and were responsible for the existence of just about everything. Now, obviously, it’s hard to know which came first, the Celestials or the Builders; however, it seems like the two of them were doing the same work at the same time throughout the universe, although the Builders did more than create life. They used Gardeners to create life on different worlds, sending Alephs, Ex Nihilos, and Abysses to shepherd these new lifeforms, as their Engineers created the ancient technology that formed the basis of reality, connecting the various universes in a network. They were able to keep the secret of their existence from nearly everyone until an Ex Nihilo and an Abyss went to Mars and began to fast forward the development of the Earth, pulling in the Avengers. They then launched a massive war against everything not much later, trying to destroy humanity’s home as the Incursions tore apart the multiverse.

2) The Celestials’ Role in Creating Life

Honestly, it’s hard to know who started first, the Celestials or the Builders, but since I learned about the Celestials first (waaay back in 1991; thanks Marvel Trading Cards Series II!), they’re getting top billing. No one knows when the Celestials reached their current forms as massive godlike energy beings traveling the cosmos in impregnable armor, but it was billions of years ago, when the universe was young. They became gardeners, visiting worlds and making them ready for life. Over the years, they experimented on many species, including the Kree, Skrull, and humanity, making life as we know it in the Marvel Universe possible. This secret was revealed at some point around the same time as the Eternals became known, a secret that was billions of years old. Earth X, an alternate future Marvel story, would reveal that the Celestials created life on these worlds as antibodies for their offspring, who they would plant in the cores of the different planet they worked on.

1) The Origin of Galactus

Galactus is Marvel’s most popular cosmic being, his first appearance in Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #48-50 being one of the greatest stories in comic history. The World Devourer had been traveling the spaceways for countless ages and no one had known where he had come from; he was just a fact of life for the people of the universe. It wouldn’t be until relatively recently that the truth about his origin was revealed. Galactus had once been Galan of Taa, one of the final living beings in the last iteration of the universe. While studying the end of all things, Galan was caught in the final moments of everything, but he would somehow survive, his body inundated with the energies of the dying universe and the spark of creation. When the next iteration of everything was born, so was Galactus. He was the first and it would be countless eons before anyone ever discovered who and what he was.

What’s your favorite Marvel Universe secret? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!

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