What alien races are running around the Marvel Universe?

The Marvel Universe has been overrun with aliens for decades. Here is a primer to tell who’s who.

The first alien race ever in Marvel is the Skrulls, introduced way back in Fantastic Four #2 in 1961. These aliens are warlike shape-changers. The Super-Skrull is like the Superman of the Skrulls and possesses all the powers of the Fantastic Four. In the first encounter with these aliens, Reed Richards hypnotized three of them (the fourth escaped) into believing they were cows. The Fantastic Four thought the aliens would live out their lives harmlessly but this came back to bite the superheroes when the cows attacked the Vision and later produced milk that turned towns surrounding the cows’ farm into a Skrull horror show.

The Skrulls have not been featured in the Marvel movies (their rights probably are with the Fantastic Four so the Chitauri are a rough analogue) but they have been a consistent part of Marvel history. For awhile, they lost their ability to shape change. Galactus once consumed the Skrull throne world, upsetting all sorts of apple carts and killing billions. A Skrull once impersonated Alicia Masters and the Human Torch married her under this false pretense. Recently, the Skrulls impersonated several heroes, such as Hank Pym, the Invisible Woman and Jarvis in the Secret Invasion story, in a plot to take over the world.

The Kree are the other major Marvel race and are more heroic, having produced the warrior Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) and empowered human Carol Danvers to become Ms. Marvel and later Captain Marvel. They also date back to the ‘60s. The Kree come in two colors: blue skinned and white skinned. Ronan the Accuser, who appeared in the Guardians of the Galaxy, is a Kree. Another prominent Kree is the Supreme Intelligence, basically a huge, floating green head who acts as a sort of oracle.

The Kree and Skrulls hate each other, which culminated in the early ‘70s in the Kree-Skrull War in the pages of Avengers. This story is notable for being one of the early examples of cosmic Marvel and the Avengers venturing into space. It’s one of the book’s best stories ever.

The Fantastic Four have the Skrulls, the Avengers have the Kree and the X-Men are most closely associated with the Shi’ar race. Deposed Empress Lilandra had contacted Professor way back when and they soon became lovers on and off again. The Danger Room had used vastly advanced Shi’ar technology. Lilandra had been running around with the Starjammers, a band of alien pirates led by Cyclops’ father, Corsair. The Shi’ar got into a major conflict with the X-Men when Dark Phoenix destroyed a Shi’ar battle cruiser and then destroyed a planet. This led to the X-Men fighting the Imperial Guard in a trial for Jean’s life.

The Dire Wraiths were a nasty piece of work. They mostly appeared in the Rom title in the ‘80s, a comic about an alien spaceknight. The Dire Wraiths would kill people by sticking their elongated tongues into people’s brains. The people would then crumble into husks and the aliens would take on their appearances. It was disgusting and horrifying. The story was a slow burn, with the Dire Wraiths appearing more and more in Marvel titles, killing and impersonating more people, until the heroes banded together to banish them.

The Badoon are another warlike race. I vaguely remembered they had conquered 30^th century Earth and fought the future Guardians of the Galaxy in the comics but I don’t know much about them.

The Brood (nicknamed “Sleazoids”) fought the X-Men several times and look similar to the alien in Alien. They would impregnate people with Brood eggs and once did so with Professor X before the Shi’ar implanted his consciousness into a new, younger body and saved him. 

The D’Bari were a peaceful race of people who looked like broccoli. They only really appeared once in an infamous story in X-Men #135. Dark Phoenix had inadvertently destroyed their planet, killing billions of them, when she absorbed their sun for fuel. Dark Phoenix was originally supposed to survive this story in a depowered form but when editor in chief Jim Shooter found out that she destroyed an inhabited planet, he decreed that she needed to pay a price because superheroes don’t kill. Overwhelmed by guilt, Jean then killed herself to protect the universe from her power. This was an example of editorial interference actually giving a story more impact.