[citation needed] The Invaders team first appeared in flashback stories set during World War II, and comprised existing characters from Timely Comics, the 1940s predecessor of Marvel.

The Invaders fight the Axis powers over the world until eventually finding themselves in England, where they meet Lord James Montgomery Falsworth, the original Union Jack.

[3] The team later adds Miss America (Madeline Joyce) and super-speedster the Whizzer (Bob Frank), during a battle with the Super-Axis.

The team continues to fight against several threats, (including a Nazi occupation of Atlantis and the emergence of HYDRA backed by the time-travelling Baron Strucker) and faces an emotional trauma with the apparent deaths of Captain America and Bucky in a drone aircraft's explosion near the end of World War II, as first described in The Avengers #4 (March 1964).

After the war's end, several members—including the second Bucky and Captain America (respectively, Fred Davis and William Naslund, formerly the superhero known as the Spirit of '76)—created a new team, the All-Winners Squad.

[7] The new team consisted of the Blazing Skull (Mark Todd), a flame-generating girl named Tara, former Liberty Legion member the Thin Man (Dr. Bruce Dickson), the U.S.

They are formed by the supposed U.S. Secretary of Defense Dell Rusk—in actuality the Red Skull—who coerces the Thin Man into gathering this new team, which the Skull intends to use for his own goals.

The 2007 12-issue crossover series Avengers/Invaders saw the original WWII team of Captain America I, Bucky I, Namor, the Human Torch I, and Toro (leaving Spitfire and a wounded Union Jack II in the past) brought to the present-day Marvel Universe by the Cosmic Cube, which had fallen into the hands of the demon D'Spayre.

The Avengers took up identities of Golden Age characters so that they could fit into the past without giving the Red Skull I too much information about the future: Luke Cage as the Black Avenger, Iron Man as Electro, Ms. Marvel as the Black Widow, Spider-Man as the Challenger, Spider-Woman as the Silver Scorpion, and Wolverine as Captain Terror.

This threat manifests as a disease that mutates those infected, causing horrible deformation, granting superhuman strength, and driving the victim insane with pain and rage.

In World War II this pathogen was created by Arnim Zola, as his last project before suffering the wounds which necessitated his consciousness being transferred into his robotic form.

[12] In 2014, Marvel launched a new series written by James Robinson and starring Captain America who is eventually replaced by Sam Wilson, Winter Soldier, the original Human Torch, and Namor the Sub-Mariner.

This version of the group is a hand-selected Special Forces infantry unit under Captain America's field command,[19] and has Bucky Barnes and James Montgomery Falsworth among its number.