Kree (person)

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.