The Incredible Hercules - Secret Invasion with Case Aiken
We’re back with another episode of Trade School! This time, we’re talking about The Incredible Hercules - Secret Invasion! Our host this week is Case Aiken!
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Edited by Case Aiken
Scored by Bret Eagleston
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Notes
Incredible Hercules Trade Paperback Overview
This section highlights the unique appeal and creative team behind the Incredible Hercules Secret Invasion trade paperback.
Creative Team and Artistic Highlights (01:27)
Written by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente, with pencils by Rafa Sandoval and inks by Roger Bonet and Greg Adams.
Colors by Marty Good, Denise Calero, and Raul Trevino; cover art by John Romita Jr., Klaus Johnson, and Dean White.
The trade’s front cover features Romita Jr.’s art, though the back cover’s depiction of the Eternal God of the Skrulls fighting Hercules is notably praised.
The trade paperback is straightforward with no special features but offers a strong, focused story.
Series Context and Character Dynamics (02:30)
The story picks up as Hercules takes over the Incredible Hulk series numbering at issue 116 to 120, following the World War Hulk event.
Hercules teams up with Amadeus Cho, a young genius, forming a "knight and squire" dynamic that balances brute strength and intelligence.
Their relationship blends humor with coming-of-age themes, especially highlighting Cho’s adolescent feelings juxtaposed with Hercules’s confident, womanizing persona.
This pairing offers a fresh take reminiscent of classic superhero duos like Billy Batson and Captain Marvel.
Secret Invasion Story Integration and Mythic Themes
This section explains how the trade fits into the broader Secret Invasion crossover and explores its mythic and cosmic dimensions.
Plot Setup and Key Mythological Interactions (04:44)
The story begins with Hercules and Cho on the run from SHIELD, finding Athena, Hercules’s sister, who summons a council of gods.
A crossover with the Eternals occurs, including characters like Thena, Icarus, and Makari, linking to Neil Gaiman’s Eternals run.
The story explores the friendly rivalry between Hercules and his Eternal counterpart Gilgamesh, adding depth to the mythological layers.
This sets the stage for the gods' involvement in the conflict, highlighting the crossover's depth beyond typical superhero battles.
Religious War Framing of Secret Invasion (07:59)
The invasion is framed as a religious war threatening Earth's faith and the power of its pantheons, not just a physical conflict.
The gods of Earth’s pantheons decide to send champions to fight the Skrulls’ divine forces, linking cosmic and spiritual stakes.
This framing elevates the narrative, making the conflict about belief and divine power rather than mere military might.
The council’s decision to send champions reflects a strategic response to the Skrulls’ threat at a metaphysical level.
God Champions and Cosmic Mythology
This section details the selected champions and the cosmic mythos that underpin the story’s conflict.
Champion Selection and Powers (09:30)
Ajak, an Eternal representing Aztec, Mayan, and Incan mythologies, is chosen for his god-like powers and role as a cultural hero.
Snowbird from Alpha Flight is selected to represent the northern gods, showing a blend of superhero and divine traits.
The God Eater Atum, an Egyptian pantheon figure and Marvel villain, adds a darker, more dangerous element to the team.
A shape-shifting Japanese god is also included, emphasizing the story’s global mythological scope and the prevalence of shapeshifters.
Eternals’ Powers and Roles (10:56)
The Eternals possess a range of powers including super strength, flight, invulnerability, energy manipulation, illusions, and psionics.
Each Eternal excels in different areas, with figures like Hyperion and Icarus showing strong physical and psychic abilities.
Their ability to resurrect and reset mirrors mythological cycles like Ragnarok, enriching Marvel’s cosmic mythology.
This power set grounds their role as god-adjacent beings capable of handling divine conflicts.
Skrull Pantheon and Mythic Conflict Resolution
This section covers the unique Skrull pantheon, the nature of their divine war, and the climactic outcome.
Skrull Divine Nature and Pantheon (15:30)
The Skrulls are depicted as the Deviants of their race with a pantheon split between the God of their inner core (an Eternal) and the God of shape-shifting, representing their dual nature.
Their history includes wiping out their own Eternals, leaving only one godlike figure central to their faith and power.
This duality reflects the Skrulls’ constant shape-shifting and the underlying eternal essence driving their identity and religious fervor.
The mythic portrayal adds depth to the Skrulls beyond alien invaders, framing them as a complex divine species.
Victory and Spiritual Impact (16:58)
The God Squad’s victory over the Skrull gods breaks the Skrulls’ spiritual drive in the war, representing a turning point in the invasion.
Hercules’s role as a god fighting on the metaphysical level shows the power of divine warfare over mundane combat.
This outcome highlights the story’s mythic ambition, emphasizing belief and spirit over physical force.
It reinforces the narrative’s core theme that faith and divine power are key battlegrounds in cosmic conflicts.
Recommendations and Broader Engagement
This section wraps up with the host’s personal endorsement and promotion of related content.
Highly Recommended Story Arc (18:26)
The host Case Aiken recommends reading the Incredible Hercules 116 to 120 arc for its fresh, mythic take on a major Marvel crossover.
The story is praised for blending gods, cosmic stakes, and character-driven humor in a unique way.
It is available as a trade paperback and fully accessible via the Marvel app, making it easy for readers to explore.
The recommendation highlights the arc as a standout example of godlike superheroes in a crossover context.
Additional Content and Host Background (19:56)
Case Aiken promotes other shows he hosts, including Men of Steel and Another Pass, as well as content on the Certain POV YouTube channel.
The network offers a wide range of evergreen comic and pop culture shows, encouraging listeners to explore their back catalog.
Aiken’s presence on social media and various platforms provides ways for fans to engage beyond the podcast.
This broad engagement strategy supports community building around comic culture and storytelling.
Transcription
00:00
Case
Welcome to Certain Point of View's Trade School where each episode a different host talks about a comic book trade paperback that they loved and why they love it. Hey, everyone, I'm Case Aiken. And yeah, I am back with yet another trade school, but that's because I love comic books. And this is a show where we get to talk about our love for specific comic books, really for specific trade paperbacks. That's the, that's the name of the show. And, and I'm. I'm back and I want to talk about a trade that I really like as evidenced by the nature of the show.
00:37
Case
I want to talk about the Incredible Hercules Secret Invasion, which is, as you would infer from the subtitle there, the Hercules crossover with Secret invasion, the big event that happened in Marvel Comics where Skrulls invaded Earth and was later adapted into an MCU to TV series that most people watched the first episode and then checked out of because it wasn't very good. And I don't really like the comic crossover that much either, but I love this specific part of the crossover. I, I love the Hercules section of the Secret Invasion crossover. It's really cool. And, and I'm going to talk about why I think it's really cool. But I want to. I want to credit the people who are involved in making this book. It's written by Greg Pack and Fred Van Lente with Pinslar is Rafa Sandoval.
01:33
Case
Inkers are Roger Bonett or Bonet with Greg Adams. Colorist is Marty Good. Gracia with Denise Calero and Raul Trevino. I'm sorry, I butchered those names. And cover artists are John Romita Jr. Klaus Johnson and Dean White. John Romita Jr's is the art that is used on the COVID for the actual book. It's not the best cover. Like, it's not the best front cover. I really like the back cover. The back cover is a really cool shot of the eternal God of the Skrulls fighting Hercules. And it's. It's a really cool shot. But yeah, so that's. That. That is getting into what the. The book is. So this comes at the time when Hercules had taken over the Incredible Hulk's book coming off of World War Hulk. Hercules had been an ally of the Hulk during. During the situation. But saying it as.
02:31
Case
No, we gotta like be reasonable. But I'm on your side, dude. Chill out. Because he had become the new ally of Amadeus Cho who. Who allied himself with the Hulk during World War World. Hulk. And so this created this fun buddy situation where Cho and Hercules were on the run together as this little guy who was incredibly smart and then this big oaf who has a lot of experience and has like some brains to him, but. But they're buried behind the fact that he defaults to hitting things first and is also a sexual dynamo. Hercules is wonderfully able to hook up with lots of characters throughout the course of the run of this series and that includes in this book and is a funny part of just the nature of it.
03:27
Case
Amadeus Cho is a young adolescent who is very much horny and is coming into his own feelings as a young adolescent. Meanwhile, he is buddied up with this guy who is just getting it on throughout the whole thing. And it's this very funny dynamic for it for anyone who watched the recent Knight of the Seven Kingdoms series. It has that knight and squire kind of vibe to it where you've got a big lunkhead as the knight and then a much smarter character as the squire. That's, that's the sort of vibe of this whole series. I also like to think of it as being a split up version of the Billy Batson with Captain Marvel dynamic where they're two separate characters. And I think that also works just fine terms of viewing these characters in a Superman analogous kind of way.
04:29
Case
But, but getting into the actual story of Secret Invasion because this is I believe volume four, it doesn't list the volume on here, but it recounts incredible Hercules 116 to 120. It picked up the numbering from Incredible Hulk, so that's why the numbering is relatively high there. It's. It is like I said, I believe only volume four going six of time. Anyway. So the thing is this is a, a crossover with Secret Invasion and so it opens with a little bit of a reset that is fairly important in terms of the story that we get where Hercules who is on the run from SHIELD at this point along with Amadeus Cho has found Athena, the goddess of wisdom who is. Happens to be Hercules's sister. And they are on the run together.
05:23
Case
And so it opens with a cute scene of Cho and doing like trivia, just like general like universe trivia with each other because they're just so smart with each other, which is fun. And they go to where the slumbering Celestial is standing on Earth and just perpetually asleep. And while there. Because this is concurrent with the Neil Gaiman. Yeah, yeah, that Neil Gaiman run of the Eternals that he did with John Romita Jr. I. So anyway, so this is concurrent with that one. Hercules gets attacked by Thena, the Athena equivalent from the Eternals, and Icarus of the Eternals who have mistaken him for Hero or Gilgamesh or the Forgotten one. It's a character who has had many names but is their version of Hercules in addition to having played other roles in heroism. Like I said, he's Gilgamesh from Sumerian mythology. So he's. He.
06:33
Case
He is responsible for a couple of Hercules's labors. Like and they go into how it sort of worked where Hercules was trying to clean the Aegean stables and instead it got washed out by Gilgamesh. And so that's just like the kind of dynamic. They, they have this like friendly rivalry and eventually they hook up that. Which becomes a funny detail. They, they are like after this point they are sharing they. When they are roommates, which is a fun detail because it's just these two bear men and it's. I find it really hilarious. But go them. Anyway, so Athena comes in, gets into a fight with Thena. They're not friends despite the like. This only goes one of two ways. Either they're the best of friends or they're the worst of enemies. And they're kind of the worst of enemies because. Because they are.
07:31
Case
And then Gilgamesh and Hercules become the best of friends. That's the way it works. So they don't get along. Anyway, heroes fight and then Makari, the Mercury equivalent from the Eternals runs in and he at this point it's a he. The Eternals can resurrect very easily and sometimes he has been a she like in the movies, but at this point it's a he. So he then says that the interpretation of the sleeping Celestial that made them think that Gilgamesh was Hercules, it was wrong. It's actually. They're actually talking about forgotten ones and it's a whole other thing. And so the Eternals go off to do their own thing. Meanwhile, in the shadow of the sleeping Celestials, Athena does what she actually came to do, which is she summons a council of all the gods.
08:28
Case
And so this then opens up the actual tie in to secret invasion, which is that the, the, the danger of the Skrull invasion is that it will destroy Earth's faith and that it's a religious war as much as a physical war. And that the invasion being a religious one, will mean that the pantheons of Earth are under siege by the gods of. Of the Skrulls and all of the pantheons that they have conquered. And so it is decided that they are going to send a group of champions. Now this is why the Eternals part is important. The. The first champion that is selected. I forget the exact order, but the first one I want to talk about is Ajak of the Eternals, who I believe was also. I believe this one was Salma Hayek in the Eternals movie.
09:21
Case
So again, genders don't really matter with the Eternals that much. But because they get resurrected and who cares. But this one is a. Is elected as a God representing the Aztec, Mayan and Incan mythologies. He played the part of a hero in their. In their roles in their. In their societies. And so he is selected as their champion. And it's important to remember what the deal with Eternals are. That they're God adjacent. They're very powerful. They. They are. They have God magic, the science magic. It said it's very adjacent to being a God, but it's not quite being a God, but it straddles the line enough that they are able to deal with the sort of weird divine stuff. And so Ajak is a really interesting candidate to be part of this quest. They're very powerful.
10:17
Case
They have more uniform abilities than the gods normally do. And in that they typically have super strength. They have eye lasers, they have a degree of invulnerability, flight, super speed. They have the basic Superman suite, usually to a much lower degree. And then in addition to that, they have like energy manipulation abilities. They have some illusion and psionic abilities. And then each one of them is better at those to a certain degree. And then there is Hyperion, who is an Eternal from another reality, who is the Superman part of that better to a certain degree. But guys like Icarus are. Are comparably like physically tough to. To Hyperion, although part of that is that he uses psionics to bolster his physical strength. Characters like Cersei are really good at the transmutation thing.
11:10
Case
Sprite is traditionally very good at the illusion thing and is the one responsible for their most recent reset. Eternals get reset all the time. It's very similar to the. The Norse mythology Ragnarok Cycle. That is also a recent thing that happened because they happen a lot of times in. In Marvel continuity. Anyway, so that. That's the deal with Ajak. The. The gods of the north elect Snowbird from Alpha Flight, which is cool. I, I really dig her. She's really cool here. I, I, I normally have not thought that much of her. Like she's been used well at times.
11:52
Case
I like there's a really cool scene in an X Men Alpha where she turns into a Wolverine as part of a fight and it notes that like Wolverine the superhero is like the closest we can get to a Wolverine but like not still not quite there in terms of ferocity. And I, I, I dig that part here and it's fun here to see her again. She, she's very cool. She plays well in the God sphere. Like I think, I think I prefer her doing the divine stuff over the mundane superhero stuff. Then there is God. I'm gonna be terrible with these names. There is the God Eater Atum from Egyptian mythology.
12:41
Case
So he is I believe a bigger Marvel villain that is sort of an outside of pantheon thing that eats gods but they also link for him to be this elder God from the Egyptian pantheon, which is cool. I don't know if that was pre established or if that was established here. I do know that the God Eater was seen recently in a Hercules story that they did. They did a Hercules Hulk crossover set in a time traveling, I believe a time traveling Hercules or maybe it was just Hulk ending up on Olympus and then Hercules hanging out or like they Hulk made friends with like the Titans and like the Cyclopses and Hercules killed them at the behest of Zeus. And it's supposed to be a flashback so I just don't know what the exact flashbackiness of it was. They get this Japanese character.
13:40
Case
I'm so bad with the names here and I'm not. I could try reading it but I'm just going to be butchering it. And I swear I'm Apologiz. Who is this shape shifting baddie who has been a recurring baddie in the various Marvel God adjacent sort of pantheon things. He's a shapeshifter as well. So that's three shapeshifters by the way. Snowbird, God Eater and this guy. And so they're going up against the Skrulls. And that's interesting that it's really small. Like another pantheon donates a dream ship made up of cool celestial dreamspeak. It's like the rainbow bird or something like that. G gave rise to this thing and its sales are made of like people's wishes. It's a very cool like the language is this purple prose that's very cool for a God kind of story. And, and so that's really cool.
14:34
Case
And then they go on this quest and they go through the dream time and they encounter like all these things along the way of the dream time before arriving and coming to blows with. With ultimately they. They first come to the blows with gods of all these like conquered pantheons. But then they come to blows with the two main gods of the Skrull pantheon. And it's so cool the concept because the Skrulls are the deviants of their world. So the Marvel Society, like Marvel has this like cosmic idea that the Eternals and the deviants are recurring things in various races because of celestial manipulation of worlds. And so that on the world on Earth they attained kind of a homeostatic balance where neither one really dominated. And sort of the middle species, humanity was able to be the dominant species of our world.
15:30
Case
But there are Eternals which are these again godlike beings, and then there are deviants which are supposed to be these devilish shapeshifting things. And the Skrulls are the deviants of their race. And at a certain point the deviants won their world and so on their world the Skrulls were totally took over and they wiped out all of the mundane scrolls of their people and they killed all of the Eternals except for one. And so that one becomes the God of their inner core, the self that is true to them. No matter who they transform into, he becomes an actual God to them as opposed to just being an Eternal. But he was already an Eternal, so he was already kind of God adjacent. And then the leader of the deviants becomes the God of their shape shifting.
16:19
Case
And so it becomes this interesting binary which is the ever changing nature of the scrolls being shape shifters and their inner core, which is the represented by the Eternal. So it's this really great dichotomy. I love the Skrull pantheon. I think it's super cool. I think it's awesome. And we get an awesome God fight between the God Squad, as they get jokingly called throughout this awesome team of two truly powerful gods that represent everything that is cool about Scrolledom. And you know, spoiler the heroes win. It's a spoiler giant spoiler for that. The heroes win. And when they win, it's represented as breaking the spirits of the Skrulls in the actual war that's happening. So that the turning point is represented as occurring in. Because the Skrull's Spirit. The, the. The dynamic that was driving their.
17:22
Case
Their religious fervor is broken by killing the gods. And that's such a cool idea there where Hercules as a God is able to be more effective in by waging war on the very concept of the thing that drives the war as opposed to waging war in the mundane sense of being a. A soldier on the battlefield. And that is truly mythic. That is exactly what I am here for when we're talking about stories with God superheroes. And that is so cool. So that's why I wanted to rave about it. It's a really cool story. I just reread it today just to refresh my memory on it, and I absolutely adore it. It's a super cool story. So wanted to praise that one and I think you should check it out.
18:11
Case
It's available as a trade and the entire run of Incredible Hercules is available on the Marvel app. And I would actually just highly recommend that run in general, but specifically this arc is the one that I would really recommend. If you're just checking out one story from the Incredible Hercules run, it's such a cool take on a God engaged in a bigger crossover kind of story. So really recommend it. Again, it's Hercules 116 to 120. So highly recommend it. The trade is really. I mean, it's a pretty straightforward trade paperback. There isn't a lot of special features to it or anything. But it's a good story and really worth checking out. So if that sounds cool to you and you enjoyed listening to me, I highly recommend that you check out other things that I work on at the time of this episode.
19:07
Case
Dropping the two main shows I want to recommend are Men of Steel and Another Pass. Again, I am Case Aiken. I am the host of those two shows. I'm also the host of most of the stuff that goes up on the YouTube channel for certain POV. So if you are more into that kind of thing, that is that. That's me. This is I. Anyway, so again, I'm Case Aiken. You can find me at all the Certain POV kind of things. You can find me on most social media platforms. Ace Aiken. You can find me on my Instagram, which I am holding on to for Dear Life. My AIM screen name as Quetzalcoatl5, which is Q U E T Z A L C o a T L5.
19:50
Case
And otherwise, I hope you check out all the stuff that we've got going on here at Certain pov. There's a ton of great shows. I can't recommend any of them enough. And I just, I think that there's just really cool stuff that we're doing. There's fun and Games with Matt and Jen. There's Reignite, there's Long Live the Legion, there's we have Issues, there's Jukebox Vertigo. There's all kinds of shows that are on hiatus that you should go and check out their backlog because most of them are evergreen and they're very cool. So just lots of cool stuff that we've been doing on the network. So you can find that@ certainpov.com and again, find the stuff that I'm sp.
20:35
Case
Specifically working on the YouTube channel, which is YouTube.com certainpovmedia and yeah, I, I hope you enjoyed this and I hope you have a great week and otherwise, happy reading. Hey, Nerf herders, you sure you want.
20:52
Sam
To go with that?
20:53
Case
Hey, everyone.
20:55
Sam
There we go. More inviting.
20:57
Case
Have you ever had a movie that you really wanted to love, but something,
21:01
Sam
Something holds you back or one that you did love in spite of a flaw?
21:04
Case
Well, I'm Casey.
21:05
Sam
And I'm Sam Alicea.
21:07
Case
And on another pass, we sit down with cool guests to look at movies that we find fascinating but flawed. And we try to imagine what could have been done when they were made to give them that little push.
21:18
Sam
We're not experts. We just believe in criticism.
21:21
Case
Constructive criticism.
21:23
Sam
Sure.
21:24
Case
Now come take another pass at some movies. Right, us.
21:27
Sam
And every now and then we can celebrate movies that did it on their own, too.
21:31
Case
You can find us@ certainpov.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
21:35
Sam
Pass it on.
21:39
Case
Cpov certainpov. Com.