Kraken

Origin

Early in the Cold War era, Daniel Whitehall was one of the foremost spymasters in the world, presumably coming from a background in British intelligence. He was a master manipulator and prided himself on making people become who he believed they were meant to be. Somehow, he had access to technology far advanced for the time and used it to create a suit of armor. Along with serving as a sophisticated weapons system, the armor disguised his true identity and allowed him to be known as the Kraken to most.

Creation

Kraken was created by Jonathan Hickman and Stefano Caselli as one of the many characters in the Secret Warriors ongoing series. The character was retconned into being one of the prominent leaders and architects of HYDRA.

One of the surprise twists of the Secret Warriors series was that Kraken had actually died before the events of the book and was being impersonated the entire time by Jake Fury. The true Kraken appeared only in flashbacks.

Major Story Arcs

Wheels Within Wheels

Along with several other prominent leaders in the intelligence community, Daniel Whitehall was invited by Leonardo Da Vinci to join the Great Wheel in 1961. The arrangement was a simple one. In return for cooperating on a few select missions for Da Vinci, he would give all of them the means to win their own secret wars. To protect their anonymity, each member was given a codename based on the Zodiac. Whitehall was codenamed Leo.

Each of the Great Wheel's missions involved the acquisition of strange technology. Whitehall teamed with Vasili Dassiev, Shoji Soma and John Garrett to salvage the power source from a crashed Brood vessel in Egypt. It was there that he revealed his Kraken power armor in order to fight off a swarm of Brood drones.

Ultimately, the Great Wheel was betrayed by Dassiev and Viktor Uvarov for the acquired technology. Their alliance would become the organization known as Leviathan. They attempted to have the rest of the Great Wheel killed, but Whitehall used his Kraken armor to protect himself and fled with Baron Strucker and Shoji Soma. Their alliance would become HYDRA.

Wake the Beast

Now more Kraken than Daniel Whitehall, he was a key figure in the creation of HYDRA along with Baron Strucker. But unlike Strucker, he orchestrated things from the shadows and chose not to make himself widely known. He continued to turn people into who he believed they should be, which led to him practically creating the rest of the leadership of HYDRA.

Kraken ran an orphanage of nearly a hundred orphaned girls, forcing them through training and tests until he was left with just one. That girl became Viper. He conducted the experiments that led to the creation of the Hive. He discovered the Gorgon at a young age and presented the murderous boy with the Godkiller sword. Then after creating all this in the name of HYDRA, he found out he was dying.

Kraken met with his old friend Strucker one last time and shared the news of his fatal illness. He feared he would not live to see the completion of their plans, namely the deaths of Nick Fury and Viktor Uvarov.

Three years later, Whitehall lied dying in a hospital better, where he was found by Jake Fury. Jake had already been to Whitehall's London home, where he found the journals Whitehall recorded everything in as well as the Kraken armor. With all that, Jake made it known that he intended to impersonate Whitehall as Kraken. He donned the armor and cut off Whitehall's life support, killing the true Kraken.