The Avengers’ Worst Enemy Just Became The X-Men’s Problem

Warning: contains spoilers for S.W.O.R.D. #1!

When the Avengers were created, the United States government decided to appoint a government liaison to monitor and exhibit some control over this team of powerful costumed heroes. That person’s name was Henry Peter Gyrich and, in time, he would become a longstanding enemy not only to the Avengers but to Earth’s superhuman community. Unfortunately, S.W.O.R.D. #1 from Al Ewing and Valerio Schiti just revealed Gyrich is about to become a problem for the X-Men and the mutant nation of Krakoa.

Created by Jim Shooter and John Byrne for Avengers #165, Henry Gyrich spent some time analyzing and witnessing the Avengers security defenses, with the National Security Agent introducing himself in Avengers #167 while also removing their priority status and all accompanying privileges due to their security failures. Gyrich later reinstated these privileges under new rules and regulations involving changes to their membership, security screenings and other decisions that could only be overridden by the President. Although Gyrich participated in a Senate investigation determining if the Avengers were a threat to national security, he was replaced by another government official while he was reinstated to a new project. He would return years later to serve as the Avengers’ UN liaison, but was reassigned yet again after the villainous Red Skull tried to use him as a spy and later shot him.

In S.W.O.R.D. #1, Commander Abigail Brand records her plans for the new mutant space program in a personal log, including her concerns about the new leader of Alpha Flight, the human organization protecting against threats from space, Henry Gyrich. Brand once worked with Gyrich in a previous incarnation of S.W.O.R.D., where her co-director was committed to an aggressive plan of capturing and ejecting all alien life on Earth. Eventually, Gyrich’s crimes caught up to him and he was arrested, but later released and made the director and commander of Alpha Flight and their Interstellar Defense and Diplomacy Initiative which includes their team, Gamma Flight, most recently seen taunting the Hulk in The Immortal Hulk 40. “I’d class Alpha Flight as an active problem,” Brand notes, “They put Henry Gyrich in charge. The weasel emerges from his burrow once again — I’m guessing he’s made some friends in high places.”

Gyrich isn’t necessarily an evil figure, but his burning hatred for superhumans makes him an obstacle to every team he crosses, whether that’s the Avengers, Thunderbolts, or X-Men. The ultimate bureaucrat, Gyrich can’t stand superheroes existing outside a system of his control, and he’s gone to extreme lengths to fix this “problem,” participating in the notorious anti-mutant Project: Wideawake and being fired from the Fifty States Initiative after his abuse of power led to a considerable amount of death and damages.

While Gyrich is an obstructionist who would rather rid the world of superpowers than simply work alongside heroes, he poses a particular existential threat to the new mutant nation of Krakoa. Marvel’s mutants consider their powers part of their species identity, making Gyrich a threat to the conceptual idea of mutants as a race. At the same time, their recent move into nationhood – and expansion to the stars – puts them firmly in his wheelhouse. Gyrich is an expert political operator, and like it or not, the X-Men are now a political entity. Abigail Brand is completely right to assess Alpha Flight as an active problem; Henry Peter Gyrich will do everything he can to scupper Krakoa, and the X-Men don’t have the political favors and favorable public opinion that ultimately saved the Avengers from his oversight.

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