The Secret Masters of the Marvel Universe
Secret, behind-the-scenes organizations have been a staple of Marvel Comics since the beginning - the 70s, in fact, were lousy with secret groups with vague descriptors. However, they are some that made appearances only briefly, but seemed to have some interesting agendas from what little we've seen. Here's some of the more interesting ones:
Order of Witnesses - Mentioned in the far-future X-Men: Phoenix series, set in Cable's future about 2000 years from now, where Apocalypse eventually triumphed. It is said to have been founded by a certain mutant in the 21st century, who is obviously a reference to the Witness - a mutant from Bishop's (nearer) future, whose name was LeBeau and sheltered Bishop for a time. Their agenda is said to be secret and they only interfere in history on occasion.
The Witness himself was made out for a while to be a future version of Gambit of the X-Men, but later material had him as a separate entity - but one that also took a very young Gambit in and cared for him for a time, much like Bishop.
There is also some similarity to another mutant - Gateway. An Australian native, he never speaks and seems to act in his own accordance. However, there are two interesting developments - in the alternate Age of Apocalypse, Gateway is actually quite talkative, and description as the 'receptacle of human knowledge'.
In the main universe, he shows up at the start of Generation X, rescuing Penance from her imprisonment, with her name coming from the single word that he says. We further learn that he tutored the St. Croix twins, and Jubilee - who was transported by Gateway to the X-Men shortly after her parents' deaths - began to suspect that he had a hidden agenda in transporting her. (Also, in an issue of Wolverine, Gateway allows Jubilee to travel back in time to discover that her parents were murdered, not killed in a car accident as originally thought, and shown the identities of their killers).
There seems to be a recurring theme here - mutants that have some ability to shift time that are making a point to influence young mutants at critical points in their lives. Unfortunately, while Gateway has made appearances over the years, Witness has not been seen since his apparent death 20 years ago.
The Askani - The Askani Sisterhood was another order from Cable's far future, and in fact was the organization - led by an older variant of Rachel Summers - that originally saved Cable as a baby when infected with the techno-organic virus by Apocalypse. Rachel Summers - as well as her fellow leader/rival - Sanctity, also known as Tonya Trask, the mutant time-travelling daughter of the infamous Bolivar Trask, the creator of the mutant-hunting Sentinels - would occasionally influence the past through particular agents, usually Cable himself. However, there is one unusual incident that was never followed upon.
While the X-Men infiltrated the US presidential campaign of Graydon Creed, the mutant-hating son of Mystique and Sabretooth, a disguised Samuel Guthrie has a strange encounter with a fellow member of Graydon's team; when asked what she thought about the campaign, she muttered the Askani creed: "What is... is". It seemed like a more direct action was being taken by the Order in the present, influencing the course of events. It is possible that they were originally supposed to have assassinated Graydon (killed in X-Factor 130, advertisements stated that the killer would be revealed in issue 150... but the series was cancelled after issue 149), but the later miniseries X-Men Forever established that the original obvious suspect, Mystique, who was cleared through an alibi and getting old allies to try to 'save' Graydon, just... set a timer on the weapon that killed Graydon.
Landau, Luckman and Lake - An inside joke about a well-known comic book shop, an interdimensional bank used by Logan... and then an organization with a strong agenda of its own.
Most of their appearances are in the issues of Wolverine, especially by Larry Hama. They seem to be fairly powerful and pursuing some hidden agenda... but what it is has never been revealed.
The most we've seen of them has been is in the first 25 issues of the original ongoing Deadpool series - however, this was a most segregated subset of the organization, focusing on the Mithras Directive - ensuring a prophesized alien messiah would arrive on Earth to herald a new era of peace, by stopping a deadly alien from attacking it. However, the heads of the organization were said to have signed off on it, so that does give somewhat of an idea of their motives.
But what's interesting is one of the members of the Directive, the above pictured Noah DuBois, originally appeared as an unnamed character in Uncanny X-Men 299 - a telepath that is part of Senator Kelly's entourage that speaks with Jean Grey. As Kelly was an anti-mutant senator who eventually ran for the presidency and had a change of heart (just prior to being assassinated), one has to wonder if they pushed him to do so as part of their overall agenda.
After the initial Deadpool run, L,L & L has mostly faded from the stories, and hasn't really been seen since the 90s.
Control - My favorite conspiracy / secret organization.
Their only real appearance in the comics has been the two-issue limited series called Conspiracy. After another supers battle damages the Daily Bugle, one of their reporters finds hidden in the wall the work of a past reporter that vanished years ago - on a vast conspiracy called only "Control". Unlike a lot of conspiracies in the Marvel Universe, this wasn't the province of powerful beings or with an ancient pedigree; it supposedly begins just prior to the start of the Age of Heroes, where a pre-FF Reed Richards battled a giant alien, and wrote a singular treatise on how an organization should be formed to 'control' events like this by ensuring that humanity would be able to confront such menaces. His paper was co-opted and instead of scientific minds, the organization became led by a coalition of high-ranking military and industrial leaders. Various evidence (of a dubious nature) suggest that they funded pretty much every mad scientist in the early days, as well as being responsible for the creation of many of its heroes (The Fantastic Four, Daredevil, Spider-Man, The Hulk, to name a few).
The most interesting part is the two industrialists involved. One is Howard Stark, the father of Tony Stark himself - Iron Man. Other sources indicate that he not only worked with Nick Fury in the defense of the Earth from aliens well before the founding of Control, but he was also a member of the Brotherhood of the Shield, the millennia-old organization dedicated to protecting the Earth - his presence as a guiding force in the organization makes a lot of sense.
The other, however, in Bolivar Trask. Bolivar was the creator of the mutant-hunting robots called the Sentinels, and members of his extended family either follow in his footsteps or are mutants themselves (sometimes both). What's interesting is that traditionally he is portrayed as an anthropologist who somehow cobbled together advanced robotics in a barn. Here, however, he is the wealthy magnate of Trask Industries, and the creation of the Sentinels becomes much more reasonable. His mansion, in fact, is said to be the meeting place of the organization in the early days.
In the end, the original members either die or go elsewhere; one former member says that new people are in charge and he doesn't know what their agenda is. We aren't left with much, except that the story begins as the reporter finds the secret research in the walls of the Daily Bugle while they are being repaired by...
Damage Control, the organization that is hired to 'clean up' and repair after superhuman fights, and also picks up any advanced technology left behind...
Pictured above: the Secret Masters of the Marvel Universe?
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