MAJOR VICTORY

 

MAJOR VICTORY

Real Name: Vance Astro (legally changed from Vance Astrovik)

First Appearance: Marvel Super-Heroes (Vol. 1) #18, January 1969

Powers: Vance Astro is the alternate timeline self (from Earth-691) of Vance Astrovik (Marvel Boy, Justice) of Earth-616. Believing faster-than-light travel technology to be impossible, America in the late 20th century devised a two thousand year round-trip mission whereby a single astronaut would be specially-preserved and transported to the Beta Centauri system. Astro's blood was replaced by a special preservative fluid while his skin was totally encased in an air-tight containment suit. He spent the majority of the next thousand years in suspended animation on board his ship, only awakened by the ship every few decades to check his navigation systems. Vance eventually arrived on Centauri IV only to discover to his dismay that a colony of Earth humans were already there to greet him. Harkovian physics had replaced Einstein's rules of the universe some 200 years after he left, and not only had Earth heavily colonized its own solar system with genetically-engineered branches of humanity, they had also established the first extra-solar colony on Centauri more than a century previously.

Becoming active in the 31st century with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Vance Astro lived under the constant threat that any tear of his containment suit would oxygenate his skin, causing it to age 1,000 years within seconds. Early in his career, he supplemented the suit with an outer costume of Kevlar, and Martinex later redesigned his costume out of a flexible Adamantium derivative which was virtually incapable of being pierced. In addition, Vance's mind had developed over his long journey, and he began manifesting his latent psychokinetic powers. As such, he found himself capable only of administering pressure to objects, and not levitating or manipulating them like a true telekinetic. Instead, he projected concussive force from his forehead either as a uni-directional beam or a full-circle radial discharge. He eventually recovered Captain America's shield and began using it as his personal weapon, including adding a psychokinetic blast to his throws so that the shield flew with tremendous force. After a bullet made of Dargonite penetrated his Adamantium casing, Vance was saved by the intervention of Krugarr, the future Sorcerer Supreme, and Hollywood, the future incarnation of Wonder Man. Hollywood gave Vance a transfusion of his ionically-enriched blood, while Krugarr cast an enchantment which enabled him to remove his containment suit and survive with his skin exposed to open air.

Adopting the new alias of Major Victory, Astro adopted a new patriotic costume to go with his shield. However, he soon gave up the shield so that it could be used as a rallying symbol for a new Earth government. Around this time, the Beyonder encountered Vance and, seemingly on a whim, altered his costume to possess a black undergarment. The meaning of this became clear when Mephisto undid Krugarr's enchantment months later, forcing Vance's body to age rapidly. The undergarment came to life, quickly covering Major Victory's entire body and duplicating the properties of his containment suit to keep him alive. Questions arose as to whether this "Black suit from the Beyonder" was another symbiote similar to Venom, and to the nature of "The Power of That Which Lies Within Yet Beyond", a mysterious force which was increasing Vance's psychokinetic powers. It was eventually determined that the suit was just an unliving sympathetic exo-armor, and the elaborately named Within Yet Beyond was merely the effects of his ionically-enhanced blood acting upon his mental powers. The sheer force of his psychokinetic blasts was dramatically amplified, and he became capable of more varied telekinetic feats. He could cast a protective bubble or shields, create hard energy columns to raise him off the ground or floating disks to ferry him and others around, move objects about in a controlled manner, encase targets in psychokinetic bonds or stasis fields, etc.