MAGUS

 

MAGUS

Real Name: Magus

First Appearance: Strange Tales (Vol. 2) #178, February 1975

Powers: The being who calls himself the Magus is actually the Earth-7528 future counterpart of Adam Warlock from Earth-616. In this timeline, the cosmic abstract entities known as Lord Chaos and Master Order decided that they needed to create a Champion of Life to oppose Thanos. They captured the Adam Warlock of Earth-7528 and conditioned him in their ways to prepare him to serve their needs. He embraced the parts of his personality embodying his most darkest and immoral desires and became the Magus.

Due to a temporal paradox, the events that led to the Magus' creation were erased from history. However, elements of Earth-7528 manifested in Earth-616 long before the timeline was altered. Thus, when the 616 Warlock gained the Infinity Gauntlet and used it to purge all good and evil from his being, the Magus was reincarnated from the evil half of Adam Warlock's soul as an independent being.

The Earth-7528 Magus possessed immense superhuman strength (Class 100), greatly enhanced durability and could project cosmic energy bolts. He could communicate psychically, even over interstellar distances and possessed "astral senses". He could become immaterial, teleport, and open dimensional portals. He wore a Soul Gem on his forehead which allowed him to emit differing radiation beams and generate force fields.

The evil fragment incarnation of the Magus had a physical form which was equivalent to that of Adam Warlock's. Already possessed of superhuman strength, durability, reflexes, etc., he could further enhance these traits by tapping to his own innate cosmic energy and even briefly possessed the power of several Cosmic Containment Units. This gave him vast energy and reality manipulation powers, enough to control the universe, though he chose to wield these energies via instrumentation. He also temporarily wielded five of the Infinity Gems, but failure to possess the Reality gem prevented his omnipotence.

His immaterial form was immune to most attacks, and he could fire psychic blasts and absorb life energy from others, using it to gradually restore himself physically.

The Magus is also a master planner, schemer, an accomplished self-taught philosopher and a highly capable combatant.