GENIS-VELL

 

GENIS-VELL

Real Name: Genis-Vell

First Appearance: Silver Surfer Annual (Vol. 1) #6, October 1993 (as Legacy); Captain Marvel (Vol. 3) #4, March 1996 (as Captain Marvel III); New Thunderbolts (Vol. 1) #6, May 2005 (as Photon)

Powers: Genis-Vell, alias Legacy, Captain Marvel III, and later Photon IV, is the artificially engineered child of Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) and Elysia. Because his father is a Kree (who are normally 50% stronger than humans) and his mother is a Titanian Eternal (who possess average Class 15-20 superhuman strength), Genis has some level of enhanced strength and physical abilities on his own. He became Legacy once he placed a replica of his father's Nega Bands on his wrists, and gained the power to harness his psionic energy as his father had (for super-strength, durability, survival in space, flight), as well as the power to use the bands to manipulate spatial distortions between our dimension and the Negative Zone. He could funnel anti-matter from the Zone to fire highly destructive particle blasts from his hands, and also create spatial warps around people or objects to hold them immobilized in place. Furthermore, he could form gateways into the Negative Zone through his own body, allowing him to drain off excess energy from his environment and harmlessly displace it, or avoid certain death by displacing projectiles or physical assault against his person through a gap in reality opening through his body.

Because of the actions of his future counterpart during the Destiny War, Genis ended up molecularly bonded to his father's old partner, Rick Jones. This event triggered the manifestation of Genis' latent cosmic awareness and solar processing abilities, which he inherited from his father. He lost his previous Negative Zone-based powers, however, due to fluctuations being generated across reality by a young girl named Kelly who was conceived at the Nexus of all Realities in the Florida Everglades. This meant that Rick and Genis were now switching places between Earth and the Microverse instead of the Negative Zone. Put simply, Genis is a Kree-Titan hybrid molecularly bonded to the Earth human Rick Jones. They are in constant psychic contact with each other, and strike the Nega Bands together in order to switch places between Earth and the Microverse. Drax the Destroyer inadvertently shattered the environmental field which normally protected Rick from the vacuum of space in the Microverse, meaning Genis needed to be on a life-supporting planet before Rick could be sent to the Microverse. Genis, now Captain Marvel III, used the Nega Bands to harness his own psionic energy and focus the energy manipulating powers he inherited from his father's genes. The bands thus give him Class 50 super-strength, superhuman endurance, reflexes, and durability, the ability to survive unaided in oxygen-less environments, photonic energy powers that allow him to produce blinding flashes of light, shaped energy fields to protect himself from harm, concussive force blasts, holographic powers allowing him to shape realistic illusions out of light, and the power to fly and reach trans-light speeds. He also inherited his father's cosmic awareness which enables him to scan alternate realities and possible futures and perform trans-navigation scans to map out the celestial bodies of the universe, keeping track of his travels through space so he doesn't lose his sense of direction. His cosmic awareness is represented by a blue, starry field that manifests over his facial features when in use.

Genis' powers increased dramatically after he went insane trying to fully comprehend his cosmic awareness. He could now consciously identify divergent points in a timeline and instantly follow the results of any given action to their ultimate conclusion, tracking the ramifications of any action he or other people made. He could also share this power with others temporarily, giving them glimpses into the various future timelines he perceived. During the time he chose to outfit himself like a Kree soldier, Captain Marvel III carried a standard Kree firearm which he occasionally used to focus his massive energy powers. Genis could now manipulate energy in a variety of new ways, including warping light waves to render himself invisible, generate intense heat and cold, travel through time by concentrating, sensing various kinds of psionic, trans-spatial, and electromagnetic energy signatures (an ability separate from his cosmic awareness) and generating interference to prevent himself from being detected by various electromagnetic spectra beyond visible light.

Shortly before teaming up with the new Thunderbolts, Genis was separated from his molecular bond with Rick Jones. Later, Captain Marvel III was seriously injured and somehow managed to resurrect himself from a death-like state, possibly death itself. Upon his return, his physical appearance was somewhat changed, as were his powers. Now calling himself Photon, Genis accessed his powers by tapping into an interspatial source of photons, meaning he is channeling and manipulating energy from another dimension instead of that which is present here. The importance of this has yet to be uncovered, however it seems like he may have regained a variation of the spatial warp abilities he had when the Nega Bands were tied to the Negative Zone. He has used his newer Photon powers to teleport himself and other people from one location to another, and can displace matter, energy and radiation out of this dimension by funneling it through his own body or manifesting a "static shell" that can be cast over a larger area of space. This enabled him to remove a bomb before it explodes or drain harmful radiation away from his area without it affecting anyone, and lets him shield himself and others from detection by displacing the probing energies used by psionics or electromagnetic sensors before they register their presence. He can also cause minor spatial shifts within other people, fluctuating their molecules to render them unconscious. The spatial rifts he can form also seem to interact with his cosmic awareness, enabling him to visually project any of the various events and timeframes he registers mentally. The Nega Bands seemed to be completely gone, with any and all powers they gave him apparently internalized into his system.

Genis-Vell once served in the Kree military, although the exact extent of his abilities and skills remain unrevealed.