SAVAGE LAND

 

SAVAGE LAND

First Appearance: Marvel Mystery Comics (Vol. 1) #22, August 1941 (Golden Age); The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #10, March 1965 (1st Modern Appearance)

History/Description: The Savage Land is an artificially created tropical forest region nestled amidst a ring of volcanic mountains on the icy continent of Antarctica. Ages ago, the enigmatic other dimensional entities known as the Beyonders contacted an alien race called the Nuwali, offering to pay the Nuwali to create a game preserve on Earth stocked with the fauna and flora of various geological periods. Hence, the Nuwali created the Savage Land as a wildlife preserve where Earth's life forms could be studied under relatively controlled conditions. The Nuwali also created similar preserves on other planets on behalf of the Beyonders.

The Nuwali constructed advanced technological devices within caverns beneath the Savage Land that helped to give it a tropical climate. But the main means of heating the Savage Land was the ring of active volcanoes surrounding it. Presumably, the Nuwali chose the site of the Savage Land knowing that the volcanic heat would enable them to create a tropical environment best suited to the life of the Mesozoic Era (the "age of dinosaurs") once the climate of that era changed over the rest of the planet.

Over a period of many millions of years within the Savage Land, the Nuwali preserved many of Earth's life forms past the point that these species became extinct in the outside world. Hence, plant and animal species from the Triassic period (the beginning of the age of dinosaurs) through the Pleistocene (the "Ice Age") continued to flourish there. Into the Savage Land the Nuwali also brought the Man-Apes, an evolutionary forebear of Homo Sapiens, as well as early examples of Homo Sapiens itself. Finally, however, the Beyonders apparently lost interest in the Savage Land and the similar habitats on other worlds, and the Nuwali abandoned them. Apparently all of the habitats collapsed except the Savage Land.

In the centuries before the worldwide disaster known as the Great Cataclysm, in which the continent of Atlantis sank, the people of Atlantis built a great worldwide empire and achieved scientific and technological heights still unsurpassed in many areas of research today. Several small tribes of nomadic Atlanteans sailed to Antarctica and settled within the great caverns lying beneath the frozen wastelands bordering the Savage Land. Eventually, these Atlanteans discovered an immense cavern containing the machinery that helped to regulate climate conditions in the Savage Land. Atlantean scientists made considerable improvements in the machinery and extended its range to cover certain areas of the surface beyond the Savage Land. The scientists used other technological devices left behind by the Nuwali to create incredible means of amusement for their people. The Atlanteans soon named their Antarctic colony "Pangea" after their word for "paradise."

Word of Pangea spread back to Atlantis as well as to other nations of that time, such as Valusia. Soon, Pangea became a leading center of trade and the world's first amusement and recreation center. The Savage Land served as stock lands for various forms of wildlife, many examples of which wore imported into Pangea. The Atlantean scientists in Pangea turned there attention to genetic engineering, experimenting upon Man-Apes they had brought from the Savage Land and using equipment left behind by the Nuwali. Thus, the Atlantean scientists genetically altered the bodies of the beast-men into bird-people (the Aerians), monkey-people (the Tree People), fish-people (theTubanti), and other animal-like races, all of which had human-like intelligence. The Atlanteans initially used these animal-people as laborers in the Pangean amusement center

The animal-people grew increasingly restive at being treated as slaves, and eventually the Atlanteans of Pangea built fully automated, self-repairing maintenance machinery, eliminating the need for the animal-people to work as laborers. The Atlanteans then confined the animal-people to a section of Pangea far removed from their own. The animal-people finally rose in rebellion and, after weeks of warfare, defeated the Pangean Atlanteans. The animal-people demanded equal rights as sentient beings, and so the Atlanteans further extended the range of the climate control machinery so that it turned all of the frozen wasteland above the underground Pangea colony into a tropical environment. The animal-people then settled in unpopulated areas of the surface of Pangea.

When the Great Cataclysm struck, the continent of Atlantis sank and the Atlantean Empire came to an end. The Cataclysm caused the Savage Land and Pangea to sink below sea level, but thanks to the surrounding mountains, neither area was submerged beneath the sea. The climate-control mechanisms were so well built that they survived the sinking, of the landmass and continued to be operational. However, three forths of the population of the Savage Land and Pangea were killed in the upheaval, The rest sank swiftly into barbarism, and soon, as a result of widespread violence, only a tenth of the human population that existed before the Cataclysm was still alive. Peace eventually returned, and the human beings of Pangea and the Savage Land struggled back upward toward civilization, forming tribes such as the Fall People.

The Englishman Lord Kevin Plunder and the American Shanna O'Hara, better known as Ka-Zar and Shanna the She-Devil, came to live in the Savage Land in recent times, and in exploring the Savage Land and Pangea encountered many of its diverse races and tribes). In the Savage Land itself lived the Fall People, the Lizard-Men of the city of Vala-Kuri, the Neanderthal-like Man-Apes, the Sun People, who worship the sun god Garokk, and the primitive Swamp Men. Among the races living in Pangea were the winged humanoid Aerians, the nomadic Cat People of Pandor, the humanoid Lemurans, the pterodactyl-like Pterons, and the amphibious fish-like Tubanti. The full number of races that lived in the Savage Land and Pangea is as yet unknown.

The Savage Land was also the home of the sorceress Zaladane, who became priestess and queen of the Sun People, and of the Savage Land mutates, who were Swamp Men given superhuman powers through artificially induced mutations. Later, the alien marauder Terminus (or, possibly a pawn of his acting on his behalf) wreaked extraordinary destruction within the Savage Land and Pangea, destroying the climate-control machinery and snuffing the volcanoes surrounding the Savage Land. Terminus slaughtered great numbers of the sentient beings living in Pangea through the vast destructive energies he wielded, and, with the volcanoes extinct and the climate-control machinery wrecked, virtually all the other inhabitants of these two regions were slain by the Antarctic cold, which swiftly spread over both the Savage Land and Pangea. Ka-Zar, Shanna, and their saber-toothed tiger companion, Zabu, all survived the disaster and found temporary refuge in the outside world.

A considerable number of the sentient inhabitants of the Savage Land and Pangea, including Zaladane and the other Savage Land Mutates, escaped the disaster by seeing through a dimensional warp into an other dimensional world. The sentient beings who thus escaped returned to the Savage Land at the time that the god-like High Evolutionary set about his preparations to restore it to its previous state. The anonymous human being who was transformed into the living image of Garokk voluntarily sacrificed his life energies to power the devices that the High Evolutionary used to return the Savage Land to its tropical state. Apparently, the High Evolutionary returned the Savage Land's climate control machinery to working order and has reactivated the surrounding volcanoes; he also repopulated the Savage Land with its animal and plant life from different ages, possibly through cloning previously obtained cell samples. Ka-Zar and Shanna returned to the Savage Land to live there, bringing with them Zabu and their new child.

VIRBRANIUM

 

VIBRANIUM

First Appearance: Daredevil (Vol. 1) #13, February 1966 (Anti-Metal/Antarctic Vibranium); Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #53, August 1966 (Wakandan Vibranium)

History/Description: Vibranium is a rare, naturally occurring metallic substance, theorized to be of extraterrestrial origin, which exists in two forms.

The first, Wakandan Vibranium, is found almost exclusively in the tiny African nation of Wakanda. Wakandan Vibranium, though as yet unknown means, absorbs vibratory energy in its vicinity, such as sound waves, with in itself. The apparent observable vibratory rate of the molecules of the Vibranium itself does not increase when the Vibranium absorbs mechanical energy. The outside vibratory energy is stored within the bonds between the molecules making up the Vibranium. As a result, a chunk of Vibranium which has absorbed a considerable amount of vibratory energy would be exceedingly hard to demolish. If enough force were applied to this chunk to smash it, the Vibranium would explode, releasing much of the absorbed energy. There are limits to the capacity of Vibranium to absorb vibratory energy, although the exact extent of these limits has not yet been determined. For example, in recent years, the oil conglomerate Roxxon discovered that a certain small island in the South Atlantic had a foundation composed of Wakandan Vibranium. Roxxon found it necessary to destroy the island and blew it up with bombs. Unable to absorb the force of the explosion, the Vibranium was destroyed, but it did succeed in entirely absorbing the sound made by the explosion.

It was in the mid 1980s that the world learned of the existence Wakandan Vibranium, although its existence has been rumored for decades. In the early 1940s, a small amount of Wakandan Vibranium came into the possession of the young, brilliant scientist Dr. Myron MacLain. Through an accident, which cannot be duplicated, MacLain created an alloy of Wakandan Vibranium and a form of Adamantium steel. The sole specimen of this alloy now serves as Captain America's shield.

Sometime later the renegade scientist Ulysses Klaw, who had believed the rumors of Vibranium were true, found the great "sacred mound" of Vibranium in Wakanda. The chieftans, also known as kings, of the Wakandans had guarded the mound for generations as a sacred trust. Klaw failed in his attempt to steal Vibranium from the mound but killed the chieftan T'Chaka. T'Chaka's son, T'Challa, became the new king of the Wakandans and also adopted the sacred guise of the Black Panther. T'Challa strove to end Wakanda's isolation from the rest of the world. He made the existence of Vibranium known to the outside world and sold small quantities of it to foreigners whom he believed would not turn it to harmful ends. T'Challa used the profits to enrich and modernize his nation.

The other form, Antarctic Vibranium, has thus far been found in nature only in the isolated region of Antarctica known as the Savage Land. Antarctic Vibranium is also known as "Anti-Metal" due to its effects. Whereas Wakandan Vibranium absorbs vibratory energy into its molecular bond, Antarctic Vibranium, through a means that is not yet understood, emanates vibrations, which cause the atomic molecular bonds in nearby metals of other kinds to weaken. The result is to cause nearby solid metals to liquefy. If huge quantities of Antarctic Vibranium were gathered together, at some unknown point the accumulated mass would be so great that the vibrations given off by the entire mass would increase logarithmically as more Vibranium was added. Theoretically, if the enormous mound of Wakandan Vibranium were composed of Antarctic Vibranium instead, the resulting vibrations would therefore liquefy metals throughout Africa, and possibly beyond. A fraction of the sacred mound of Wakandan Vibranium was apparently converted to Antarctic Vibranium by particle bombardment.

Vibranium is not an element, despite various references to it as such. The properties of Vibranium do not qualify it to fill any gaps in the Periodic Table of Elements. Moreover, Vibranium could not be an element with a higher atomic weight than any known elements, since it is not radioactive as the elements with the highest atomic weights are.