NEBULA

 

NEBULA

Real Name: Unknown

First Appearance: Avengers (Vol. 1) #257, July 1985

Powers: Nebula was converted by extraterrestrial scientist, Dr. Mandibus, into a cyborg. She has an artificial left eye, arm, and shoulder. The upper left quarter of her head and part of her right hip are sheathed in metal. She possesses superhuman strength (Class 25) and durability. She has blasters worn on both wrists that fire both concussive blasts of an unknown form of energy and heat blasts that can incinerate a person almost instantly. She once wore a device that allowed her to disguise her appearance, through either holographic projection or a molecular rearrangement of both her body and clothing.

Nebula briefly possessed unlimited superhuman powers on two occasions: Once, when she was in possession of the Infinity Union, a combination of three devices which could channel all forms of ambient energy into her when together. The second was when she possessed the Infinity Gauntlet holding all six of the Infinity Gems, which gave her seemingly absolute control over reality.

A gifted intellect, she is an excellent battle strategist.

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.

INFINITY GEMS

 

INFINITY GEMS

First Appearance: Marvel Premiere (Vol. 1) #1, April 1972 (Soul Gem); Marvel Team-Up (Vol. 1) #55, March 1977 (Time/Power Gems); Avengers Annual (Vol. 1) #7, August 1977 (remaining gems)

Description: The Infinity Gems (previously known as the “Soul Gems") are some of the most powerful artifacts in the Universe. Each one allows its owner complete omnipotence over one aspect of the universe: Time, space, reality, the mind, power, and the soul. When all six are directly wielded together, nothing is impossible for their bearer.

When wielded separately, the power of the Gems varies from user to user, depending on what they are capable of tapping into. The Infinity Gems are linked to each other mentally. Supposedly, this is because the Gems were the remnant of the previous supreme being of the universe (Galactus's origin universe), although how that ties into the recent revelations (from Ultimates 2) is unclear. Anyone who has wielded the Gems in the past remains linked to them in some way, possessing a form of cosmic awareness derived from having been tied into a greater infinity. For instance, Thanos was once able to send a telepathic call to Nebula, which was intercepted by Gamora, all because of their previous wielding of the Gems.

The Soul Gem was introduced first, in the possession of the High Evolutionary when he passed it on to Adam Warlock. It had a unique interaction with Adam's own cosmic powers. Adam was extra-powerful on his own, and his abilities were burning his body out. To compensate, he limited his powers to their minimal levels, but focused them through the Soul Gem, which was fed by spiritual energy: His own confidence, convictions, and the faith that others had in him. The Soul Gem had an unexplained vampiric nature, though, causing it and Adam to hunger for the souls of others. It also coaxed most of Adam's soul into itself, leaving him unable to remove it. The scenario was reversed, and Adam began spending most of his energies on containing the Soul Gem's appetites, rather than using it to enhance his powers. In later years, Adam learned to use the Soul Gem to fire karmic blasts, disrupting the soul rather than taking it. Others have wielded the Soul Gem like the In-Betweener and Rune, the later of whom's natural vampiric abilities were drastically exaggerated by the Gem.

The Power Gem has infinite raw power that can be directed for devastating effect, or harnessed to augment any given system. Wielders such as Champion, Thor, Drax, and Titania have used it to achieve literally immeasurable strength, with their physical power levels constrained only by their imaginations.

The Time Gem can be manipulated for time travel, viewing the past and future, altering the flow of time on specific people or objects, etc. Gamora harnessed the Time Gem only minimally, gaining a form of precognitive sight to anticipate and counter her opponents in battle, or unbidden visions of the future that alerted her to potential dangers. The Gardener wielded the Gem in his garden, accelerating plant growth and maintaining his flowers at the apex of their bloom.

The Mind Gem grants mental powers or boosts existing ones. This was the Gem Moondragon used, amplifying her moderate telepathic and telekinetic abilities to Phoenix levels, allowing her to rearrange molecular structures, even creating a working starship by assembling molecules from the soil around her. In the Ultraverse, the Mind Gem turned the bestial creature known as Primevil into a coherent, educated, and intelligent being.

The Reality Gem is the most difficult gem to wield individually. Like the power of Proteus or the Disassembled era Scarlet Witch, it can alter reality itself, manifesting whims, reconstructing universal laws, dimensional structure, and so on. The sensory input provided from Space, Time, Soul, and Mind is often necessary to understand and control the power of the Reality Gem, causing minds to lose themselves if they attempt to wield it alone. Loki and Night Man had an encounter over the Reality Gem where Night Man's every move or decision caused him to split off a doppelganger, causing him to manifest every possible outcome of a situation in a single timeline. Recently, Carol Danvers recovered the Reality Gem in another reality, indicating the rules of the Infinity Gems may have changed, since typically the Gems can only operate in their own native reality.

The Space Gem reduces the idea of distance to a mere concept, allowing the wielder to be anywhere they choose to be. Often this appears in the form of teleportation. Pip the Troll was given permanent teleportation powers from his time with the Space Gem. The Elder known as the Runner subliminally tapped into the gem's power, believing it was making him faster as he ran. In fact, it was bending space between him and his destinations.

THANOS

 

THANOS

Real Name: Thanos

First Appearance: Iron Man (Vol. 1) #55, February 1973

Powers: Thanos is a Titanian Eternal. Born with greyish-purple skin and red eyes with no pupils, he was considered a mutant by Titanian Eternal standards in that he is markedly different from his parents. By far the most powerful of the Titanian Eternals, his genetic mutation gave him a massive, heavy-bided body with the capacity to synthesize cosmic energy for certain personal uses (This is a trait that Thanos shared with his father, A’Lars, and all Earth-born Eternals, but not with his fellow Titan-born Eternals).

By augmenting his natural powers through cybernetics, mysticism, and even through additional power granted him by Mistress Death herself, Thanos increased his physical strength and resilience to levels surpassing even the strongest of the Earth Eternals, at approximately Class 100. His power was also augmented in other ways, enabling him to tap, transform, and direct vast quantities of cosmic energy for destructive force. His skin is nearly invulnerable, particularly against heat, cold, electricity, radiation, toxins, aging, and disease, and he can survive indefinitely without food or water even before his "curse" from Death left him immortal, unable to die. He is capable of surviving unaided in the vacuum of space. Though not an acrobat by any means, Thanos' speed, agility, and reflexes are much greater than his massive size would indicate.

Besides destructive force, he can also manipulate vast amounts of cosmic energy to produce various levels of heat, light, explosive energy, and disintegration from his hands or eyes, as well as the power to shape fields of protective force. Thanos has also been shown generating a nimbus of energy around his hands which apparently increases the force of his blows even further. He has some limited access to telepathic and molecular rearrangement powers, but has always employed these feats sparingly, if at all. He had occasionally killed a victim by turning them into lifeless stone. His indomitable will gives him great advantage in mental conflicts, even against opponents who possess fully-developed telepathic powers. He usually employed a hovering chair with additional offensive weapons and the ability to teleport fantastic distances.

ADAM WARLOCK

 

ADAM WARLOCK

Real Name: Adam Warlock

First Appearance: Fantastic Four (Vol. 1) #66, September 1967 (as Him); Marvel Premiere #1, April 1972 (as Adam Warlock)

POWERS: Adam Warlock, originally known simply as Him, was an artificially engineered humanoid created with an affinity for cosmic energy. Adam's metabolism is bolstered by cosmic power in a process similar to, but not the equal of, Cosmic Eternals. Since the beginning, Adam has had the powers of self-healing and self-evolution thanks to his natural cocoon. This biological construct is used by Adam to shield himself from considerable harm or accelerate his healing powers in instances where his wounds are near-fatal and too serious for his natural healing abilities to deal with. He can weave it around his entire body in a matter of moments. Adam enters into a state of hibernation inside this cocoon, and often emerges from it having undergone some form of mental or spiritual transformation.

The power of Him was initially awe-inspiring, with superhuman strength enough to battle Thor, the power to project concussive force or completely obliterate entire mountainsides, and cast solar vortexes which allowed him instantaneous travel between space and dimensions. He also had certain psychic perceptions, could animate unliving matter to shape as he chose, and form reflective energy fields to repel all forms of attack. This rampant overuse of his own cosmic energies was costly, though, and upon another death-rebirth cycle within his cocoon, he tempered his various abilities to more reasonable levels. Him took the name Adam Warlock for the first time here, and accepted a gift from the High Evolutionary to help channel his powers: the Soul Gem, an emerald jewel placed upon his brow. The gem harnessed spiritual energy from Adam and the people around him, giving Warlock excess reverses of strength based upon the strength of his convictions, and the belief other people had in him. On the other hand, his stamina would quickly become depleted if he fell victim to self-doubt, or loss the faith of those who followed him. At this point, Warlock possessed a natural Class 4 strength, superhuman endurance, reaction time, durability, and recuperative powers. He was also capable of directed levitation, but little else on his own power. Instead, he allowed his excess cosmic energy to be funneled through the Soul Gem's ability to access his spiritual energy, using the jewel as a conduit for his own powers. Warlock could use the gem to boost his strength to Class 40 levels, and similarly increase all his other physical powers and boost his flight speed to faster than Mach One. The gem also sustained his natural ability to survive in the vacuum of space, and he could reach sub-light speeds once outside of atmosphere. Warlock can travel faster than the speed of light by locating naturally-forming wormholes and space warps, traveling down them to move across galaxies under his own power. He also was capable of molecular manipulation. By stimulating molecules he could generate intense heat, ignite or douse flames, project concussive pulses, liquefy or even totally atomize solid matter. While battling the Man-Beast and the New Men, he most often used his molecular power for controlled devolution, reverting the animal men back into mere animals. It was similarly useful for reversing the transformations of the Hulk-like Brute. Warlock could even perform advanced molecular reconfigurations, like sculpting sheer rock into a lifelike human statute, or reconstructing a suspension bridge that was broken in two.

Eventually, Warlock lost much of his power after realizing that the Soul Gem was like a karmic vampire, feeding endlessly off of the cosmic-spiritual energy he was channeling through it. It even became impossible for him to remove the gem from his brow, as it had coaxed enough of his soul into itself to render him near lifeless when separated from the jewel. Warlock's molecular powers were now completely gone, as he rededicated his natural energies to controlling the Soul Gem better. The Gem hungered for the souls of other beings, and could consume them in an instant, leaving his victims terminally incapacitated for all eternity. Warlock had to fight the Gem's attempts to influence him into using this power. Still, he gained new skills from probing the jewel's capabilities, such as the power to sense other people by their spiritual energy, and even temporarily revive the recently deceased so as to coax information out of them. Ultimately, Adam died and had his soul consumed by his own gem. Since being restored to the physical plane of existence, Adam Warlock has proven to have greater control over the Soul Gem than before. Using it since his resurrection, he has been able to focus cosmic energy as concussive bolts or protective shields, and can non-fatally manipulate the gem's own power to karmically disrupt the anima centers of other beings, causing madness or simple unconsciousness. Adam Warlock has purged all good and evil from his soul, and exists in a state of being that places him outside the realms of chaos and order. This gives him certain psychic senses and abilities, as well as a unique perspective on the universe which often surprises his opponents.

Warlock had later gone through another period of healing and resurrection through his cocooning, after his empathic senses responded to the death unleashed by the Annihilation War, forcing him into his recuperative state. He maintains his natural powers of superhuman strength, durability and flight, but mainly utilizes his newly discovered abilities as a quantum magician, able to manipulate energies that look and act like magic. The reason for a formerly science-based being would be suddenly manipulating arcane forces is unclear, although its uncertain if that is truly what Adam's power is. He can sense souls and spiritual energy, and his powers can be magnified dramatically based on the amount of spiritual energy he has to draw upon. He can also manipulate true magic as well, though, absorbing energy from spells cast around him, disrupting enchantments or turning them back on his attacker. His energies can be released as illumination, a concussive blast or "obliteration charm", create an immobilizing field to contain opponents, used to gather and return other forms of energy back at their source, or shaped around his fists to magnify the force of his blows. It can also be formed into a hollow sphere for protection and superluminal transport by jumping through subspace. He has also cast spells of healing or transmute matter, altering the elemental composition of large masses or performing simple tricks like conjuring up a uniform. Adam is sensitive to psychic and electromagnetic energy at this point. He was able to detect the presence of a nearby teleportation sequence the moment the Phalanx arrived, scan for the High Evolutionary's power trace to locate him, and analyze the energy manipulating properties of the quantum bands. He can also detect rifts in the fabric of space-time, the growing menace caused by the Fault and the breakdown of natural laws throughout the cosmos.