Genis-Vell
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Genis-Vell, also known as Captain Marvel and Photon, is a fictional character, a superhero (and sometime anti-hero) in the Marvel Comics universe. He is the son of Mar-Vell, the first person to take the identity of "Captain Marvel" in the Marvel Universe. Genis-Vell would at one point take the title of "Captain Marvel" as well.
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[edit] Publication history
First appearing in Silver Surfer Annual #6, the character of Genis-vell takes the codename of "Legacy". He eventually becomes the wielder of his father's Nega-Bands, and in his early appearances he is portrayed as being psychologically immature due to his accelerated aging. He continues to be depicted as such in recurring appearances in the on-going Silver Surfer series (issues #91 and #110) as well as the Cosmic Powers miniseries.
Legacy was featured in a series titled Captain Marvel by writer Fabian Nicieza and artist Ed Benes. The series was abruptly cancelled after only six issues. The unpublished issues #7-12 were later summarised by Nicieza in a fill-in issue (#14) of Peter David's 2000 Captain Marvel series.
Legacy appeared in Avengers Unplugged #5 wherein he meets Monica Rambeau, the then-current bearer of the "Captain Marvel" title. Eventually, Monica cedes the title to Genis, and decides to adopt the codename "Photon" instead.
In an attempt to bolster Marvel Comics sales, the U-Decide campaign was launched in 2002. Although critically popular, sales for Captain Marvel were flagging. U-Decide was initiated as a contest between Captain Marvel, Marville (written by Bill Jemas) and Ultimate Adventures (written by Ron Zimmerman, who Jemas had claimed would be the next big writer at Marvel, though fans dissented), in which the comic that sold the most copies would remain while the others would be discontinued. In order to compete against the other two series, Captain Marvel was rebooted to issue number one, and Peter David, its head writer, took the book in a new direction. The Captain Marvel series won by a decidedly strong margin.
Eventually the Captain Marvel ongoing series was cancelled due to low sales. Peter David was given the chance to wrap up the plot in a single over-sized issue. He brought back the pastiche of the Endless and joked that Rick Jones could sense the impending end of the series via his "comics" awareness.
[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] Birth and early life
After the death of Mar-Vell, his lover Elysius decides to have a son. As one of the Eternals living on Titan, she uses the advanced technology of her race to impregnate herself with some of Mar-Vell's genetic material. Elysius seeks to protect her new son, Genis-Vell, from Mar-Vell's powerful enemies by taking him to a distant planet. There, she artificially ages him and implants false memories in his brain, making him believe that he had a natural childhood and that he is the son of Starfox.
[edit] Avengers Forever (the Destiny War)
When the Destiny Force resurfaces in Rick Jones for a second time (the first time occurring during the Kree-Skrull War), it triggers a time-spanning conflict known as the Destiny War. A motley crew of Avengers are gathered. Among them is a future version of Genis, now known as Captain Marvel. At the climax of the Destiny War, Rick Jones' life is in jeopardy, and the future Genis is forced to re-create the Nega-Band connection with Rick in order to save him. After the war, Rick returns to the current day and the Genis of the present finds himself unwillingly bonded with Jones, a process which triggers his latent Cosmic Awareness.
[edit] Bonded
Cover art by Wayne Faucher.
Rick and Genis spend a considerable time adventuring together, in an arrangement somewhat reminiscent of the one that existed between Genis's father, Mar-Vell, and Rick years before. During their time together, Mar-Vell and Rick exchanged places with each other between the regular universe and the Negative Zone and could hear each other's thoughts unaided.
Genis-Vell and Rick, however, alternate between the Microverse and the regular Marvel Universe and can not only hear each other's thoughts unaided but can also see each other in reflective surfaces or as red ghostly visions.
Whereas Mar-Vell and Rick formed a strong friendship during their time together, Genis-Vell and Rick have a much harder time getting along. Genis' alien (and immature) perspective make him unfathomable to Rick's jaded-sidekick sensibilities. Their ability to see and hear what the other is experiencing lead to awkward situations with Rick's wife, Marlo Chandler, and Genis's many amorous partners. Eventually, however, they become good friends.
[edit] Insanity
Genis, now known as Captain Marvel, is suddenly acting in an unpredictable and volatile fashion. It is revealed that the cause of his irrationality is the inability of Marv's finite brain to deal with the potentially infinite information generated by his Cosmic Awareness. Furthermore, foreseeing the potential outcome of any action shows Genis that all of the good he did resulted in just as much or more evil.
Genis goes on a self-destructive spiral, joining the Kree space navy, and eventually destroying the universe at the behest of Entropy and Epiphany. Captain Marvel also helps the two recreate the universe with a Last Thursdayism affect on the new universes population, although with several alterations. The Captain Marvel of the new universe had become the hero that the true Captain Marvel had always wanted to be. This Genis-Vell had never gone on the insane binge that resulted in the universe's destruction.
In the new universe, Genis's mother Elysius had never died. In fact, Genis's recreation of himself was such a success, that this Elysius genetically engineered another offspring with the DNA of herself and Mar-Vell: a daughter named Phyla-Vell. An ironic twist to this redemption results when the original Genis, seemingly cured of his insanity by Epiphany, re-enters the timestream: the original self "overwrites" the healthy, recreated self of the new reality. Reversing the incident which had caused him to snap, Genis finds the "new" future still embroiled in a galaxy-wide war. He promptly breaks down in insane laughter, transforming his red and blue costume into the Kree uniform once more in the process.
Despite Rick's ability to cause Genis great mental pain at the cost of similar pain to himself, Genis still continues to adventure with little regard to the consequences. He attempts to join the Asgardian gods, temporarily empowers a serial killer before arranging his death, and establishes rule over a race who had "saved" another. Genis also uses a rip in time for everyone, himself and Rick included, to meet two of their past selves. During the period, he gradually develops influence over Rick which finally ends into full-blown mind-control.
Genis orders Rick's death, while giving the Kree, Shi'ar and Skrull coalition arranged against him three days before he kills them all. In response, they call in a delegation of Titans - including the mother he still thinks dead.
Confused and enraged by the discrepancies of the new reality, he raises Rick from the dead using their bond, and leaves for Titan, with Elysius and Eros in pursuit. Elysius warns Titan of their impending arrival, and tells Phyla that the Captain Marvel title will now belong to her. When Genis arrives, he finds that all the other Titans are unreachable and out of phase with reality. Their elusiveness angers Marv further.
As Genis begins doubting his own perceptions of reality, Phyla makes her presence known, and he becomes further disoriented. The two fight, and Genis eventually gains the upper hand. Before he can hurt her too severely, Elysius and Eros intervene. In response, Captain Marvel opens a portal which sucks in Phyla, Eros, and Elysius. As Phyla is being sucked in, she forms an energy lasso and pulls Captain Marvel into the portal with them.
Now in a realm of different physical laws, the more experienced Eros, Elysius, Phyla, and even Rick Jones are able to overcome the less experienced mind of Captain Marvel, leaving him a crying heap. He then changes to a white and navy version of the costume which was first seen in the series, Avengers Forever. Although he swears to do good throughout the universe - a hallucination of Epiphany tells him that he is still insane - he just needs to be more subtle about it.
[edit] Odyssey
Genis sets up an office for his superheroing activities on Hyperion. Phyla drops by to mock their efforts, and they are interrupted by an alternate version of Marlo, who attacks Rick. Phyla tries to intervene but is promptly punched into orbit. Captain Marvel continues to fight and by the time Phyla returns, the alternate Marlo has deteriorated into nothing.
Captain Marvel travels through time to resolve the conflict with the future Marlo. Phyla takes the Earth-616 Marlo to Titan for better protection, where they are able to see the Magus attacking and badly injuring Moondragon. Via time portal, Captain Marvel reenters the present day while still in great anguish from being forced to swear to kill his son in the cradle as soon as he is born. Phyla tries to get him to confide in her but he refuses to tell her his thoughts.
[edit] Photon and the New Thunderbolts
Genis travels to Earth and joins the Thunderbolts. During this time, he develops an interest in Songbird.[1] The manipulations of the Purple Man cause Atlas to attack Genis in a rage, apparently killing him and throwing the body into the Hudson River. Though Genis would have recovered on his own, former Thunderbolt Baron Zemo uses a pair of alien moonstones to form a cocoon of energy, feeding him energy from the beginning and end of the universe to speed his recovery. When he emerges, he has absorbed the Nega Bands into his body.
Genis' subsequent adoption of the name "Photon" causes him to quarrel with Monica Rambeau, who had also called herself "Photon" and "Captain Marvel." In the end, Genis is allowed to use the name "Photon" and Monica decides to use the codename "Pulsar".
Finally, however, Zemo realises that his mistake of siphoning energy from the beginning and end of time created a link between Genis and the universe that threatens to end existence. Zemo explores all future timelines with the moonstones, but fails to find a way to save both Genis and the universe: In every possible future timeline, Genis destroys the universe. Genis is aware of this, but keeps trying to tune his cosmic awareness in order to find a way to prevent this from happening. Finally, in a fight with Zemo, Genis is defeated. Zemo traps Genis in a moment in time. He then uses a combination of Blackout's Darkforce powers and the moonstones to separate Genis into individual pieces, trapping them in separate, far-off parts of the Darkforce Dimension so that they cannot be reunited.
[edit] Powers and abilities
Thanks to his Titanian Eternal mother, Genis was more powerful than his father, although he still needed the Nega Bands to make full use of his abilities until Zemo made some adjustments to his body.
Initially, he could only use the Nega Bands for flight, energy blasts and transport to and from the Negative Zone. After his bonding with Rick, his latent Cosmic Awareness, inherited from his father, was activated. His link to another dimension was redirected from the Negative Zone to the Microverse.
After his bonding, he began to experiment more with his abilities. His experiments culminated in full access to his Cosmic Awareness to see things on a large scale. Originally, he had only used it for a localised focus which only allowed him to realize exactly what he needed to know. When his powers grew, he was promptly driven mad. While insane, he returned from the dead, raised Rick Jones from the dead (noting that he could only properly raise him because of their bond), puppeteered other dead bodies, created holograms, empowered an alien serial killer and manipulated his powers in many other ways.
After Zemo accidentally linked him to other areas of time, Genis absorbed the Nega Bands and developed teleportation-based powers that could transport him through both time and space.
Photon's fellow Thunderbolt, Dr. Chen Lu, the Radioactive Man, theorised that he could control the photons of which everything is composed, literally translating as large scale reality altering powers.
[edit] Toys
In 2006, Toy Biz released it's last wave of Marvel Legends action figures with Genis-Vell being released as a variant figure of his father Mar-Vell.
