Goddess (comics)
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| The Goddess | |
 The Goddess Art by Ron Lim |
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| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Infinity War #6 |
| Created by | Jim Starlin Ron Lim |
| In story information | |
| Alter ego | The Goddess |
| Team affiliations | The religious superheroes of Earth in the Marvel Universe |
The Goddess was the name assumed by the "feminine, self-aware" supposedly "good" aspect of Adam Warlock, subconsciously exiled from his psyche whilst he was in possession of the Infinity Gauntlet. Her appearance was almost certainly styled after Joan of Arc.
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[edit] Fictional character biography
The Goddess, along with her counterpart The Magus, was created while Adam Warlock was in brief possession of the Infinity Gauntlet; desiring to be a logical god, and not prone to judgment-impairing emotions, Warlock subconsciously expelled both good and evil from his soul, creating the beings The Goddess and The Magus respectively.[1]
Neither stayed inactive, and both would resurface. The first hint of The Goddess' existence came at the end of the Infinity War crossover, when it was revealed that an unknown woman had stolen the five Cosmic Containment Units in the Magus' possession. Thanos suspected the Goddess' existence and threat to the universe.[2]
When The Goddess made her appearance, reaching out to the heroes of Earth who were of a religious or spiritual persuasion as their would-be savior, she possessed 30 such Cosmic Cubes, gathered from a multitude of different realities, which she soon reformed into the enormous structure known as the Cosmic Egg. The Egg afforded the wielder a phenomenal amount of power, although it still fell short of the legendary Infinity Gauntlet, most notably in its lack of control over the soul. She recruited various heroes to join her in her mission to create peace throughout the universe, and created her base on Paradise Omega.[3]
From her base on the newly-reformed Counter-Earth, The Goddess used her Earth heroes and Cosmic Egg to declare holy war on a sinful universe; despite being the "good" portion of Adam Warlock's soul, she was a creature of extremes, and saw only extreme solutions to the problems she perceived; in this case, she decided at some point that the only way to remove all sin was to remove all sinners by blowing the Universe up. Using heavy telepathic emissions from the Egg, The Goddess slowly removed all crime, hate and war from everywhere across the galaxy, with seemingly the only ones unaffected being Earth's "heretical" heroes, and Uatu, the Watcher. She stopped Mister Fantastic, Iron Man, and the Vision from investigating her base on Paradise Omega.[4]
As the heroes plotted against the Goddess, Pip the Troll teleported into Paradise Omega and used the Cosmic Egg to temporarily change the Goddess into salt.[5]
Ultimately, it was Thanos of Titan, in conjunction with Warlock and the heretic heroes, who engineered the defeat of The Goddess. Believing she had triggered the celestial armageddon she had worked for, The Goddess was dismayed to learn that Warlock's spirit had communicated with the Egg, sending out an illusion that armageddon had been triggered, a fraction of a second before the real thing. This meant that The Goddess' plans were ruined; since her many universal followers now realized her intent, she could not generate the universal will needed to override the Egg's inbuilt safeguards regarding destruction.
The climax came in a showdown on the spiritual plane between The Goddess, the soul of Adam Warlock (now linked with the Cosmic Egg through his own machinations), Thanos (powered by Adam's Soul Gem, which he had been given for the duration of the conflict), and Professor X (catatonic, but with Thanos able to access his spirit on the spiritual plane). The Goddess evaded their attacks, but when she returned to the physical plane to utilise the Egg's energies against the heroes, she found that Adam Warlock had beaten her to it, taking control of the Egg long enough to stall her, during which period Thanos used the power of the Soul Gem to take her spirit within, to Soul World.
Within Soul World, The Goddess met with her counterpart, The Magus; the two made to battle, but it transpired that, as part-souls themselves, not only could they not interact with the other denizens of Soul World, but they could not even touch each other. As The Magus put it: "Even to each other we are as ghosts."
Over time, The Magus apparently escaped the Soul World. It is unclear at this point if the Goddess has escaped as well.
[edit] Powers and abilities
The Goddess is an artificially-created being whose body as certain cosmic energy receptive cells. She possesses superhuman strength and durability, and she has the ability manipulate cosmic energy for a variety of uncatalogued effects. She is known to possess the abilities of telepathy, cosmic awareness, and mind-control, and can fly under her own power at supersonic speed. She is also an accomplished self-taught philosopher, and a master planner and schemer.
Her powers are mostly unconfirmed, since all of the recorded actions of the Goddess were during her possession of the 30 Cosmic Cubes. Nevertheless, since she was able to gather the Cubes in the first place, a degree of personal power must be assumed, presumably similar to those shared by her "brothers" Warlock and Magus.
[edit] Equipment
The Goddess had gathered 30 Cosmic Containment Units (not all were shaped as cubes) from over a dozen realities, which are power objects containing powerful reality-changing energy-beings. She melded these units into the supremely-powerful Cosmic Egg, capable of reality manipulation on a massive scale - galactic at the least, judging by her intentions. Unlike the Infinity Gauntlet, however, the Egg could not affect the soul, and was possessed of inbuilt safeguards concerning massive destruction.
