Captain Mar-Vell
STATISTICS
F: IN(40)
A: RM(30)
S: AM(50)
E: IN(40)
R: GD(10)
I: AM(50)
P: RM(30)
Health: 160
Karma: 90
Resources: PR (40)
Popularity: 50
BACKGROUND
Real Name: Mar-Vell
Occupation: Captain in the Kree Space Fleet, former astronomy assistant, adventurer, and "Protector Of The Universe"
Legal Status: Citizen of the Kree Empire, Exiled for treason
Identity: Public
Other Known Aliases: Doctor Walter Lawson
Place of Birth: City of Rad-Nam, planet Kree-Lar, Kree Galaxy (Greater Magellanic Cloud)
Marital Status: Single
Known Relatives: Theodore "Teddy" Altman (Dorek VIII, Hulkling, son); Genis-Vell (son, deceased); Phyla-Vell (Quasar, daughter, deceased); Minister Marvel (nephew, deceased)
Base of Operations: Mobile
Past Group Affiliations: Avengers (Posthumously); formerly Imperial Kree Army, Defenders for a Day, The Organization, Legion of the Unliving
Present Group Affiliation:
KNOWN POWERS:
Over the course of Mar-Vell's life he was, both artificially and cosmologically, augmented and evolved by a host of outside sources that all bolstered his natural Kree genetic structure. The first was by being empowered by cosmic entities, both the false entity called Zo and, later, the true entity named Eon. Subsequently, he was also empowered by such devices as the Psyche-Magnetron and the Nega-Bands.
Kree Physiology: Owing to his Kree physiology, Captain Mar-Vell possessed the natural attributes of the Kree race.
- Strength: Excellent (20); originally Mar-Vell’s strength was slightly above average for a heavy gravity world Kree.
- Resistance – poison, disease: Amazing (50) resistance to terrestrial toxins and disease.
- Invulnerability: Good (10) resistance to damage.
Augmented Physiology: Zo had greatly enhanced Mar-Vell's condition beyond his initial regular limits, making him strong enough to crush boulders, resist heavy impacts, and move even faster than ever before. Under the influence of Eon, his bodily frame was augmented further still.
- Strength & Endurance: Incredible (40); At Zo's temperance, Captain Mar-Vell's base strength level subsequently became sufficient for him to lift (press) at first 10 tons, later 15 tons
- Invulnerability: Excellent (20); Mar-Vell's tolerance for blunt trauma was also strengthened
Cosmic Awareness: Captain Mar-Vell's most impressive power was his "Cosmic Awareness," which he received from Eon. This ability allowed him to know exactly what he needed to know at any moment. This could range from what his current location was to discovering an opponent´s weakness. It was a Monstrous (75) power. This power alone made Captain Mar-Vell a force to be reckoned with, but its exact nature and scope have never been clearly defined. It might have been somewhat comparable to Spider-Man's "spider-sense" and to Mantis's awareness of psychic "vibrations," but its scope was far greater than either of those.
Energy Absorption: Dr. Benjamin Savannah's radiation treatment of Rick Jones had altered Mar-Vell's genetic structure in such a way, that not only could he absorb energy with Amazing (50) ability from outside sources but also convert and manipulate it for various uses. He eventually came to rely on solar power rather than the Nega-Bands.
- Healing – self: Amazing (50); Captain Marvel would eventually learn that he could channel solar/photonic energy through the Nega-Bands to accelerate his own recovery process.
Solar Energy Metabolism: Mar-Vell possessed the ability to metabolize solar energy and convert it for a variety of uses, including conversion of the light of the sun and stars into different forms of light and energy.
- Flight: Shift X (150) in an atmosphere, CL 3000 in space. While he retained his ability to fly, when doing so using solar power rather than the Nega-Bands, Mar-Vell would leave behind a glowing trail that resembled a star-field.
- Solar Sustenance: Mar-Vell had no need to eat or drink while exposed to a source of solar energy
.
- Photon Energy Blasts: Amazing (50) blasts of solar energy.
- Energy Strike: Mar-Vell could channel energy into his strikes dealing +1CS blunt damage.
EQUIPMENT:
Nega-Bands: Mar-Vell wore and used for much of his career the Kree Nega-Bands. While later in his career he used them less and less.
They focused the wearer’s psionic energies into increasing his Strength and physiology:
- Hyper Strength: Amazing (50); The bands boosted Mar-Vell’s strength +1cs.
- Invulnerability: Incredible (40) resistance to damage
- Flight: Remarkable (30) in an atmosphere, Cl 1000 in space.
- Life Support: Unearthly ability to survive the vacuum of space. While wearing the bands he had no need for food, water, air or sleep.
- Energy Blasts: Remarkable (30)
- Alter-Ego: The bands allow the wearer to trade places with one being wearing a similar pair in the negative zone. The two share a telepathic connection and may communicate across the dimensional boundaries.
WEAKNESS:
The Blackend: Mar-Vell was exposed to nerve gas contained in a canister stolen by Nitro, during their fight, he was able to seal the canister of the gas. but he could not avoid breathing in some of the nerve gas. The gas was carcinogenic and caused cancer cells to develop over time. (Kree use the medical term "Blackend" to refer to the disease known as "cancer" on Earth.) His Nega-Bands kept the disease at bay for many years. Rick Jones appealed to scientific heroes to find a cure for Mar-Vell's cancer, whereupon they found themselves uncomfortably realizing they could have made this kind of effort beforehand for others. The super-heroes did manage to develop a tunic that slowed down Mar-Vell's cancer by 20%, but after a long search for a cure for the Blackend the nerve gas had given him, in which he was unsuccessful, the disease took its toll upon him, and he died of it.
TALENTS: Astrogation; Espionage; Galactic Lore; Leadership; Martial Arts: A, C, D, E; Military (Kree); Pilot – space; Technology (Kree)
CONTACTS: Rick Jones, Carol Danvers, Eon, Avengers, Titan Eternals
HISTORY
Captain Mar-Vell was a member of the Kree, the alien humanoid warrior race which has forged an empire throughout the galaxy known as the Large Magellanic Cloud. More specifically, he was one of the so-called "Pink Kree." This Kree race has the same color skin as Caucasian Earth humans, to whom those Kree who belong to it are more biologically similar than blue Kree are. Their existence was the result of interbreeding of many of the original blue Kree race with humanoids of other worlds, and they now far outnumber the blue Kree, who, however, still dominate positions of wealth and governmental power in the Kree Empire.
The Supreme Intelligence, or "Supremor," the computerized fusion of great blue Kree minds of the past that governed the Kree Empire for millennia, had encouraged the interbreeding in question because of its realization that the original blue Kree race had reached an evolutionary dead end and hence, being composed of blue Kree minds which it absorbed into itself by means of the "Supremorization" process, it would evolve no farther either. Though it had believed that such interbreeding could have infused new life into the Kree gene pool, in recent years, it had come to believe that this was not having the desired result; the worst example was that it could not absorb pink Kree minds directly into itself.
Then the defeats of Kree Sentry #459 and Ronan the Accuser caused Kree attention to be turned towards the planet Earth, where the Inhumans had been spawned by Kree genetic experimentation on some of the early natives. The Supremor now saw the spontaneous emergences of Earth humans who were possessed of super-humanoid powers, and realized the human potential for development of nearly limitless psionic powers.
It formed a complex plan: Awaken, in an Earth human, the vast psionic power their species could evolve; Cause this Earth human's mind to be linked with that of a pink Kree, since, as mentioned above, they had greater biological similarity to Earth humans than blue Kree did; Forge a psionic link with these two minds, with an unusual plant, the "Millennia Bloom," aiding this, resulting in the Supremor acquiring almost limitless psionic powers but rendering both the pink Kree and the Earth human mindless and subject to the Supremor's full control; and, finally, destroy Earth, using the pink Kree and the Earth human as its agents, to prevent any Earth human with power matching its own from arising.
Other factors in its calculations involved treachery by Ronan and Zarek intended to overthrow it. After causing a near disaster by framing a pink Kree for treason against the Empire, which they would blame on the Supremor after they had killed the supposed traitor, they planned to supplant it as Kree Imperial ruler. The Supreme Intelligence planned, even as it intended to foil that conspiracy, have the pink Kree pawn whom the plotters selected for it be the very pink Kree whom it would have linked to the Earth human.
Seeking the pink Kree who would best meet these many requirements of its highly complex plan, the Supremor found him in Mar-Vell, a captain in the Kree Space Fleet who was already a renowned Kree Imperial war hero, despite his youth. He was then in a relationship with a nurse in the Kree Space Fleet, Una; the Supremor was aware that both of these possessed humane attitudes and sympathies, which had been suppressed in most other Kree in their educations. Moreover, the Supremor was aware of the unrequited love of, or rather the lust after, Una that Yon-Rogg, a colonel in the Kree Space Fleet, felt, and that he was ruthless enough to use any means of disposing of his rivals for her affections; Mar-Vell and Yon-Rogg despised each other as a direct result. The Supreme intelligence thus arranged to have a spy ship dispatched towards Earth, with Captain Mar-Vell serving aboard it, Colonel Yon-Rogg assigned as his commander, and Una serving as a nurse on their spy starship.
But soon after his arrival on Earth, Mar-Vell witnessed the death of Dr. Walter Lawson, a scientist on his way to his new assignment at Cape Canaveral, Florida, in an automobile accident. Coincidentally, Lawson bore an astonishing resemblance to Mar-Vell, so the latter decided to pose as him, the better to study Earth human's progress towards developing means of space travel. While posing as Dr. Lawson, Mar-Vell first met the Cape's security chief, Carol Danvers, for whom he developed a special concern that, in time, caused him to experience love for her. Meanwhile, Kree Sentry #459, which the Fantastic Four had defeated, had been brought to the Cape for study, and Yon-Rogg, hoping that it would destroy Mar-Vell, re-activated it from his starship. Mar-Vell publicly appeared in his green Kree helmet and green-trimmed sky blue uniform to fight the Sentry, which he succeeded in defeating. Onlookers, hearing the Sentry call him by name, believed him to be a new Earth-born superhuman adventurer named "Captain Marvel" and acclaimed him as a hero.
Over the succeeding months, as Ronan, Zarek, and the Supreme Intelligence had all secretly planned, Mar-Vell's sympathy for the people of Earth grew increasingly stronger, and on many occasions, he surreptitiously subverted orders from Yon-Rogg and Ronan that would bring harm to Earth people if obeyed. Finally Yon-Rogg caught Mar-Vell in direct disobedience of an order from the Empire's Supreme Council, and Ronan sentenced Mar-Vell to death by firing squad. Mar-Vell was about to be executed on Earth when Yon-Rogg's firing squad was attacked by a contingent of Aakon warriors. In the melee, Una was fatally wounded by a stray shot by an Aakon. Mar-Vell escaped on an Earth missile, and laid Una's corpse to rest on an asteroid. Yon-Rogg seized Mar-Vell's missile with a tractor beam and hurled it into hyperspace. As the Earth missile had no means of leaving hyperspace, it drifted there for 63 days, by which point Mar-Vell was reduced to an utter state of exhaustion and had lost consciousness.
In time, Ronan and Zarek brought the missile to a small world on the edge of the Kree Galaxy, and once there, they took the now unconscious Mar-Vell to a "multi-sensory illusion chamber" they had constructed. There they caused him to have the illusion that he encountered a godlike being named Zo, which gave him the power that he wanted to be able to destroy Yon-Rogg. The powers that Mar-Vell then received were not illusory: he became far stronger than other known Kree except for Ronan, and he gained the ability to cast sensory illusions and to teleport himself across even intergalactic distances. Mar-Vell briefly returned to Earth. However, Zo "appeared" to him again and ordered him to Hala to battle a gigantic generator of magnetic power, disguised as an idol of the Kree god Tam-Bor, which was capable of destroying the entire planet. Right after Mar-Vell found the generator, Ronan, carrying out his and Zarek's planned attempt to overthrow the Supremor as ruler of the Kree Empire, appeared and accused Mar-Vell of being its creator. Mar-Vell and Ronan fought, but Mar-Vell succeeded in destroying the generator. The Supreme Intelligence's personal "Super-Sentry" then appeared, drove off Ronan, and brought Mar-Vell to the chamber of the Supreme Intelligence, where Zarek stood as a captive. Suddenly Ronan teleported into the chamber and teleported out again with Zarek, leaving a spherical antimatter bomb behind. Though Mar-Vell leaped upon the sphere to save the Supreme Intelligence, the Supremor explained to him that its devices had neutralized it. The Supreme Intelligence honored Mar-Vell with a special uniform colored in red with black trim and gold decorations, and allowed him to retain his newly increased strength and abilities to fly unprotected through space and hyperspace, though he lost his powers to teleport himself and to cast illusions as a result. However, as soon as Mar-Vell left for space, he was suddenly bombarded with a wavelength of electromagnetic radiation and found himself blasted into the Negative Zone, an antimatter continuum alongside that of Earth.
Next, the Supreme Intelligence secretly enabled Mar-Vell to make telepathic contact with Richard "Rick" Jones, a youth who had previously been a companion to the Hulk, Captain America, and the original Avengers. At the time, Jones was attempting to replace James Buchanan "Bucky" Barnes as Captain America's partner, even going so far as to wear a duplication of Barnes's special outfit as Bucky. He then did not know that Captain America's greatest enemy, the Red Skull, had recently employed a "Cosmic Cube" to transpose his and the real Captain America's minds into each other's bodies. The Red Skull, in Captain America's body, gave Jones a brush-off that angered the youth, and he abandoned Avengers Mansion in a huff. It was then that Mar-Vell's image, disguised as Captain America's, lured Jones to a hidden and abandoned Kree base on Earth, where he had Jones slip on a pair of "Nega-Bands" around his wrists; owing to their unique properties, the bands promptly shrank to fit Jones's wrists, for which, up to then, they had been too large. Mar-Vell then appeared to Jones in his true form and had Jones strike the nega-bands together above his own head. The result of Jones doing so was that he and Mar-Vell exchanged places: Mar-Vell was instantly teleported to Earth, and Jones, his body surrounded by a protective aura that allowed him to survive, was just as instantly teleported into the Negative Zone. As long as they wore the bands, Mar-Vell and Jones were in total telepathic contact; thus, the Supreme Intelligence had created the psychic link it sought between an Earth human and a pink Kree. The nega-bands remained on Earth on the wrists of whichever of the two, Mar-Vell or Jones, was on Earth at the time. Hence Mar-Vell could return to the Negative Zone by striking the bands together above his own head, thereby returning Jones to Earth.
Mar-Vell soon discovered that he could only remain on Earth for brief periods of time; if he stayed a total of three hours or used enough energy to consume three hours(as he once did against the Hulk), he and Jones would exchange places automatically. This meant that it was Jones who spent most of the time on Earth. However, he was usually willing to exchange places with Mar-Vell at intervals.
The conflict with Yon-Rogg resolved; the origin of Ms. Marvel
Soon after becoming linked with Jones, Mar-Vell confronted Yon-Rogg, who had abducted Carol Danvers as a hostage to use against him. Mar-Vell defeated Yon-Rogg, who died when a nearby Kree device exploded. But in the course of this fight, Danvers was bombarded with radiation from a Kree Psyche-Magnetron, which caused her to develop a half-Kree physiology that was similar to Mar-Vell's own; using the super-human powers she had accidentally acquired by this means, Danvers later became the first costumed adventurer known as Ms. Marvel. Sometime later, Mar-Vell used the Fantastic Four's machine that created a doorway into the Negative Zone to transport Jones out of the Zone, so that they both then existed in the Earth dimension simultaneously and separately.
It was at this point that Ronan, who had been imprisoned along with Zarek, now broke free and seized control of the Kree Imperial government. Almost immediately afterward, war broke out between the Kree and Skrull Empires; this war directly involved the Avengers. Eventually, the Supreme Intelligence contacted Rick Jones and awakened his latent psionic powers. Jones used them to paralyze the entire Skrull Space Fleet as well as Ronan and his forces, thereby ending the "Kree-Skrull War" that had resulted and allowing the Supreme Intelligence to return to power. The Supreme Intelligence then robbed Jones of his power, leaving the youth exhausted and lying on the point of death. As the Supreme Intelligence had planned, Mar-Vell again linked himself to Jones, in the same manner as before, so that his own life force would restore Jones to health.
Mar-Vell returned to Earth, where he discovered that because of the Supreme Intelligence having stripped him of his latent psionic powers, Jones's body had lost its ability to contain both his own life force and Mar-Vell's. Jones was bombarded with a form of electromagnetic radiation by Professor Benjamin Savannah, which had two effects. The first of these was that Jones's body regained its ability to contain both his and Mar-Vell's life forces. The second of these was that Mar-Vell himself acquired the power to absorb solar energy and use it for flight, strength, and firing bolts of force. Unfortunately, Savannah himself was killed just after administering this radiation treatment to Jones.
Soon afterward, Mar-Vell became embroiled in fighting Thanos and his plans for destroying all life in the universe. Mar-Vell was teleported to the presence of the extraterrestrial being called Eon, which had been created thousands of years before to watch over the evolution of super-human beings on Earth. Eon induced Mar-Vell to reject the Kree's love of warfare entirely, and to reach inner peace. Eon then granted Mar-Vell a psionic ability called "cosmic awareness," whose exact nature and scope were not clearly defined, and designated him as "Protector of the Universe." Thanks to these changes in himself, Captain Mar-Vell became the primary force in bringing about Thanos's defeat.
But Mar-Vell's next encounter was the one that ultimately led directly to his own death. For in it, Mar-Vell faced off against the criminal Robert Hunter, who had acquired the power to explode his own body at will and later re-integrate himself physically without being harmed, and who called himself Nitro. Just before he and Mar-Vell fought, Nitro had stolen a canister of a powerful nerve gas. During the fight between the two, a leak developed in the canister of gas, and even though Mar-Vell used his high strength level to seal the canister, he could not avoid breathing in some of the nerve gas himself, and it caused him to collapse. Nitro had lost their fight, and Mar-Vell himself seemed to recover fully afterwards. Unfortunately for Mar-Vell, however, as he was eventually to learn, the nerve gas also had the side effect and after-effect of carcinogenesis, the causation of cancer.
As time passed, Mar-Vell and Jones learned that they could both exist in the Earth dimension simultaneously by concentrating on the nega-bands. However, to maximize Mar-Vell's power when necessary, they would still merge. The Supreme Inelligence, as per its true plans (described above) for them, orchestrated events so as to force Jones and Mar-Vell to share the power of the nega-bands and then, as the Supremor, challenged them in battle at the same time, intending to defeat them in time for the "Millennia Bloom" to ravage their minds, reducing both of them to mindless soldiers whom the Intelligence would use to destroy Earth, so that no Terrestrial could ever arise with power matching its own, and absorb Jones's potential. But its plans were foiled when Jones activated the Intelligence's ship's weapons systems to trigger a solar flare from Hala. The Intelligence was forced to divert all of its energy into the planetary shields, leaving it and all of the Kree powerless and unconscious.
After Mar-Vell passed too closely to a black hole, Jones was again trapped in the Negative Zone. Mar-Vell and Jones lost their shared ability to communicate with each other through the bands, and neither of them could last longer than nine hours in the Zone at a time. Mar-Vell managed to solve this problem during a battle with the Super-Adaptoid, tricking the robot into mimicking the nega-bands and then striking them together above its own head, which dispatched the Adaptoid to the Negative Zone and returned Jones to Earth, freed of his dependence on Mar-Vell.
But finally, and tragically, the lung cancer ("Blackend" in Kree medical terminology) that the nerve gas he had breathed in, during his fight against Robert "Nitro" Hunter, had afflicted Mar-Vell with took its toll upon him, his efforts to find a cure for it having failed. Mar-Vell relocated to Titan, a moon of Saturn, on which he spent his last days and where he died, surrounded on his deathbed by his by-then lover Elysius of Titan, Jones, the Avengers (who accepted him into their ranks on an honorary and posthumous basis), and various other friends. He was even awarded the Royal Skrull Medal of Valor, brought to him by General Zedrao.
During the Chaos War event, Mar-Vell was one of the deceased Avengers resurrected from the dead due to a weakening in the veil between life and death. Alongside several other Avengers, he faced off against minions of the Japanese god Amatsu-Mikaboshi and former Avengers foes Grim Reaper and Nekra while working to save the living Avengers who, due to Nightmare's earlier defeat, had been left in a comatose state. Mar-Vell ultimately re-sacrificed his life to enable the Swordsman and Yellowjacket to escape.
Most recently, during the war between the Avengers and the X-Men, Captain Mar-Vell was again resurrected by the Kree Empire using the M'Kraan Crystal to unite and protect all of the Kree against the Phoenix Force. This plan was orchestrated by the Minister Marvel, the nephew of Mar-Vell, and by his son, in order to clear his family name. Mar-Vell himself was brainwashed, along with all the other Kree and everyone powered by Kree energies, into believing that the Phoenix would bring their salvation. The Vision, a synthezoid created by Ultron from the remains of the by-then destroyed first Human Torch who had then betrayed his own creator and joined the Avengers, managed to free Mar-Vell and the other Kree from the illusion, but too late to evacuate the planet, as the Phoenix drew ever closer to Hala. Mar-Vell realized that the Phoenix was coming to claim the portion of its power that had been used to resurrect him the second time and still resided within him. He re-sacrificed himself to save Hala, and the Phoenix departed for Earth. Mar-Vell's corpse later landed on a desert planet and, having been touched by the Phoenix, sprouted the first plant life on the planet.