Species
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Acanti
Acanti
Ancient whale like species which peacefully wandered through space. Then the Brood got hold of them and turned them into living starships and food.
- And I Must Scream: The fate of an Acanti under Brood control is this two-fold. Firstly, the Brood it carries eat the Acanti from the inside out, slowly devouring it to death over a period of years. Secondly, the Brood force the gentle creature to transport them to new worlds to spread the Brood's reign of corruption and murder, an added psychological torment. And all the while, the Acanti is unable to do anything to resist its orders or expel the parasites from its bodies.
- Living Ship: The Acanti are living creatures used as spaceships by the Brood.
- Sapient Ship: Despite being treated as mere vehicles, the Acanti are easily as intelligent as their Brood "masters".
- Space Whale: The Acanti are giant piscine-looking creatures that move through the void of space as if it were water, and evoke many traits of whales, particularly communicating with hauntingly beautiful "songs" and being Gentle Giants.
Alpha Centaurians
Alpha Centaurians
A species from the planet Alpha Centauri.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: They're all shades of blue.
- Oh, My Gods!: The Alpha Centaurians follow a religious belief in the "Circle of Life" (no, not that one).
- Roboteching: The forge their arrows with a unique, sound-sensitive metal that allows them to use whistles to redirect arrows in mid-flight without losing velocity.
- Rubber-Forehead Aliens: Alpha Centaurians look like blue humans with giant fins on their head.
- Space Elves: Sometimes, though they're as willing to travel in space as any other species. They just tend to use bows and arrows as weapons.
Aspirants
Aspirants
The dark counterparts to the Celestials, prone to destroying all life they encounter.
- Abusive Precursors: Unlike the Celestials, who operate by an odd morality but are ultimately good, the Aspirants cared little for their creations, seeking the approval of the First Firmament first and foremost in their industrious worship of him.
- Arc Welding: The Ultimates squared ties together the Aspirants, mentioned during Kieron Gillen's run on Iron Man with the Dark Celestials of Matt Fraction's Defenders, along with a throwaway line from an issue of Grant Morrison's Marvel Boy.
- Dark Is Evil: Where the regular Celestials are a variety of bright colors, these guys are generally black with white or red lines.
- Great Offscreen War: Two of them. First was the Celestial War between the Celestials and the Aspirants, which included the creation of the Godkiller Armor. However, the armor would be stripped for parts, which led into a civil war between the Aspirants, which let the Celestials recover to turn the tide.
- I Have Many Names: They're known as the Aspirants, Dark Celestials or the Astro-Gods.
- Meaningful Name: They were name Aspirants by the First Firmament, likely because of their aspirations to create in his name and influence.
- Omnicidal Maniac: They want to destroy all other forms of life. This is out of devotion to the First Firmament, as the Celestials wanted their creations to evolve and the universe to change out of their scope. The First Firmament saw this as sacrilege.
- Powered by a Forsaken Child: According to Marvel Boy, their hops across universes are powered by acts of genocide.
Badoon
Badoon
A reptilian race living in the Milky Way Galaxy. In the here-and-now, they're generally considered a joke species by the big empires, but in a few thousand years, the Badoon will be one of the greatest threats to the cosmos imaginable.
- Aliens Are Bastards: Xenophobic lizards that want to kill everyone who isn't them, and have a tendency to nail people to tables and turn them into zombie-monsters (and if they're lucky, those people are dead first).
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: The first time they appeared in Silver Surfer, the Brother Royal and his army swore blind to Norrin that all those nasty stories he'd heard about them simply weren't true. The Badoon just want to spread civilization everywhere they go, honest! Seconds later a human girl runs in screaming about how they're planning to invade, having experimented on her to facilitate that, before she's shot in the back.
- Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Male Badoon are ugly-as-sin lizard monsters. Female Badoon, not so much. The females also have hair (and, for some reason, breasts).
- Bystander Syndrome: The Sisterhood of the Badoon were quite content to stay on their homeworld while the men went out and did whatever, but only because they never knew what the Brotherhood were up to, assuming the men were pacifistic like them, and they weren't terribly interested in going off-world. They were put out to learn the truth.
- Child by Rape: Due to the way in which Badoon reproductive drives work, no Badoon are ever conceived willingly.
- The Dreaded: Even the Silver Surfer, no stranger to unsettling tales, said he'd heard many unpleasant tales of the Badoon.
- Elite Mooks: The Monster of the Badoon, a giant bruiser (which may or may not be a souped-up Zom) capable of throwing down with Marvel's heavier hitters.
- From Nobody to Nightmare: The Badoon as a species are older than the Kree and the Skrull, but for most of their history were primitive swamp-dwellers. That changed in the 20th century, when they finally figured out technology. Up until around 2008, most of the universe thought the Badoon were just relatively harmless jerks. Then they started testing Zoms on people. The Badoon of the 31st century have a tendency to very nearly wipe out mankind, and at least one version of events has them nearly wipe out everyone else, too.
- Mars Needs Women: The Badoon's hatred for all non-Badoon has one apparent exception, in human women, who they will take for "entertainment".
- Night of the Living Mooks: Zoms, Badoon shock-troops when they don't feel like using their own goons. Original flavor Zoms were simply lobotomised humans. The ones met in 2008 are made from people the Badoon have killed.
- Omnicidal Maniac: Anything that isn't a Badoon is their enemy. At least one timeline in Guardians of the Galaxy shows that if the Badoon get a chance to kill everyone else, they'll take it.
- Sore Loser: The Badoon of Earth-691 steamroll through, conquer and enslave humanity in response to the Silver Surfer defeating them a thousand years before. Now there's a grudge.
- Unwitting Pawn: Another of Immortus's many pawns in his plan to prevent humanity becoming a space conquering empire.
- Walking Shirtless Scene: Standard issue for Badoon guys is usually a pair of undies and nothing else. That some Badoon think they're amazingly beautiful might have something to do with this.
- We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future: Earth-691's Brotherhood of the Badoon conquered mankind and put the ones they didn't wipe out to work, often in hazardous conditions which would kill them in short order anyway.
Beyonders
Beyonders
The Beyonders are a mysterious omnipotent race from another plane of existence, for whom the Marvel multiverse is simply a lab for them to conduct experiments upon. Like the original Beyonder, they are godlike entities who exist outside of space and time. They have been carefully plotting to erase the Marvel multiverse. However, sabotage from the mysterious interloper known as Rabum Alal results in their plan backfiring, causing universes to collide with each other. These "incursions" are the ongoing crisis explored throughout The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman) before culminating in the epic crossover event, Secret Wars (2015). Defenders: Beyond revealed that they were created by the Celestials to maintain the Multiverse, and their attempt to destroy it was done in an attempt to prevent a looming threat.
- Always a Bigger Fish: The Beyonder who was behind the original Secret Wars events is revealed to be considered a mere child unit among their ranks.
- Alternate Company Equivalent: To DC's The Super-Celestials/Hands. Otherworldly beings that come from the Void Between the Worlds and are Always a Bigger Fish to all other cosmic beings.
- Also to DC's Imps since their most famous member, The Beyonder is a Great Gazoo who likes to use his powers to mess with heroes on Earth.
- Always a Bigger Fish: Higher up the cosmic chain than the likes of Galactus or the personifications. With the Phoenix, it's a little zigzagged; a fight between one Beyonder and the Phoenix in regular space would be a draw at best. In the White Hot Room, it'll win.
- Ambiguous Situation: At the last issue of Loki: Agent of Asgard, the titular character and their friend Verity run into Those Who Sit Above In Shadow... who a few issues prior had used the catchphrase of the Beyonder. Towards the end of the issue, Loki suggests they might've been Those Who Sit Above resurrected in the Final Incursion, or some Beyonders running from Doom, but no-one gets confirmation either way, beyond Loki shrugging it as a "nice suggestion for the science crowd".
- Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: Murdering or exploiting fellow Beyonders is strictly taboo, and one of the only rules in existence they hold sacred.
- Arc Welding:
- 2022's Defenders: Beyond reveals them to be the Omega Council from Matt Fraction's Defenders run.
- Venom (2021) reveals that they are counterparts to the King in Black: where the Beyonders maintain every universe from the outside, a King in Black works on one universe from within.
- Asshole Victim: In Avengers Beyond, many of them are hunted down and killed by the Lost One, their very first victim and also their creator whose power they stole for their own.
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Prester John was said to be an original member of the Omega Council in Matt Fraction's Defenders, which due to the above retcon would make him a Beyonder.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: They are nigh-completely outside of typical human mindsets, and see nothing wrong with annihilating an entire multiverse as an experiment. The only one of their kind who does is The Beyonder, and even then it took some time to get there, and it's clear his mindset is still just as alien.
- Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu: It is possible to kill them, just difficult. The Avengers team that goes after them gets near wiped out to a man just trying to take out two. Doom's effort is more successful, but at the tiny cost of accidentally wiping out what little multiverse hadn't already been trashed to begin with.
- Catchphrase: Tend to introduce themselves with a "we are from beyond".
- Conservation of Ninjutsu: Despite supposedly being an entire race akin to the Beyonder, they don't demonstrate as impressive omnipotence. The Beyonder established his power by wiping out a galaxy, which even Doctor Doom admitted required power beyond measure. These Beyonders can be killed (albeit with great difficulty) by mortals.
- Deader than Dead: The Lost One killing and reabsorbing the power they stole from him is one of the surefire ways to kill them outright.
- Fighting a Shadow: As seen in Defenders: Beyond, any form they take to interact with mortals can be killed momentarily, but the real Beyonder will be fine, if a little sore. Blue Marvel makes one explode, and a few pages later it's seen reconstituted and nursing a sore arm.
- Foil: As above, so below. The Ewing run on Venom reveals Beyonders have their counterpart in the form of the Onyx King. Where the Beyonders only operate from a distance, preferring subtle manipulations, the Onyx King operates within the multiverse, on the "factory floor", as it were.
- A Form You Are Comfortable With: As beings from outside our reality, they don't exactly have a defined shape. The Beyonder took human form because he was inadvertently shaped by Molecule Man, and then picking up random human thoughts, so he looks like a guy in a leisure suit with a jheri curl. The ones Thor and Hyperion fought took on bizarre looking forms, apparently the closest they could approximate.
- Generic Doomsday Villain: In The Avengers (Jonathan Hickman), they're ludicrously all-powerful beings who create universes, and now want to blow everything everywhere up because they're bored. Everything about them is delivered in second-hand exposition, they only make two flesh and blood appearances, and then Doctor Doom kills the whole lot of 'em. Off-screen.
- Greater-Scope Paragon: Their Concordance Engines are the source of the Enigma Force, also known as the Uni-Power and God of Light, the thing that grants Captain Universe their power. They're also this for most of Marvel as a whole. The Concordance Engines manipulates reality to increase the probability of certain heroes and individuals obtaining their powers. Explaining why there are so many specific superpowered heroes and villains throughout the multiverse.
- Greater-Scope Villain: The "debaser" Beyonders behind the Beyond Corporation, for Nextwave. They messed with the memories of the team and created the events of the series, but never came near the team.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: The Beyonders planted a version of Molecule Man in every universe with the goal of seeing them detonate their home universes upon their deaths. Doctor Doom turns their plan against them, first by killing the Molecule Men prematurely, and later by outright destroying the Beyonders themselves with a massive bomb made out of Molecule Men.
- I Have Many Names: The Beyonders, the Ivory Kings, the White Lords from Wild Space, The Omega Council, among other mythical epithets.
- Informed Attribute: Owen Reece describes them as being "curious as cats", but they don't show a lot of curiosity, just all-consuming apathy and malice - it's possible that they were originally curious, but got bored.
- Light Is Not Good: They call themselves "Ivory Kings" and in addition to all the meddling they do to the cosmos to further their own ends, it transpires in Avengers Beyond that they stole most of their power from their creator Cal-Horra who used to be an example of Light Is Good before this betrayal and his subsequent imprisonment caused him to go so mad with hatred that he can barely think of anything else besides killing Beyonders.
- Man of Kryptonite: The 2022 Defenders: Beyond explains how they were able to kill the Celestials; the Celestials made them strong enough to do so, just in case. They just never expected they actually would. Especially since the reason they killed them wasn't for the same reason to why they were made.
- Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: Aside from their alien morality, being multi-dimensional beings Beyonders quite often just don't do very well being down in the squalid little hothouse humans mockingly call "reality". It tends to make them mad.
- Not So Invincible After All: Rabum Alal proves that even gods can be killed.
- Omnicidal Maniac: It takes a special kind of mentality to decide to blow up all existence, murdering anyone who tries to stop you, just because you're bored. Although it later turned out to not be their actual reason.
- Precursors: They're purported to be the ones who've shaped the entire Marvel multiverse. Defenders: Beyond clarifies this a little; since the time of the Second Multiverse they've worked from their higher-dimensional home to keep the Multiverse in working order.
- Reality Warper: The Beyonder from the first Secret Wars was a mere child by their standards and to him, the fabric of the Marvel universe may as well have been silly putty.
- Retcon: Defenders changes their motivation of omnicidal genocide from malice to enforcing cosmic duty in an attempt to prevent something worse.
- Smug Super: When Eddie reacts to learning about them with a "My God", the Eventuality's response suggests they think highly of themselves.Eventuality: Yes. They really think they are.
- Token Evil Teammate: The rogue "Debaser-Class" Beyonders, who you might know better as the Beyond Corporation. Unlike their companions who are only interested in research and hold no real enmity towards mortals, these Beyonders take sadistic pleasure in screwing with ordinary people and messing with reality just because it's fun.
- Weaksauce Weakness: Their main handicap is despite their power they are entirely linear, and have no way of fighting it.
- The Worf Effect: They murder the Living Tribunal, followed by every last incarnation of Eternity, Infinity, the Celestials, and every other abstract entity found in every universe. In spite of their insane feats, they are surprisingly not invulnerable. Starbrand was able to kill one Beyonder with a self-destructing energy blast, or at least its physical avatar.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Blowing up everything was an attempt to prevent something called "the Dominion". Afterwards, they figured it was a failed experiment.
The Brethren
An opposite force to the Eternals, created by the Celestials to cleanse worlds of life, only for their creators to lose track of the idea.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: They haven't really reappeared as a concept since their introductory arc in Avengers.
- Evil Counterpart: To the Eternals. While the Eternals are meant to support and encourage life, the Brethren do the exact opposite.
- Gone Horribly Right: Amazingly, they didn't actually turn against the Celestials. Rather, the Celestials just got bored and let them wander off to do whatever.
- Omnicidal Maniac: They were designed to wipe out all life on a planet, and are filled with a desire to do just that. Once they were let off the leash, they wandered the universe killing anything they found.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Collector found and captured the whole lot of them. He eventually let them out to kill humanity, and therefore boost their rarity value. This did not end well for anyone.
Brood
Brood
The Marvel Universe's resident Xenomorph Xeroxes, the Brood are a particularly nasty parasitic Hive Mind who often come into conflict with the X-Men and Captain Marvel. One of the very first apex predator species of the universe, the Brood collectively follow the desires of their Queen, which typically happen to be only one thing - to consume all other life in existence.
- Always Chaotic Evil: For the most part. While exceptional individuals exist, by and large Brood are sadistic by nature and take a particular enjoyment from the terror their infection inflicts upon their hosts.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Brood Queen is usually massive and, as a boss in video games, tends to be so big she fills the screen.
- Bee People: The Brood have a civilization based on typical communal insect societies, in which the Queens are the absolute rulers and the drones do all the work unthinkingly. However, queens have no particular allegiance to one another.
- Beware My Stinger Tail: As any kid who grew up in The '90s and owned their action figure knows, the Brood all come with these standard issue.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Full-grown Brood are large enough for a human being to ride, and their queen gets even bigger.
- Body Horror: They inflict this on whoever they've given a Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong to. Rather than bursting out of the body like Xenomorphs do, they assimilate it, turning it into a Brood from the inside out.
- Bug War: An inevitable consequence of being Bee People. Whenever two queens exist in proximity to one another, the Brood usually get consumed by Enemy Civil War, a weakness which the X-Men have exploited on at least one occasion.
- Compressed Adaptation: X-Men 2: Clone Wars for the Sega Genesis pretty much uses the Brood interchangeably with the Phalanx.
- Conflict Killer: Early in human history the Brood launched an attack on Earth, which was thwarted by an alliance between Apocalypse and the period's chosen Moon Knight.
- Corrupted Character Copy: The Brood were a corrupted character copy of the xenomorph monster from Alien, taking what the film presented as a wild animal following its reproductive and survival instincts and turning it into an entire society built around exploitation and torture of other species whose leaders not only force the masses to partake in but force them to enjoy it. The Brood were so effective that aspects of them actually got copied back into the original monster for Alien's sequels. However, Planet Hulk shows that despite their reproductive method being problematic for other species, Brood isolated from the main society can be perfectly decent individuals otherwise. Far more agreeable than the original monster could ever be when left to its own devices.
- Diabolus ex Nihilo: The Brood apparently had their own homeworld in our dimension. Curiously enough, though, in the Ultimate Marvel universe they have appeared in the Mindscape, the home dimension of Sleepwalker, along with that universe's version of the Shadow King.
- Face Full of Alien Wing-Wong: Their method of propagating their race is this, furthering their Xenomorph parallels.
- Fighting from the Inside: Individuals with ample Heroic Willpower can resist being subsumed by the mental if not physical parts of the transformation. Professor X was able to regain control of himself, as were Ghost Rider and Wolverine (who did had the benefits of their mystic biology and healing factors respectively).
- Final Boss: The Brood Queen is the closest thing to one that exists in X-Men 2: Clone Wars. She preludes the final fight against the Phalanx clones, and she's by far the largest boss in the game.
- For the Evulz
- X-Men/Brood: Day of Wrath gave them a Freudian Excuse: they're just so terrified of extinction that they'll stop at nothing to make more Brood, and unfortunately for the rest of the universe that entails...
- Freudian Excuse: X-Men/Brood: Day of Wrath explains that they're just so terrified of extinction that they'll stop at nothing to make more Brood, and unfortunately for the rest of the universe that entails...
- Hive Caste System: Brood have the traditional "worker, drone, queen" caste system usually found in fictional aliens of this type.
- Hive Mind: They use this to pass the information taken from their hosts between each other and on to their queen, meaning newborn Brood know everything every adult member of their race knows.
- Kick the Dog: To drive home how evil the Brood were, a species of Space Whale aliens were introduced called the Acanti. It was explained that the Brood had hunted these gentle stellar giants to the point of extinction, hollowing them out to serve as living starships.
- Living Weapon: For most of their history the Brood's origins have been kept deliberately vague, but one storyline revealed that they were actually an artificial species created by the Kree to destroy the Shi'ar.
- Made of Explodium: The Brood Queen, at least in X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse.
- Mind Rape: The Brood can absorb the memories, knowledge and abilities of their hosts, even as they erase the host's personality and take control of the body. This may possibly have a connection to their presence in the Mindscape, as noted above. And then there's what they do to the Acanti: stealing the soul of the Acanti species, keeping it trapped inside the dead 'Prophet-Singer'. Thankfully, the X-Men and Binary intervened, destroying the old Prophet-Singer and allowing a new one to free the Acanti.
- Mooks: The Brood were originally introduced as generic subordinates for Deathbird, "literally the most horrible thing I could think of" according to artist Dave Cockrum.
- My Species Doth Protest Too Much: No-Name of the Warbound and Broo of the The Jean Grey School for Higher Learning are two present-day examples of "benign" Brood. There's also a similar group that exists in Bishop's timeline.
- Necessarily Evil: As bad as the Brood is, there's something far worse in the 616 universe and thanks to the Annihilation Wave, the Brood's home planet was destroyed, allowing these dangerous entities to wreak havoc across galaxies without the Brood to keep them in check.
- Nicknaming the Enemy: Wolverine labelled the Brood 'sleazoids', a nickname that has stuck among those friendly with the clawed Canuck.
- The Power of Love: Early in the first run of New Mutants Professor X was revealed to have been infested with a Brood Queen egg and over the course of the story was transformed completely into a Brood. He was able to regain control and begged for a Mercy Kill (which Wolverine was very willing to give), but the other X-Men refused to give up on their mentor and ultimately a new body was grown for Xavier at the order of his Shi'ar lover Lilandra. In later stories, this trope is explicitly cited as the reason why Chuck is still alive.
- Restraining Bolt: The King Egg, which is actually a device created by the Kree to make sure the Brood never Turned Against Their Masters. It's eventually (and accidentally) eaten by Broo, turning him into the absolute monarch of the Brood and more or less reforming the species.
- Scary Dogmatic Aliens: The classical 'conqueror' subtype that is driven by both biology and theology to roam the cosmos subjugating everything they can to their will.
- Virtue Is Weakness: The Brood hate and detest empathy and friendship, the known "Mutant Brood" are born with empathy, mutant Brood are quickly eliminated by normal Brood, they see love, empathy and friendship as a virus or a deadly disease that must be eradicated, as these mutant Brood are seen as a threat to Brood society. The only empathic Brood allowed to live would be; No-Name of the Warbound and Broo.
- The Virus: The 'Slaver Virus', a synthetic virus the Brood use on prey species they do not or can not infest such as the Acanti. The virus destroys the higher cognitive functions of its victim's minds, turning them into mindless husks that the Brood can then control freely.
- Xenomorph Xerox: They are a species of wasp-like insectoid telepathic aliens with razor-sharp fangs and elongated heads, and reproduce by parasitizing hosts — the resulting offspring even inheriting whatever powers their host had. They even have a Queen whose head-crest strongly resembles that of a Xenomorph Queen (though amusingly, the Brood Queen was introduced four years before Aliens came out).
- You Don't Look Like You: Weirdly, despite the Brood making an unnamed appearance as generic Mooks in the first Mojo story in the 1990s X-Men Cartoon, the episode "Love In Vain" features the Brood with a new name — "The Colony" — and a physical redesign that makes them look largely like Lizard Folk (with some bug elements) wearing cybernetic Combat Tentacles harnesses, similar to that used by Doctor Octopus.
- Your Size May Vary: The Brood Queen's size seems to depend on who is drawing her. In the original Claremont stories, she was barely larger than any of her children. After Claremont left, stories started featuring bigger Brood Queens, starting with her appearance as a villain in Ghost Rider.
Builders
Builders
Bug-like aliens, among the oldest in existence, who like to uplift promising species. Or did, at any rate.
- Abusive Precursors: What they've become. Arrogant, demanding, and thoughtlessly destructive.
- Benevolent Precursors: What they started as, but that was a long, long time ago. Though for what it's worth, they did try to stop the Beyonders. Didn't work, and didn't help, but they tried.
- Cargo Cult: They worshipped the Enigma Force, Captain Universe, as their mother goddess.
- Dimensional Traveler: They freely travel the multiverse, to the point that they set up waypoint beacons in the Superflow to organize travel between universes.
- Killer Robot: Not them, but their Aleph servants, which are designed to raze worlds found unsuitable. Unfortunately, most Alephs shown seem to be maniacally obsessed with the destroying part.
- Murder Is the Best Solution: On learning Earth-616 was the focal point of the Beyonders' plans, they decided to make a beeline for it, killing anyone and anything that stood in their way, never once bothering to try and explain why they were doing this.
- Neglectful Precursors: They developed the glyphs of New Universe and Newuniversal fame, but they also never bothered leaving behind instruction manuals for all the paranormals the White Events create, leading to far too many destructive cases of How Do I Shot Web? for the people suddenly given superpowers at random.
- Paper Tiger: They talk a mildly impressive game (the whole "we created you" spiel), but catch them in a fair fight, and they're squishy enough that an angry Asgardian with a hammer can kill them with ease. After Infinity, Black Swan reveals they're not even big players in the multiverse, being confined to a mere few thousand realities.
Celestials
Celestials
Enigmatic entities, travelling the universe, evaluating species according to strange and nigh-inexplicable rules that only they seem to understand.
- Abusive Precursors: At their worst, they'll annihilate entire planets for no readily apparent reason.
- Ancient Astronauts: Occasionally, if they find a sufficiently suitable planet, they'll tinker with the locals, creating Eternals and Deviants. Earth's one of those planets, as is Skrullos.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: While general scale tends to fluctuate with them, even at their smaller sizes they're huge.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: They might exterminate all life on a planet... or they might just give it a fresh coat of paint. They operate according to some code which they don't feel any need to share with anyone else.
- Breakout Character: Of all the characters from Eternals, the Celestials have gotten the most exposure since.
- Grew Beyond Their Programming: It's why they turned away from the First Firmament in the first place. In the current multiverse, their current manager the Fulcrum also wishes this for them, and praises the Dreaming Celestial for doing so.
- Didn't Think This Through: When creating the Beyonders, the Celestials made them powerful enough to kill even them as a sort of failsafe in case another Celestial War happened. This bit them and literally everybody and everything else in existence in the asses when the Beyonders decided to destroy the multiverse one day.
- Might Makes Right: As Hawkeye points out during Judgment Day, it's moot whether they could justify their arcane moral standards to "lower lifeforms", because they have the unassailable power to impose and enforce it either way.
- Racial Remnant: According to Kieron Gillen's run on Iron Man, the Celestials of the modern day are actually greatly reduced from how many they used to have, after a war with their sibling-species, the Aspirants.
- Secretly Selfish: It's implied that at least on some occasions that their genocide of certain species is motivated by securing their own safety. Either a species is so warlike to be considered disruptive to their work or powerful enough to be a threat to hinder it anyway when they come knocking.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: The most notable example from Marvel. They also provide the page's picture.
- Strange-Syntax Speaker: On the occasions they do speak, they tend to use different meaning/definition of words.
- Time Abyss: They're older than the entire multiverse. And the multiverse before that, and the multiverse before that.
- Turned Against Their Masters:
- The first Celestials were created by the First Firmament, the very first universe to exist. Then they started creating life, which it was against.
- And then the Beyonders were this to them, as they were created as obscenely omnipotent in case another Celestial War happened, but then Secret Wars (2015) happened, the Beyonders decided to destroy the multiverse as an experiment, and then they wiped out their creators along with all the other cosmic entities.
- The Voiceless: Normally. If a Celestial is speaking, that's usually a very bad sign.
- The Worf Effect: Ever since the mid-00s, the Celestials have taken a massive pounding, power-wise. Formerly so completely unstoppable that even a super-powered Odin couldn't scratch their thumb, numerous stories have been written showing them getting slaughtered to show how dangerous the latest villain du jour is, including species who previously were shown as unable to get their attention.
Chitauri
Chitauri
A militaristic hive-mind species who only came into prominence in the last few years, galactically speaking. Known for their aggression and cruelty.
- Canon Immigrant: They're based on their versions from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who are loosely (very loosely) based on the versions from the Ultimate Universe, making it a two-fold immigration.
- Decomposite Character: As with their MCU versions, these Chitauri have nothing to do with the Skrulls like their Ultimate versions.
- Depending on the Writer: Having been introduced in 2012, their exact deal tends to shift between writers with wildly varying ideas. Sometimes they're mindless berserkers, sometimes they're henchminions. Sometimes they're slaving expansionists. However, a consistent detail is that they're the bad guys.
- Fantastic Racism: One thing that's pretty consistent about them, they don't like other races.
- Hive Mind: The lowest ranking Chitauri aren't even, strictly speaking, alive in any sense, just following the edicts of the higher castes. And the queens rule the proverbial roost.
- Zerg Rush: Secret Empire has the entire Chitauri species rushing Earth en-masse to recover their captive queens, not caring about the giant impregnable barrier Earth has, even as they slam against it and die in the untold millions repeatedly.
Cotati
Cotati
Plant aliens who developed alongside the Kree. Early Skrull explorers found them, and staged a competition to see which they would uplift. The Cotati won, which the Kree took very poorly. Some Cotati survived their response, creating the Priests of Pama.
- The Dog Bites Back: In Empyre the Cotati returned under the leadership of Quoi, the son of Mantis, and began a war against the Kree/Skrull Alliance and all animal-based life in the universe, out of a misplaced desire for revenge against their oppressors.
- Fantastic Racism: During their crusades they refer to animal life with disdain.
- Green Thumb: Being as they are plants. Of course, if they get upset, they can use this to kill people in incredibly horrific ways.
- Organic Technology: All their technology, which includes starships and stargates, is plant based.
- Plant Aliens: Plant aliens that look humanoid, though if they stay in one place too long they might turn tree-ish.
D'Bari
D'Bari
Alien species who were all but wiped out when the Dark Phoenix destroyed their home-planet.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: They're green, which combined with their Alien Hair makes them look... well, like human broccoli, and even led to them being called broccoli people in-universe.
- Throw the Dog a Bone: It eventually turned out some of them survived.
Deviants
Deviants
The Deviants are an evolutionary offshoot of humanity created by the Celestials' experiments on prehistoric humans around a million years ago.
See Deviants
Dire Wraiths
Dire Wraiths
Vicious, magic-using shapeshifters. Sworn enemies of the Galadorian Space Knights. An offshoot of the Skrulls.
- Always Chaotic Evil: Well, almost always. We did meet one Wraith who tried to become a Defector from Decadence, but the other Wraiths killed him for it. As sorcerers who draw their strength from the supernatually evil Dark Nebula, most Wraiths gleefully embrace evil as an abstract concept, and are nauseatingly cruel not just to other races but even to each other.
- Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Since Marvel no longer owns the rights to them, or Rom, or the Spaceknights, don't expect to see these guys any time soon (unless an artist sneaks them in somewhere).
- Death World: The sorcery-based Dark Nebula, described by Rom as a "seething system of negative suns, shadowed planets, and cold, forbidding ice-worlds", but the kicker is the Dire Wraith homeworld of Wraithworld. Orbiting a black sun of sorcerous energies, which can actually split portions of itself off as soul-devouring shadowy dragon-forms called "Deathwings", Wraithworld itself is a barren world of ash-thick skies, rivers of molten metal, and pouring hypercorrosive acid rain. The Dark Nebula is so deadly that when Galactus tried to eat it in issue #27 of the Rom: Spaceknight comic, the Dark Nebula tried to eat Galactus back. It ultimately ended up in a draw.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: In their last major appearance, in Annihilators, they're saved from being forcibly turned into Skrulls, and manage to make peace with Galador, in a way that saves them from extinction.
- Eat Brain for Memories: Female Dire Wraiths have the ability to steal knowledge from their victims by using a spiked tongue to extract their living brain, which makes them better at infiltration than their male counterparts.
- Even Evil Has Standards: How bad are the Dire Wraiths? The Skrulls consider these beings the scum of the universe, hate them even more than the Kree and even aid Earth in attacking a Wraith base. It certainly helps that the Dire Wraiths are, in fact, a Skrull offshoot descended from an exiled cult of sorcerers, so there's historical bad blood between them helping said animosity.
- Face Stealer: Female Dire Wraiths prefer to kill existing people and hijack their identity, whereas males simply invent their own identity.
- Freakiness Shame: Male Dire Wraiths don't like their default appearance, and use their shapeshifting to hide it.
- Kill and Replace: Operated via this. They don't need to, they just do. Weirdly, they preferred not to do this in their earliest appearances, so chalk that up to Early-Installment Weirdness.
- Put on a Bus to Hell: The end of their war on Earth had them all banished into Limbo for decades. In their return in Annihilators, it turns out this began slowly killing them, with any who were remotely strong getting snatched away by Immortus to use as minions.
- Science Versus Magic: Male Dire Wraiths preferred science. Female Dire Wraiths prefer magic. That said, these aren't as hardcoded as some examples; a female "Sci-Wraith" is a prominent villain in the Rom: Spaceknight comic, whilst the Half-Human Hybrid... Hybrid is both a male sorcerer and was trained by a cabal of male sorcerers.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: When Rom pursued them back to their homeworld, the Wraiths threw up their hands and legged it, rather than get banished into Limbo.
- Touched by Vorlons: Their differing appearance from the Skrulls is thanks to the Celestials tinkering with them.
- Writing Around Trademarks: When the race is brought back into prominence during an Inhumans arc, they're called the Direst wraiths. Because Marvel no longer owns their rights.
Eternals
Eternals
The Eternals of Earth are a humanoid race with great powers, created by the Celestials a million years ago, tasked with watching over the planet and keeping Deviant activity under control. Current continuity states that there are 100 of them, that no new Eternals are born, and that as long as Earth itself endures, Resurrective Immortality ensures that any who die are returned to life.
Several stories have also mentioned alien Eternals, created for similar purposes on other worlds, with appearances matching the races they watch over (e.g. Skrulls and Kree).
See Eternals
Humans
Humans
Humanity is the result of countless variation of earlier forms of beings and external influences.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Humans are very good at this. The first time we saw a Shi'ar ship approach Earth space, they weren't too concerned until they saw the planet had driven off Galactus. Twice. They immediately turned tail and ran, and that was in the 1970s.
- Eagleland: The depiction of America is usually a Type 1, but often can veer very heavily into Type 2.
- Fantastic Racism: A common problem with humans. They can't seem to get on with any of the species they share a planet with. Mutants seem to get it worst of all, but they're not wild about Inhumans or Atlanteans either.
- Freudian Excuse: Humanity doesn't have a good opinion of aliens, but given how many of them try invading their planet, it's hard to blame them.
- Humans Are Flawed: Yeah, a lot of focus is made about how the normal masses are easily manipulated, pretty racist towards mutants, short-sighted, and prone to turning on the guys who have risked their lives to protect them, plus supervillain origin stories had to come from somewhere. However, humanity is also capable of great good. This is where superheroes came from, but several stories have shown civilians step up and do the right thing.
- Humans Are Morons: A lot of stories have large swathes of humanity easily swayed or turned against their own heroes at the drop of a hat, quite often on flimsy or outright non-existent evidence.
- Humans Are Warriors: Why Immortus manipulated so much history. If mankind got out into space as an expansionist empire, no-one would be able to stop them. Even in the here and now, humanity has an odd habit of fighting the seemingly unstoppable and winning.
- Insignificant Little Blue Planet: Earth is supposedly an out-of-the-way planet in the ass-end of Nowhere, Space, but its strategic position is enough for the Kree, Shi'ar and Skrulls to think it's worth taking over.
- Puny Earthlings: Repeatedly subverted. Humanity as a species doesn't get any of the cool abilities that many aliens do, and your average human won't last long in a fight against them. On the other hand, individual humans constantly gain superpowers through everything from random accidents to X-Gene mutations to using their own scientific or magical talents to create everything from Super Serums to Powered Armor.
- Touched by Vorlons: First the Celestials tinkered with early man, creating what would become the Deviants and Eternals. Some time later, some Kree scientists tinkered with them as well, giving rise to the Inhumans.
- Underestimating Badassery: Many aliens species have assumed that humans are pushovers, ripe for conquest. They are wrong. A surprising amount of invasion fleets tend to limp away from Earth.
- Ungrateful Bastard: American humans, at the very least, seem to be incapable of holding any respect for the people who saved them from the latest supervillain, killer robot or alien invasion of the week. Any instance where this happened tends to be forgotten the second a superhero makes a mistake.
- Wowing Cthulhu: Humanity, in the space of a few years, has managed to gain the attention and sometimes respect, even friendship, of some very powerful beings.
Inhumans
Inhumans
The result of Kree experimentation on Homo Neanderthalensis using Terrigen Mist, The Inhumans are a race of super powered beings who live in isolation and do not trust humans.
See The Inhumans
Klyntar
Klyntar
The Klyntar are an alien race that feeds on the emotions of its host. Also referred to as the Synoptic or the Symbian. They exist in a near liquid form.
See Symbiotes
Kree
Kronans
Kronans
AKA "the Stone Men from Saturn." Hulking silicon-based life-forms with conical heads. They're every bit as big and tough as you'd expect living statues to be. Not actually from Saturn, they did have a base on one of Saturn's moons years ago, from which they launched an invasion of Earth which was repelled by Thor. These days, the best known Kronan around is The Incredible Hulk's buddy Korg.
- Homosexual Reproduction: Since Kronans are all male, there's no other way to describe their means of reproducing.
- One-Gender Race: There are only male Kronans, and they reproduce by holding hands with another Kronan (or another stone-based sentient lifeform) in lava for three days, after which a baby Kronan will be produced.
- Retcon: Originally, they were from Saturn, but when that turned out to be a little completely impossible, they turned out to be from somewhere else instead.
Martians
Martians
Creatures who settled the planet Mars, and who regard our world with envious eyes, slowly but surely drawing their plans against us.
- Alien Invasion: It's their main thing. So far, they haven't actually tried it in the regular Marvel continuity yet, but they're certainly thinking about it. The fact it never takes is part of the reason why.
- Aliens Are Bastards: Aliens with intelligences vast and cool and unsympathetic to humans, who in several futures invade Earth to take it for their own. That said, Killraven did establish that they're not Always Chaotic Evil, and given the right chance could possibly learn a different way...
- Big Bad: Of Killraven.
- Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Budding off, like trees and fruit. This also means the typical Martian has no emotional connection to its progenitor or vice-versa.
- Canon Immigrant: Based on the Martians from War of the Worlds. But without the weakness to earth germs, making them a more dangerous threat.
- Evil Will Fail: While Killraven ended unceremoniously with their invasion still pretty entrenched, Defenders and then Guardians of the Galaxy revealed mankind did eventually get rid of the Martians.
- In Spite of a Nail: During the Wisdom miniseries, Pete Wisdom learns that the Martians have determined that no matter what they do, Jonathan Killraven turns up to oppose them. They're trying to take steps to prevent that, Skynet-style (which, of course, just gives Killraven more reason to oppose them in the first place, so...)
- Starfish Aliens: They look like giant, beaked tentacled blob... things.
- Taught by Experience: No poxy Earth viruses to keep them down this time. Didn't stop mankind trying to use biological weapons against them, which went really, really wrong.
- Tripod Terror: Their main war machine, as is expected.
- Unwitting Pawn: Immortus is responsible for their second invasion, as part of a scheme to prevent mankind getting to space.
Mutants
Mutants
The Children of the Atom, mutants are individuals in the Marvel Universe who are born with an X-Gene that grants them superhuman abilities. Mutants mark the next step in human evolution, known as Homo Superior.
See Mutants
Phalanx
Phalanx
A techno-organic race that spreads through living creatures on a planet via a transmode virus until all life has been assimilated and all energy drained from the planet.
- Body Horror: If Phalanx tech comes anywhere near Kvtch tech, the results are not pretty. The Phalanx immediately and painfully turn into a Babel Spire to summon a Technarx.
- Phalanx are capable of reshaping their techno-organic bodies into any configuration they wish, and will often physically fuse together to create particularly large (and nightmarish) constructions. Picture a hybrid between the Thing and a Borg.
- Brainwashed and Crazy: Being made Select. You've still got a measure of free-will, but it's geared towards serving the Phalanx. Some characters can even be pissed about having it done to them, while still being a-okay with it.
- Expy: They do have some resemblance to the Borg of Star Trek fame... only more evil.
- Food Chain of Evil: The Phalanx "feed" via the use of a similar yet slightly-weaker race of technological aliens, known as the Technarchy. The Technarchy spread the transmode virus to infect organic races, converting them into more Phalanx instances, which in turn are driven to infect as many people as possible. Once a planet has been completely converted, the Technarch then summons the Phalanx to arrive... and the Phalanx then devours the Technarchy and all other life on the planet as fuel.
- This is taken to new extremes in House of X/Powers of X, which reveals that the Phalanx themselves are mere emissaries to a being called The Dominion - an immensely powerful reality-spanning singularity whose AI brains are so big that they take the form of black holes.
- Getting Smilies Painted on Your Soul: Ask anyone who's been Selected, and they'll tell you how great it feels to be part of the Phalanx collective. They're certainly not screaming on the inside, no sirree. They just feel so happy. All day. Every day. Forever. Why won't you just let them make you happy, too?
- Retcon: Originally, the Phalanx started off as a horrific side-effect of Technarx feeding. Jonathan Hickman's X-Men changes it so the Technarx answer to the Phalanx.
- Rogues' Gallery Transplant: They started off, by and large, as X-Men baddies. Annihilation: Conquest bumps them up to cosmic level threats. X-Men (2019) split the difference and made them both cosmic threats and X-Men baddies.
- Took a Level in Badass: Under Jonathan Hickman's pen in the Dawn of X titles.
- Villain Override: Ultron effortlessly seized control and brainwashed the whole lot of them in moments.
Progenitors
Progenitors
Strange beings who travel the cosmos, seeking aliens races, giving them super-powers for less than benevolent reasons.
- Adaptive Ability: They'll send classes with the appropriate abilities for each threat. During an encounter with the Guardians of the Galaxy, Gamora is a little annoyed that the team only merits napalm barf.
- A God I Am Not: Despite their being essentially god-like, they don't see themselves as such. They don't even know what the word means.
- Ambiguous Robots: How they look, and act. The reveal of how they recreate raises even more questions about how they got started. Certainly, they're not robots... well, not entirely robots. They can be hacked by someone who knows what they're doing, but can also be cloned, and have enough biological parts to feel pain or be incapacitated when someone hits them hard enough.
- Ancient Astronauts: For the Kree, much like the Kree were for the Inhumans... but with even less benevolent goals.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: They think weirdly, let's put it like that. For starters, they don't really get the concept of love. Or hate. The Inhumans blowing up one of their moons and killing a few of their own didn't actually anger them. It just made them curious about a potential resource to exploit. Deconstructed because common emotions are just as incomprehensible to them as they are to us, leaving them easily manipulated psychically to attack each other or just outright self destruct when overloaded with feelings. They're also surprisingly easy to manipulate mundanely to be baited into harvesting any random planet.
- Body Horror: How they reproduce. They find species they dosed with primagenesis and harvest them to create new Progenitor types. And there's just a bit, just the tiniest bit, of the original beings still in there.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Progenitors tend not to like it when people touch their stuff. Setting foot on their turf is grounds for them to destroy whoever's responsible.
- Hijacked by Ganon: X-Men: Red reveals that at some point they were brought under the control of Orbis Stellaris, who is a spade-marked, decrepit clone of Nathanial Essex.
- Hive Mind: The Progenitors all share the same mind, more or less.
- Know When to Fold Them:
- After Medusa killed the ones they sent to harvest the Inhumans, they decided the best thing to do was stay away from Earth forever. Smart move.
- When the Guardians of the Galaxy kick their behinds, Nova tells them to stay the hell away from the Kree and Skrull. The Progenitor he's scolding agrees.
- Lack of Empathy: All they see in other species is whatever they can use, and that's mostly just the superpowers. Anything else is to be crushed and discarded.
- Mad Scientist: Essentially their interactions with other species. They play with syringes on entire planets, then come back later to harvest any results beneficial to their needs.
- Magitek: They look like robots, but there's some magic in there, enough for Hulkling's space sword to do a number on them.
- Off with His Head!: Their main floating head is a weak-spot. Take it off and the whole body dies.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: During Guardians of the Galaxy (2020), they attack the Kree-Skrull alliance. Everyone involved notes how suspicious the timing is, given the Progenitors don't pay attention to galactic politics, and figure someone tipped them off. Doctor Doom swears blind it wasn't him, and there's every possibility this is actually true. X-Men: Red implies very heavily that it was, in fact, Abigail Brand.
- Squishy Wizard: Overlord-class Progenitors may be extremely powerful, but they're not made for actual fighting.
- Strong as They Need to Be: Thanks to their adaptive abilities, the Progenitors are often just strong enough to put up a good threat for a few pages, kill a powerhouse like Cable, then be taken down.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: Al Ewing intended to be somewhere between the Kree and the Celestials. They keep entire moons penned up and hidden from sight.
- Was Once a Man: All of them used to be an alien species, until they were harvested by the Progenitors.
- What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: They understand basic emotion so little, love causes several of them to explode.
- Worthless Yellow Rocks: They grow primagen, of which the Inhuman's terrigenesis is a cheap knock-off. This stuff boosts an Inhuman's power to insane levels and induces immortality, and the Progenitors... use it as batteries.
Shi'ar
Shi'ar
The Shi'ar are an alien race of avian descent and one of the most powerful empires in space.
See Shi'ar
Skrulls
Skrulls
The Skrulls are a breed of green-skinned humanoids from the Andromeda galaxy. They are a fierce warrior race who carved for themselves the oldest surviving empire in the Universe’s history.
See Skrulls
Spartoi
Spartoi
Humanoid aliens from the planet Spartax, probably most famous for providing the universe with half of Peter Jason Quill.
- "Ass" in Ambassador: The Spartoi's main voice in politics tended to be King J'son, who was 100% of a dick, being loud, arrogant and completely racist. And that was before he became a crazed supervillain.
- Boisterous Weakling: The Spartoi have an empire, but their war record isn't so great. When J'son tries throwing his weight around near some dumb humans (specifically, Captain America), the Supreme Intelligence smacks him down by pointing out mankind's success record against the Kree far outstrips the Spartoi, before inviting Steve's opinion.
- Depending on the Writer: Are they the Spartoi or the Spartax? Depends who you ask.
- Feudal Future: They're a space-faring race, still ruled by a king. At least one version of them in the 31st century is still ruled by a king.
- Human Aliens: They look exactly like humans, without even rubber foreheads or different eye colours (well, usually).
Technarx
Mechanical lifeforms who feed on "life-glow", the essence of living beings, travelling the universe to sate their endless hunger.
- Abusive Alien Parents: A siredam will gladly try to eat its progeny.
- Cast from Lifespan: Sometimes a Technarx can loan life-glow to another lifeform, but it'll drain their reserves.
- Ghost Planet: Kvtch is pretty much uninhabited, the Technarx having headed out to the starts looking for more things to eat.
- Kaiju: Some fully grown Technarx, who mix being enormous with utterly mindless into the mix.
- Life Drain: How they eat, infecting lifeforms with the Transmode Virus and sucking the life-energy out of them, leaving behind dust
- Mechanical Abomination: A full-grown Technarx is an energy-draining mechanical thing capable of wiping out entire solar systems. The best way to fight them is to run.
Watchers
Watchers
The Watchers are some of the oldest beings in the universe. They remain perched throughout the universe using their advanced technology to record all events without interfering.
- All-Powerful Bystander: They watch. It's what they do, after what happened with the Prosilicans they dare not do anything else. Sometimes they're so dedicated to this they won't even save their own lives.
- Brought Down to Normal: At the end of the Reckoning War, all their cosmic abilities get funneled into Uatu, reducing their abilities to just their technology while he is elevated to a cosmic being (and subsequently more motivated not to interfere than ever, since he's now too powerful).
- Crystal Spires and Togas: Their aesthetic. Every Watcher seen dresses in a toga.
- My Greatest Failure: They shared nuclear secrets with the Prosilicans, which nearly resulted in the destruction of the universe. The Watchers had sworn an oath of non-interference as a result.
- Sufficiently Advanced Alien: They are practically the highest level a species can get without ascending to higher dimensions; capable of freely shapeshifting, casting planet wide illusions or throwing down with other cosmic heavyweights. These are abilities they've long since ingrained into themselves, and do not cover the sheer scope they're capable of with their technology.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Some adhere to their non-interference clause to the point that they'll work to disrupt the attempts of similarly powerful beings to affect less developed species. During the Reckoning War, they all go so radical that they imprison and torture the Watcher for trying to help stop the Proscilians, even though the entire universe is under threat and are their responsibility in the first place.
Xandarians
