FIREFROST
FIREFROST
Real Name: Shareen
Identity/Class:
Extraterrestrial (Moensien
race), extratemporal (billions of years in the future of Reality-81049) mutate;
active on Earth in modern era and circa 1952+
Occupation: Currently unrevealed;
former space explorer/life-seeker
Affiliations: Tania
Belinskaya (later Red Guardian and Starlight), Peggy Carter, Fantastic Four (Human Torch/Johnny Storm,
Invisible Girl (her alias at the time)/Susan Storm (now Sue Storm-Richards), Mr.
Fantastic/Reed Richards, Thing/Ben Grimm), Woodrow McCord, Howard Stark, Anton Vanko (later the Crimson Dynamo);
indirectly Mikhail Uriokovitch (later Ursa Major);
presumably Russian forces (including Igor);
members of Moensien race;
mutated by
extradimensional energy creatures;
formerly Ebon Seeker (Xanth);
Enemies: Hydra agents;
formerly Woodrow McCord
Known Relatives: Ebon Seeker (Xanth; former life mate)
Aliases: None (that I took note of)
Base of Operations: Unrevealed (last seen in Russia circa 1952 A.D.);
formerly a black hole;
formerly an unidentified portion of the universe;
formerly the planet Moensien in a region far distant from the
known galaxies billions of years in the relative future of Reality-81049
First Appearance: Fantastic Four I#229 (April, 1981)
Powers/Abilities: Shareen can move light and energy to warm, salve, and heal. She can also alter her form to some degree.
She can use her energies to create a ship able to travel interstellar distance, and presumably able to warp space, and/or travel across dimensions. She can transfer portions of her energies into other objects,
At least prior to her second escape from the black hole, Firefrost was a being of living light. She could at least originally travel through space unaided, and she presumably was effectively immortal, as well. Her light could dispel darkness as well as protect others from the Ebon Seeker's destructive energies. She spoke telepathically, but any other powers she possessed were not clearly displayed.
As Shareen, she had extensive education in science and philosophy.
Height: 5'6";
original height unrevealed
Weight: Presumably immaterial; original weight unrevealed (approximately
145 lbs.)
Eyes: White (with visible iris and black pupil)
Hair: White; original form did not possess any visible hair
Skin: None (white-glowing energy); (original form) green; (adopted human form) pink (Caucasian)
History:
(Fantastic Four I#230 (fb)) - Billions and billions of years in a far distant
sector of the universe in the future of Reality-81049, the Moensien race reached an evolutionary,
moral, scientific, and philosophical dead-end. The inhabitants had begun a slow
but inexorable decline into decadence and corruption. The Moensien Elders
realized the scientific means to restore their society was slipping from their
loosening grasp; they decided that hope for their world's revitalization could
be found only in contact -- and exchange of ideas, knowledge, and experience --
with other life, other planetary cultures and civilization.
Two native pilots, the lovers Xanth and Shareen, were chosen to explore space for other lifeforms with which to interact with and enrich their stagnant race. Two of the rare natives who still believed in the old ways, embracing progress and rejecting decadence, they were inculcated with the absolute necessity for success. Together they left their dying world behind, seeking new life with the hope and faith of youth.
They searched empty space for "forty solar years" before finally ending the doubt and hopelessness of age by finding evidence of life: a derelict ship -- a battered remnant of random encounters with the flotsam of space -- floating towards a black hole. Xanth was desperate not to lose the one thing they had finally found, and so he flew their ship into the black hole after the derelict, despite Shareen's warnings.
Their ships and their bodies were instantly disintegrated, but their minds lived on as they were pulled into the black hole. Inside the hole, their vaporized life-energies fused with the ships' dead matter as they were pulled deeper into the black hole's pipeline -- and there was fire and frost, blackness and blinding light...the ecstasy of agonies held for a flickering moment of forever. The vaporized life-energies tasted colors and saw sounds, felt strange odors and heard frozen visions of burning light.
Arriving at the heart of the black hole, the life-energies were met by swirling energy-beings of black light, who spoke to the new mass of arriving energy, whispering and cooing and buzzing deep in the consciousness -- perhaps in welcome, passing on the secrets of eternity -- or perhaps merely seeking to instill madness. The energy-beings infused what was/were Xanth and Shareen, violating them with their maddening, soundless voices. The life-force that had been Shareen listened to their voices, accepting their hissing, crackling messages of bliss and mania, and she was reborn as Firefrost, a creature of living light, knowing a peace beyond peace. The energy-beings told Firefrost how the universe's expansion since the "Big Bang" would eventually reverse and the universe would contract and eventually be swallowed up by a central black hole.
However, the life force that had been Xanth could not listen or comprehend, and was driven mad. He took on only the darker aspects of the black hole, which consumed him body, mind, and soul. Rejecting the voice of alien life -- precisely what he had sought for 40 years -- Xanth fled the dark light at the bleeding heart, and escaped out of the "opposite end" of the black hole, forsaking his Shareen.
Xanth emerged into Reality-616's universe, distant from the point in space from which he had entered it, and in the dim past, an unrevealed time period prior to the modern era. Maddened, he moved on with but one thought stirring his dark soul -- to complete his mission at any cost -- to find life. But his new form was like unto a black hole himself and, upon contact with a planet, his energy was pulled outward -- to begin destroying the planet even as the planet destroyed him. Upon the cataclysm of his death, he destroyed his first world...and then was reborn in the released energies of destruction...to continue seeking new life...to repeat the tragic process endlessly (allegedly a million times).
In addition, the black hole that re-created Xanth began expanding somehow, attempting to reclaim its escaped matter (both the Ebon Seeker and Firefrost), and threatening to bring about a premature end to the universe.
(Fantastic Four I#230 (fb) - BTS) - Shareen, now Firefrost, pursued her lover, known primarily as the Ebon Seeker, endlessly, attempting in vain to restore his sanity and put an end to the destruction.
(Fantastic Four I#229) - In recent years, Reed Richards used a
signal-pulser to send and receive a roving signal to help NASA locate a missing
communications satellite (see comments). The Ebon Seeker detected this
signal and followed it to Earth. His approach caused a temporary wave of
distortion across the planet. He landed in Manhattan, where his leaking
energy/matter
damaged and injured the materials and people around him. The
Fantastic Four attempted to stop him, but their powers failed to
harm him in the least. Mr. Fantastic used the signal-pulser to
lead him out into the sea to get him away from the city, but the
pulser was ultimately destroyed by Xanth's tendrils. The Ebon
Seeker spoke out, accusing them of using the signal-pulser as a
trap to draw him to Earth so it could kill him, after which he blasted
them into submission. Firefrost then arrived on Earth, protecting the heroes
while interacting with Xanth's potential victims for the first time.
(Fantastic Four I#230 - BTS) - Shareen told the Fantastic Four of her and Xanth's origins, explaining the threat not just to Earth, but to the entire universe.
(Fantastic Four I#230) - Richards theorized that if
they moved the Ebon Seeker into the Negative Zone, the energy drain on
him would be reversed, ending his cycle of destruction and rebirth.
While Richards prepared a containment field, the rest of the Fantastic
Four occupied the Ebon Seeker. Firefrost then appeared before the
Seeker; surprised that she had come down a planet for the first time,
the maddened Ebon Seeker suspected a trick and he pursued her,
threatening to destroy her. When they entered the containment field,
Reed transported a few blocks of Manhattan into
the antimatter Negative Zone, bringing the Ebon Seeker and Firefrost
with them. There, as Richards had planned, the
energy siphoning process was reversed, and Xanth was restored to
his full size, no longer bleeding off his life. Xanth could not
understand why his enemies had helped him, but in that moment of
clarity, Shareen was finally able to connect with him. She
explained how he had changed so drastically from his original form and
purpose, and that neither of them could exist anywhere outside of the
black hole anymore, nor could the cosmos survive if they did not return
there. She further convinced him that if he returned to the black hole
with her,
that he could accept the light energy and become a creature of
light like her. Xanth took Shareen's hand, and they returned to
the black hole, using a conduit in the Negative Zone.
Oh, and don't worry, Reed got the block of Manhattan back to Earth...but
that's another story (one you can find
here).
(Operation: S.I.N. #5 (fb) - BTS) - Shareen sought a brief escape from her life of eternal darkness.
(Operation: S.I.N. #4 (fb) - BTS) - Believing she could escape and hide, and wishing to feel her feet on solid ground and to feel the sun on her face, Shareen traveled to Earth, arriving in its relative past (circa 1952 A.D.) a ship...
(Operation: S.I.N. #5 (fb) - BTS) - ...formed out of her energy...
(Operation: S.I.N. #4 (fb) - BTS) - ...in
Siberia; she believed the site to be a wasteland and did not expect to
encounter people. She apparently joined the group of Russian scientists
conscripted into serving Hydra.
The energies of her escape from the black hole were detected by Hydra agents.
(Operation: S.I.N. #2 (fb) - BTS) - An older Russian named Pasha Antipov saw "a ghost ship that fell out of the sky in a shower of stars and diamonds" and "a witch made of pure light" who vanished into the forest and whose ship melted into the snow.
(Operation: S.I.N. #2 (fb) - BTS) <A month prior to the main story> - At a tavern, Pasha met Malcolm
McCord, an associate of Howard Stark who was tasked with keeping Earth
safe from extraterrestrial threats, and told him of the "ghost ship" and the "witch of light."
(Operation: S.I.N. #3 (fb) - BTS) <1952 A.D.> - The human-form Shareen accompanied Soviet scientist Anton Vanko, who was considered a criminal by his own government, who turned him over into custody of Hydra forces for unspecified payments. Anton never saw Shareen eat, instead feeding the rate under the table.
Hydra agents instructed Vanko and the others to identify the source of a mysterious energy they had detected.
(Operation: S.I.N. #4 (fb) - BTS) - Shareen worked with Vanko and the others, helping their efforts just enough so that she could stay with Anton: Helping just enough to keep him close to the solution but never quite getting there.
(Operation: S.I.N. #1 (fb) - BTS) - Investigating
Pasha's story, Malcolm McCord could only find an alien sphere (a beacon
to Shareen's ship). Questioning those nearby he found that people
either were not speaking about it, or they were telling "ghost stories
and baloney."
(Operation: S.I.N. #1 (fb) - BTS) - McCord requested Howard Stark meet him in Moscow.
(Operation: S.I.N. #1 (fb) - BTS) - Stark sent Peggy Carter a memo noting a mission involving aliens.
(Operation: S.I.N. #1 - BTS) - Stark recruited Carter to join him in Moscow, Russia. Making her way to Moscow on her own, Carter was met by Tania Belinskaya (who was seeking her father, imprisoned in a Russian gulag, and who had taken out the KGB agent assigned to meet Carter there.
After meeting up with Stark and Carter, McCord discussed the alien sphere, and Stark assessed it as potentially being a short-term beacon. Manipulating the sphere, Stark activated it, and an energy ship appeared above the city.
(Operation: S.I.N. #2 - BTS) - The energy ship released energy blasts that blew up some structures in Moscow.
(Operation: S.I.N. #2 (fb) - BTS) - Stark deactivated the beacon and placed it in his pocket, at which point the ship vanished. The group fled into an underground engine testing facility.
(Operation:
S.I.N. #2 - BTS) - Stark dreamed that he dropped the beacon and that a
young boy was incinerated by the ship when he picked up the beacon.
After McCord acquired a truck, his group fought their way through a Russian roadblock and then drove 10 hours north to a village to meet McCord's connection, Pasha. Although he was gone, a village woman who knew Pasha gave them shelter for the night. The woman told them of a giant bear, and McCord pursued and shot the bear, which reverted to the form of the young teen Mikhail Uriokovitch. The youth told them he knew what they were looking for and would show them tomorrow.
(Operation: S.I.N. #3 - BTS) - As they neared the facility, Stark crashed McCord's truck into a lake to avoid a herd of reindeer, and they continued to the location on foot. While the site seemed barren, Mikhail advised them to wait until morning.
(Operation: S.I.N. #3) - En route to a Hydra lab in a remote region of the USSR, Shareen told Anton that he was starting to look like his own grandfather and should eat more. She further told him that she needed very little, some water, and some sun would be a blessing. When Anton warned her against feeding the rat, she assured him that she was fattening it up so he could soon wear it as a boot with minimal modification.
When the Germans fatally shot Kalyakov, one of their best engineers, for collapsing in line, Shareen led Anton away to try to keep him out of trouble. Her eyes glowed mysteriously...
(Operation: S.I.N. #3 - BTS) - Meanwhile, at dawn's light, the ship became visible to Carter, McCord, Stark, Belinskaya and Uriokovitch, and -- with McCord standing atop the ursine Mikhail's shoulders -- McCord placed the alien beacon into the alien spaceship.
(Operation: S.I.N. #3) - Her hands glowing, Shareen realized what had happened.
(Operation: S.I.N. #3 - BTS) - After Stark and his associates entered the ship, Stark activated the ship, which was pulled on a course toward Shareen.
(Operation: S.I.N. #4 (fb) - BTS) - The activation of her ship allowed Xanth to locate Shareen. 
(Operation: S.I.N. #3) - When the portal in the Hydra base subsequently activated, Vanko worked to isolate the energy source, but Shareen told him to stop and fired a blast from her hands. As she began glowing, the Hydra agents aimed their guns at her, and she told them she did not know what they had been trying to do, but she assured them that they had not succeeded.
(Operation: S.I.N. #4) - As the Hydra agents denounced her as a traitor, Shareen noted that she now saw that they were never going to survive this place. As Vanko noted that the source of the energy was gaining mass, Xanth's voice was heard through the portal, and Shareen begged the others to let her go. As Xanth began to emerge from the portal, she lamented that he had found her.
Shareen's ship then crashed into the Hydra base, and Stark joined Vanko in trying to find a way to close the portal to prevent Xanth's emergence.
As Shareen hid under the rubble from a Hydra agent denouncing her as a saboteur, Peggy Carter shot the Hydra agent and greeted Shareen, who spoke to Xanth, trying to stop him. At Anton's query, she explained her past somewhat, noting that -- to save his planet -- she had agreed to stay with Xanth in the "Negative wastes...forever."
In response, Anton asked if she had been there before, but she told him, "No. Not before. And my escape, that was the first energy that was registered."
Noting how she had tried to keep Vanko and the others just short of the solution, she apologized and considered that she may have underestimated Anton's intelligence. She then apologized to the others and told them that Xanth's pursuit would only stop when she returned to him.
When the injured Tania collapsed, Shareen noted that she could move light and energy to warm, salve, and heal. Although she realized this may hasten Xanth's arrival, at Peggy's urging she told her to step back and she returned to her true form and then imbued Tania with energies that healed and revived her. After Tania thanked her, Shareen noted that if this was the only reason that she had come to be there, it was enough. Considering that she had been foolish to think things could be different than they were, Shareen prepared to depart, but the anti-alien McCord raised his weapon, intending to kill her.
(Operation: S.I.N. #5) - Carter and Stark stopped McCord from killing Shareen (who had returned to her more normal form), and when she resolved to return to Xanth, they and Anton insisted she would not. She told them that she had abandoned her one true love and that if he came to Earth again, he would destroy everything in his path. Peggy and Howard argued that the Ebon Seeker was not her beloved Xanth anymore but rather a mass of negative energy. Stark then convinced her to help him and Vanko, after which she explained that what the Ebon Seeker was saying was from another time and that he had said it over and over again as he was trapped in an infinite cycle of now and before and after.
Taking Vanko's hand, she told him that she did not want to leave him specifically, at which point Stark objected, not willing to allow the Soviets to maintain access to advanced alien technology.
Shareen clarified that the Ebon Seeker was mindless, his hunger held in check by the repetition of a half-remembered dream: He had no memory, no hope, and no love in him, and only the reassurance of her presence gave him a point on which to focus. After she further explained that her ship had been formed out of her energy, Peggy asked if her ship's energy could be used to fool the Ebon Seeker into believing he was with Shareen. When she noted that it likely would and suggested that they would not need the whole ship, just the power sphere out of its central console, Stark went into the ship and retrieved the power sphere.
As Soviet forces -- seeking to sever ties with Hydra -- assaulted the base, Stark delivered the power sphere to Vanko, who worked to isolate the portal's focal point, and Shareen placed her energies she later noted to be "her heart" into the sphere and then confirmed that it was ready. As Ebon Seekers' hand reached through the portal, Anton delivered the power sphere to it, and Shareen told him, "You have found me." Apparently accepting this as Shareen, Ebon Seeker's hand retracted and the portal reversed.
As the Soviet forces, led by Igor, then confronted the group, and Peggy
took a bullet in her left shoulder. Not wishing Shareen to expose her
true nature in front of the Soviets, Peggy declined her healing, but
the group otherwise stood down. They reluctantly allowed the Soviets to
take Tania into custody.
After Peggy promised to try to help Vanko, Shareen revealed that she had put her heart into the orb, and Peggy asked about her love for Vanko. When Shareen noted that Peggy gave her heart where it was needed, Peggy joking noted that she didn't have a heart, and Shareen told her that they were the same.
After Peggy told them to look after each other, Shareen joined Vanko when he noted that they were ready to return to the arms of Mother Russia's best laboratories. While Stark and McCord did not want to leave Shareen in the hands of the Soviets, they were greatly outnumbered and forced to allow this.
(Operation: S.I.N. #5 - BTS) - After clearing the base, the allegedly Russians "sterilized" the base (presumably destroying it).
(Operation: S.I.N. #5) - Shareen subsequently worked alongside Vanko in a Soviet laboratory.
(Operation: S.I.N. #5 - BTS) - Back in the USA, using what looked like the power sphere from Shareen's ship -- presumably indicating that there were two of them; or perhaps that the Ebon Seeker claimed the energy, but not the construct; or maybe it was the beacon rather than the power sphere (although it looked more like the latter), or... -- shipped from Vostochny, Howard initiated Stark Industries Nuclear.
Comments: Created by Doug Moench, Bill Sienkiewicz, and Joe Sinnott.
The Voyager ship was a hot topic back when the Fantastic Four stories were written. Reed Richards reasoned that it was the ship which Xanth and Shareen had found on the edge of the black hole in the distant future. It was also the topic of the movie Star Trek: The Motion Picture. I'm pretty sure it featured in other sci-fi stories.
Special Thanks to MarvellousLuke for cleaning up the main image! Thanks to James Cope for pointing out a recurring typo.
The Moensien race was identified in Fantastic Four: Five Fabulous Decades handbook: Ebon Seeker entry
I definitely enjoyed Operation S.I.N., and Ebon Seeker and
Firefrost were some of my favorites from my earliest days of reading
comics, but it did take me three reads to wrap my mind around exactly
what was going on.
It wasn't clearly spelled
out (or I just missed it, again!), but presumably time-warping
associated with a black hole and extreme gravity vs. escaping through a
specific time-space warp vs. an in-born energy ability (or a
combination of all of the above) caused Shareen to arrive in the
relative past on Earth compared to her first trip to Earth in the
"modern era."
However, I do think it is problematic putting Tania Belinskaya and Mikhail Uriokovitch
as teens and Anton Vanko as 30-something or older in 1952. Even Howard
Stark and Peggy Carter's involvement in World War II is getting
increasingly problematic with them both still being around close to or
even well into the modern era, making them like a hundred years old
even in 2023...
I'll update the profiles on Starlight and Crimson Dynamo with this story and discuss that further therein.
As her ship was last seen within the base which the Russians were going to "sterilize," although we never saw that happen, I'll do a profile on her ship (and the beacon and power sphere(s)) in the coming months...
Thanks to MarvellousLuke for the image upgrades!
Clarifications: Shareen, Firefrost, has no known connection to:
Fantastic Four I#229, last page, last panel (main image);
#230, pg. 5, panel 5 (Shareen, original Moensien face);
pg. 19, panel 4 (Firefrost face)
Operation: S.I.N. #4, pg. 4, panel 3 (Shareen's human face);
pg. 15, panel 1 (human, seated);
panel 4 (human, standing);
pg. 19, panel 1 (reverting to true form);
#5, pg. 19, panel 4 (Peggy and Vanko in Russian laboratory);
Appearances:
Fantastic Four I#229-230 (April-May, 1981) - Doug Moench (writer), Bill
Sienkiewicz (pencils), Joe Sinnott (inks), Jim Salicrup (editor)
Operation: S.I.N. #1-5 (March-July, 2015) - Kathryn Immonen (writer), Rich Ellis (artist), Joe Moisan (editor)
First Posted: 12/13/2001
Last updated: 04/10/2024
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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