TRIAX (THE TERRIBLE)

Real Name: Triax the Terrible. He tells us that the High Evolutionary gave him that exact name. Nice going there, H.E., I wonder why he turned out to be a bad guy?

Identity/Class: One of the High Evolutionary's original batch of New Men, mutated from a "mud-wallowing warthog".

Occupation: Cosmic flunky to the Man-Beast

Group Membership: Man-Beast's army of New Men

Affiliations: Man-Beast

Enemies: Adam Warlock, the Infinity Watch, Vision, Captain America

Known Relatives: In general, all the many different New Men are genetic siblings of some kind.

Aliases: Apollo, Alpha (unconfirmed?), and Ralph Shaw, Senatorial Bodyguard

Base of Operations: Originally Earth, in the Wundagore region of the Carpathian mountains. Then either the artificial planet of Wundagore II or the galaxy Dromisana. Then Counter-Earth. Then presumably the dimension of the Beyonders. Then a cloaked spaceship orbiting Earth. Then finally the United Nations building.

Appearances: Warlock I#3 (December 1972)

Powers: Triax is strong (probably 10 ton range), durable, and a decent if unskilled hand-to-hand combatant. Presumably, he has all the natural powers of a warthog as well.

Triax used several different kinds of technology to enhance his powers. Triax has access to the same kind of mysterious disguising powers the Man-Beast always had that let him pass for a human, despite the fact that he was a seven-foot tall half-ton warthog. In his first appearance, he used a chainmail flight suit. In his next appearance, he used a full-body complement of armor.

He also had access to a pretty incredible flying laser submarine-thing that also fired glue. It was called the "Apollocraft". I don't make this up.

Weaknesses: He has a fanatical hatred of Adam Warlock. Originally, he had an intense desire to be worshipped by those around him, which somehow later became sycophantic loyalty to the Man-Beast. Also, he gets really mad if you remind him he's just an evolved warthog.

Physical Description: Triax is everything you'd expect from a giant warthog. He has green skin, long pointy ears, a mohawk of brown hair, two huge tusks and a purple Aquaman-style swimsuit. In his disguise as Apollo, he was a pink skinned human with bad 70s fashion sense and a knock-off Thor helmet. In his armored form (Alpha) he quite resembled a giant purple metallic Snoopy, or possibly a shiny rat. As Ralph Shaw, he was an extremely broad shouldered guy in a suit with thinning hair. He looked really uncomfortable the whole time. Sorry for the comments, but you have to admit, he's just never found a look that really suits him.

 

 

History: The history of the High Evolutionary and his transformations and his various generations of New Men is quite a complicated one. It is likely that Triax was from the either the first generation, the same one that produced the Man-Beast, or the Man-Beast's quick generation of 'evil' New Men seen in Thor 135. With the defeat of the Man-Beast's first assault, Triax was either behind the scenes as one of the conspirators there who was sent to "the galaxy Dromisana", or he was a passive observer who later went bestial on Wundagore II. I don't know that it was ever explained where exactly the Man-Beast got his army of New Men from when he came to Counter-Earth in Marvel Premiere 1, but he brought Triax along with him, and apparently set him up as a high lieutenant of some kind, with lots of technology and such. After the defeat of the Man-Beast in Power of Warlock 2, Triax apparently tried to take the Man-Beast's place, believing the Man-Beast dead. He appeared before the Man-Beast's followers in his disguise as Apollo and some of them joined him on his super-sub ("the Apollocraft") in a bid for world domination. He planned to rule Counter-Earth, not destroy it, which the Man-Beast may have thought was sacrilege.

(Warlock I#3) - As Apollo, Triax commanded his Apollocraft to attack Warlock and his speedboat full of groupies, floating in the ocean near Florida. His goal was "to nip Warlock's heroics in their birthings, then commanding worship of this entire planet!" This is not quite as stupid as it sounds since Warlock really was about the only super-human on the planet at the time. So he attacks Warlock with his submarine, using whirlpools, lasers, and tentacles, but is forced to flee in an inky cloud after Warlock rips out all the attack tentacles.

 

 

So Warlock shrugs it off ('Eh. Sorry I disappeared into a whirlpool, kids. Another tentacle death-submarine') and goes to watch a rocket launch at Cape Canaveral with the apostles, I mean, brats. In charge of it is Colonel Roberts, father of two of Warlock's followers, Eddie and Ellie. As the rocket is launched, Apollo's craft leaps out of the sea and shoots it down with lasers. His stated objectives for this act of terrorism is to cause "the Earth-bound people to gape with awe at my power! With amazement will come mystery and wonder, soon to be replaced by fear-filled worship!" (Always the best kind...)

Triax decides the only way to truly assume his pantheon or something is to defeat Warlock in hand-to-hand combat. So he flies out his ship, gets in a flying fistfight with Warlock, saying things like, "The house of worship is built on bricks of fearful power -- and mine is the strength eternal -- and the glory everlasting!!!" Warlock punches him into a mountain.

It's at this point that Triax's disguise as Apollo melts away and he stands revealed as a big evolved warthog. But this lets him "regain touch with his innate animal power", so boffo for him. Then after being beat by Warlock some more he runs over to the rocket base and takes two of Warlock's followers hostage, Ellie and Eddie Roberts, right in front of their dear old Dad.

(Warlock I#4) - Triax wants Warlock to surrender, or he'll kill the annoying kids. Warlock freezes, though he threatens Triax with his soul gem. Suddenly, Presidential Candidate Rex Carpenter shows up. One of Warlock's followers says (and this is never explained, I believe) that she knows only Rex Carpenter can stop Triax, so the teenager shoves the Presidential candidate out to talk to Triax. Triax recognizes Rex Carpenter (He's the Man-Beast, alright? There, I spoiled it) and gets terrified, presumably because he tried to replace the Man-Beast, and quickly jetpacks away up a tall gantry tower, hostages in hand, threatening to drop them. Warlock still can't decide what to do, so frozen with concern is he.

Triax then calls his Apollocraft to come and assault Warlock. Which it does with its infamous glue gun, and while Warlock's encased in glue, it starts attacking the base. Warlock's followers try and convince the Colonel not to retaliate to this, to give Warlock a chance to settle it (with his more acceptable brand of pseudo-moral mega-violence, I guess). But the Colonel orders planes to scramble anyway. Then they all predict bad things will happen, the snotty little kids.

Warlock summons his will, and breaks out of the glue, and the Apollocraft launches missiles at him, which he leads around, and eventually back to destroy the Apollocraft in a nice little maneuver.

This angers Triax. Colonel Roberts then orders his planes to drop a tear gas bomb on the ten foot by ten foot platform fifty feet up in the air which has Triax holding his only two children on it. I am not kidding about this in the least. In fact, the explosion is so big it's shaped like a mini-mushroom cloud, but somehow neither Triax or Ellie or Eddie are hurt in the least, unless you count Triax's pride because he starts crying girly pink tears. This angers Triax even more, and he picks up Eddie Roberts and flings him right off the tower, Warlock makes a last minute grab for the kid, and... fails. Eddie becomes runway pizza.

The idiot Colonel learns some kind of lesson about cycles of violence or something, asks Warlock to save his daughter, and then Warlock flies up the tower and punches Triax like five times. There's no explanation why he didn't just do this on the first page. Then he rips off Triax's flight suit. Triax then falls off the tower, and as far as anyone ever knew, he died in a big splat at the bottom (although he could survive all of Warlock's Soul Gem enhanced punches). Anyway, everyone in the comic forgets about Triax, except for maybe the Cape Canaveral janitorial crew.

(W&IW#3) - Flash forward twenty years. Jim Starlin is writing Warlock and the Infinity Watch, all is right with the world. Pip the Troll is enjoying his Space Gem by stealing Fantasticars from the Fantastic Four and going joyriding. He's intercepted by a huge purple armored individual, who just flies right into the car, destroying it and knocking Pip out. He takes Pip with him and flies off.

(W&IW#4) - No appearance, but you learn the mysterious Omega had discovered the location of the High Evolutionary's Counter-Earth, stored in the dimension of the Beyonders. He's transformed some ordinary citizens into the cyborg attack force known as THEY. And behind the scenes here, he must have rescued Triax as well, either dead or imprisoned. This is just before the annihilation wave from the Infinity Gauntlet destroys the first Counter-Earth forever. (This always bothered me a little. All effects of the Gauntlet in Thanos's possession were undone, except for this? Maybe it was special because the Beyonders were outside the realm of Eternity, when Nebula wished it all back.)

(W&IW#5) - Warlock realizes that the rest of the Infinity Watch were kidnapped, and goes to rescue them. He finds Omega's ship, defeats all the Omega's cyborg guards in true Warlock fashion, and then Triax comes after him personally, boasting he will "beat Warlock like I did before" (shyeah right). Then comes a bone-crunching fight, as Triax really pounds Warlock hard with his star-tempered armor. Warlock, on the verge of defeat, bounces back and knocks Triax off a balcony, and then pounds on him some more at the bottom, finally, getting through Triax's armor, and smashing his head through a wall. It's a great fight. He then pulls off the remnants of the mask, and we see that it is our friend Triax under the armor. The Man-Beasts then unleashes the Infinity Thrall.

(W&IW#6) - Triax spends most of the issue lying unconscious on the floor, but wakes up in time to point out to the Man-Beast how he has engineered his own defeat, by letting Warlock lead the Infinity Thrall to the engine room. He actually grabs the Man-Beast and tries to shake some sense to him, the Man-Beast punches him across the room ("unhand me, dolt!") and realizes too late what Triax was telling him. Half the ship is destroyed, and they both make their way to an escape pod and jettison for Earth.

(W&IW#26) - Senator Kyle Munson, special attache to the U.N., gets a security council order to evict Adam Warlock from Monster Island. This had previously been tried in W&IW 14 and W&IW 22 with human U.N. soldiers, with hilarious results. This time, Senator Munson has authorization to use the Avengers. He and his bodyguard Ralph Shaw meet the Avengers at an airfield, and he hypnotizes them (He's the Man-Beast, alright? There, I spoiled it again) and tells them their real mission is to kill Warlock, which all of them agree to. Ralph Shaw gets two lines, and hulks menacingly in the background.

(W&IW#27) - The Avengers try and kill Warlock, Warlock fights Hercules to a standstill, the Vision eventually stops the fight and tells Warlock all the others were hypnotized, but being a synthezoid, he was immune and just playing along. Moondragon uses her Mind Gem to free them from the Man-Beast's influence. Meanwhile, in the U.N. offices of Senator Kyle Munson, Ralph Shaw stands around and has one line. Kyle "Man-Beast" Munson reveals that he doesn't care whether the Avengers win, so long as the Watch kills an Avenger in the conflict, they'll be branded outlaws forever.

 

(W&IW#28) - Warlock teleports to the U.N. chambers in session, interrupting Kyle's speech about Warlock killing the Avengers by showing up with all the Avengers alive. He then threatens the United Nations, laying sole claim to Monster Island and ordering it be recognized as a sovereign nation. Warlock reveals Munson as the Man-Beast before the whole U.N., the real senator is dead. The Man-Beast tries a frontal attack against Warlock, and calls Triax to his aide, who drops his disguise as Ralph Shaw. Triax surprises Captain America and knocks him out (!), but the Vision gets a solid punch in against him and keeps up the assault. Man-Beast takes a second to take out the Vision with his force beam, and then he and Triax together assault Warlock. Then Man-Beast runs away, and leaves Triax to delay Warlock. Warlock has a great speech for Triax. "Even at my weakest, you were no match for me, Triax. What makes you think matters will conclude in any other fashion this encounter? Infinite optimism? Unrealistic ambition? Blind stupidity? Perhaps you can see the future by reading tea leaves? I'm terribly sorry Triax, I forgot that reading is not among your highly vaunted powers." OUCH. He says this as he beats Triax to a bloody pulp, ending it with a Karmic blast. Triax is turned over to the custody of the Avengers, and does not appear with the Man-Beast in any subsequent appearance, though he's still alive.

Comments: Created by Mike Friedrich and Gil Kane.

I swear, in W&IW 3-6 when Triax is in his big armored Snoopy form, that the Man-Beast, himself posing as Omega, calls Triax by the name Alpha. But I can't find it anywhere in the dialogue, maybe I'm just crazy. Anyone know if this is true? Maybe in a letter column or handbook/index entry? Somewhere? I was nigh-positive.

So did the Man-Beast reawaken after Thor 135 in a distant galaxy, then somehow get to the planet Wundagore II, and take those ill-tempered New Men with him back to Counter Earth? Or did he take the few bad ones (Maybe thirty shown in Thor 135) he had with him to Counter-Earth? Where did all the New Men (there are literally tons of them, good and bad) on Counter Earth come from? The High Evolutionary had abandoned making New Men after Tales to Astonish 96, and I don't think there were any left on Earth at the end of Thor 135. Can anyone help with this? At one point Warlock says that Triax was specifically evolved by the Man-Beast himself. But at another point Triax says his creator was the High Evolutionary, and he was named by him. The New-Men and Knights of Wundagore are dying for a comprehensive profile to clear this up and several other confusions about them.

The Power of Warlock series was not really one of Marvel's better moments. It makes their Pope John Paul II comic look good. As an angry writer in one of the letter columns aptly said, "I don't want to read about Jesus Christ, Superhero." Cause that's exactly what Mike Friedrich was doing with this series, with all the subtlety of a crashing, fiery blimp. So perhaps that can explain some of Triax's flowery dialogue as Apollo and his obsession with being worshipped (mentioned five times!), quite different from the evolved warthog flunky of today that we know and love.

There are many good parts, in the sense of 70s terrible parts, in Triax's first two appearances. But my favorite has to be after Warlock is shot by the glue gun and stuck in a giant glue, uh, crystal, and says "It's hardening into a solid gel! I'm TRAPPED! No air enters my nostrils, in seconds -- I'll suffocate and die!" Which is fine, but he says this out loud... thought I'd share.

The Legion of Well-spoken Warthogs VS the Cockroach Conspiracy? Triax and Dr. Stranger Yet could make it a threesome, if they were joined by Razorback. Providing, of course, the latter was possessed by, say, Xemnu the Living Titan. Or, even the astral body of the Counter-Earth (HE) Necromancer! (Gullin could also join them -- Snood) And they would whup the Conspirators' buggy-butts, if they recruited...THE AMAZING SPIDER-HAM!
--Carycomic

Profile by: caliban

Clarifications: Triax the Terrible has no known connection to:

In his disguise as Apollo, Triax should not be confused with:

In his disguise as Alpha, Triax should not be confused with:

In his disguise as Ralph Shaw, senatorial bodyguard, Triax has no known connection to:

"Apollocraft "Bearing a striking resemblance to a killer shark", this flying submarine could create whirlpools, underwater lasers (no mean feat), had five very efficient 100 foot metal tentacles, an inky cloud to hide in, a 'sticky viscous liquid' (=glue gun), and heat seeking missiles, armed with a "fatal" payload, as opposed to the heat-seeking flower missiles that Dr. Doom's attack sub had. Also, it can fly pretty well, though with a limited mobility that proved its downfall.

 

 

 

Appearances:
Warlock I#3-4 (December, 1972 - February, 1973) - Mike Friedrich (writer), Gil Kane (pencils), Tom Sutton (inks), Roy Thomas (editor)
Warlock and the Infinity Watch#3 (April, 1992) - Jim Starlin (writer), Rick Leonardi (pencils), Terry Austin (inks), Craig Anderson (editor)
Warlock and the Infinity Watch#5-6 (June-July, 1992) - Jim Starlin (writer), Angel Medina (pencils), Bob Almond (inks), Craig Anderson (editor)
Warlock and the Infinity Watch#26-28 (March-June, 1994) - Jim Starlin (writer), Tom Grindberg (#26-27) & Jeff Moore (#28) (pencils), Bob Almond (#26-27) & Tim Dzon (#28) (inks), Craig Anderson (editor)

First Posted: 03/20/2002
Last updated: 08/01/2002

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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