VOLX, the DIRE WRAITH QUEEN

Real Name: Volx

Identity/Class: Extraterrestrial, member of the Dire Wraith race (a sub-species of Skrulls)

Occupation: Marauder and avenger of her children

Group Membership: Dire Wraiths

Affiliations: Her children the Dire Wraiths, anyone she fools into helping her through her disguises;
    formerly Klobok

Enemies: Annihilators (Beta Ray Bill, Cosmo, Gladiator, Ikon, Quasar, Ronan, Silver Surfer), Immortus and his legions (including Tempus), Klobok, New Warriors, Garthan Saal/'Nova Omega'/Supernova, Rom, Queen Brandy, and the Spaceknights and people of Galador, Skrulls, the Mad Thinker (though she didn't know it), all of Earth's human population, especially their protectors

Known Relatives: The entire Dire Wraith race were said to be her children.

Aliases: The Dire Wraith Queen, Reban (Xandarian pilot victim), Jacqueline Zanca (human victim), Walter ?? (human victim), Dan Jones, Mike Jeffries (Turbo, human victim)

Base of Operations: Limbo;
    formerly Earth, Xandar, Wraithworld, others unrevealed.

First Appearance: Nova II#17 (May, 1995)

Powers: Volx possessed the Dire Wraiths' enhanced version of the Skrull's shape-shifting -- she could quickly transform her body to mimic other living creatures, and even mimic the ground beneath someone's feet. Like the other Wraiths, she could bolster her humanoid disguises by sucking out the brains of her victims through her barbed, razor-sharp tongue, giving her their memories and allowing her to simulate their personalities.

    Volx could wield mystical abilities like the rest of her species, but when the rest of her people lost their powers in the destruction of Wraithworld she presumably did too. However, once restored outside Limbo, her magic was able to repel the powerful blasts of the Annihilators. She seemed even better with technology than her children, who certainly couldn't have recreated Rom's neutralizer, and was more crafty and a better strategist as well. She had a psychic link with other Dire Wraiths. Her body was larger than other Dire Wraiths with additional spiked fingers and tentacles.

History: 

The Dire Wraiths, a sub-species of Skrulls warped by their dark magic, lived 'peacefully' for an unknown amount of time on a world hidden in the extremely dangerous Dark Nebula, apparently somewhere in the Andromeda Galaxy. But one day more than 200 years ago, an exploratory ship from the human planet Galador entered the Nebula, and was attacked by the Wraiths and slaughtered without cause. The male Wraith population overruled the usually dominant female portion, and left the Nebula to assault Galador itself. The Galadorians fought back, sacrificing their humanity to become cyborg Spaceknights, who drove the Wraiths back and then scattered them to the stars. Where the Wraiths went, they infiltrated other planets and brought death; and where the Wraiths went, the Spaceknights followed them. The last of the Wraiths were hunted down to earth by the greatest Spaceknight Rom, who, with the help of the X-Men, the Avengers and many normal humans, killed the Wraiths or banished them to the dimensional prison of Limbo, and banished their homeworld as well.

But rumors circulated that the Wraiths' queen survived the Spaceknights' genocide of her species, and travelled across the universe plotting her vengeance and constantly changing disguises. That queen is Volx, who may well be the mother of the entire Wraith species, and who made her way across galaxies to earth, to revenge herself on the entire human species for her childrens' deaths. Her history and nature, as well as her true relationship to the rest of the Wraith species, remains unknown.

BTS - Volx makes her way to Xandar, an artificial biosphere planet that her children's destroyer Rom once aided in repelling a Skrull invasion.

(Nova II#17) - Volx ambushes Reban, a pilot of a Xandarian ship on its way to earth, and assumes his identity, jettisoning the remains of his body into space, and assures his co-pilot Kanan that everything is allright.

(Nova II#18 (FB) ) - The Xandarian battlecruiser piloted by Kanan and Volx-as-Reban departs Xandar for earth, with Rich Rider, formerly Nova I, and his replacement Garthan Saal as passengers. While Saal deposits the ship's cargo of surveillance spheres in Mars' vicinity, Kanan runs a Class One scan on the ship, and discovers an anomaly in the cabin. To distract him Volx throws the ship out of control, and the two engage in a firefight using energy weapons, leaving Kanan disintegrated. The ship crashes on earth, but both the remaining passengers survive thanks to Reban's piloting skills, exercised by Volx. Rider, assuming Volx is a Skrull, arms himself and is amazed when Volx morphs up out of the ground. He's saved from Volx's tongue when Saal arrives, but Volx gets away when Rider accidently shoots Saal instead. Saal digs a scanner device out of the shipwreck and heads after her.

BTS - Saal tracks Volx down, but she knocks him unconscious, and brings him to a Dire Wraith-built complex hidden in Yosemite National Park.

(New Warriors I#60) - Saal awakens inside a 'nucleic pump,' as the living power-source of the Magnetic Oscillator, a machine designed to cause a slight tremor in earth's magnetic field, a polarity-shift that would kill most life on earth. Including, Volx (impersonating a humanoid) explains, her children who built it. "Not very good planners, those boys... can you blame me for replacing them with the girls?" When the New Warriors track Saal's energy signature, Volx shapeshifts a spacesuit around her human disguise, so that when Alex Power uses his density power to enter the complex she tricks him into thinking there's a poisonous gas leak long enough to contain him in an airtight capture bubble. When the other Warriors break in, Volx mimics a control console, but Turbo's Spaceknight-charged visor sees through her disguise. Volx realizes that Turbo wears the Torpedo armor, the prototype created for her sons as the ultimate battle armor, and tries to acquire it, but is attacked by Garthan Saal. Rich Rider, formerly Nova, turns some belt-guns Volx's human disguise was wearing on the machinery, and the entire complex explodes. The Warriors and Saal believe Volx dead, but a lump of grassland shifts into a deer with glowing eyes, and escapes.

BTS - Volx kills and replaces Jacqueline Zanca, City Editor of the San Francisco Observer, and begins researching the New Warriors and the Torpedo armor.)

(New Warriors I#64) - After several weeks of research, Volx-as-Zanca reassigns a reporter named Walter to the story behind the explosion in Yosemite. He protests, as his articles about Garthan Saal's taking up residence in 'frisco as the new Nova have been selling papers. She quickly decides that the 'story' would be better served ub her hands, and tongue-spikes Walter and assumed his identity.

BTS - Volx tracks the Torpedo armor through its owner Brock Jones, aka Torpedo II, through to his cousins the Jeffries family, and deduces that Michael Jeffries must have found the armor. She adopts the form of Brock's son Dan Jones, though whether she kills him or not is unclear.)

(New Warriors I#73) - Volx as Dan Jones arrived at the Jeffries' family residence in Glen Cove, Long Island, and after startling the younger daughter Maggie, is directed inside to Mike, aka Turbo. 'Dan' explains who 'he' is, and how he traced him.

(New Warriors I#74 (fb) ) - Volx tongue-spiked Mike and absorbed his identity.

(New Warriors I#73) - As Mike, Volx calls the headquarters of the Warriors, and tells Mickey Musashi/Turbo I about Dan Jones, and tells her that he'll meet her there. When he does, he finds the other Warriors assembled, and is made to tell them the story of how 'he' found the Torpedo armor in his attic, and gave it to Mickey to wear as a halloween costume. Volx-as-Mike convinces the Warriors to let him wear the Torpedo suit while he goes to get Dan Jones, and Volx reshapes the armor and reveals her true form!

(New Warriors I#74) - Volx shrugs off the attacking Warriors, explaining Mickey just what she did to Mike. Volx then blows a hole in the wall, and uses the armor to interface with Friday, the Warriors' Kymellian Smartship, who she takes control over and uses to make her escape, evading pursuit with the ship's cloaking device. Garthan Saal observes her escape from his orbiting battlecruiser, and brings the Warriors aboard to formulate plans to fight her. Volx seizes Forge's Neoneutralizer, a giant-sized version of Rom's Wraith-banishing weapon used to send her homeworld to Limbo, from a military base. The Warriors realize that she hopes to power it with the Torpedo armor, and irradiate the entire planet with it from orbit, neutralizing every superhuman on earth.

BTS - While the Warriors search for her, Volx mounts the Neoneutralizer Friday's hull, and uses the Smartship's databanks and Kymellian technology to partially reconstruct Rom's neutralizer, with which to power it.

(New Warriors I#75) - To distract Volx while he searches for a method of alerting the Xandarian ships, Friday urges Volx to halt her plans. The Battlecruise fires on the cloaked Friday, who crashes in Greenland. When the Warriors attack Volx she scrambles their powers using the Torpedo armor, and sets the Neoneutralizer to overload, hoping to rid the earth of superhumans that way. Rich Rider engages her, and is about to die at her hands (tongue) when Kymaera, Night Thrasher and Rage arrive, and attack Volx. The three were alerted to the battle by the Mad Thinker who calculated that earth had little chance of survival without their assistance. Garthan Saal throws himself at Volx and sucks out much of the armor's power, sacrificing himself and passing his powers back to Rider, who leads the renued attack on Volx, just as the Neoneutralizer overloads. The area is bathed in power-dampening energies, but due to Timeslip's tampering with it for hours in a time-warping field, the blast only affects the superhumans present, not the entire earth. Volx crawls towards Timeslip to get revenge for having her plans thwarted, but Night Thrasher plunges his forearm blade into Volx's head, and she died, dissolving to ashes.

(Annihilators#3/1 (fb) - BTS) - Volx returned to Wraithworld, which was held in Limbo. Her drive to free her race drove her mad and she took on an offer from "Dr. Dredd" (actually the Skrull Klobok in disguise) to free them. With his aid, Volx took on the form of one of the Galadorian queen's retinue to manipulate the Galadorian queen.

(Annihilators#2/1) - Klobok used his reality-cutting power to rip the Wraith's Black Sun from the Dark Nebula, allowing the Dire Wraiths to return. Volx appeared in the Galadorian Queen's chambers as the assembled Annihilators sought to stop the Wraith incursion; Volx blasted her opponents back.

(Annihilators#3/1) - Volx attacked the Silver Surfer, spearing the Surfer's forehead with her tongue spike, but was unable to destroy the surfer, instead revealing Volx's past actions and motivations to him. The feedback incapacitated Volx. Shackled, Volx was transported with the Annihilators into Limbo and Wraithworld, who used he psychic link with other Wraiths as a guide. Once there, Volx tried to rally her fellow Dire Wraiths,  but they rejected her. At that point, Immortus' legions attacked, dominated by Tempus, who were drawn by the Annihilators' presence.

(Annihilators#4/1) - Silver Surfer persuaded the other Annihilators to defend the Dire Wraiths and Ikon protected Volx. Immortus stopped the attack after speaking with Quasar and the Annihilators returned to Galador where Wraithworld was shunted into harmonious orbit with the Spaceknights' planet. However, Klobok was there and bound Volx and other Dire Wraiths, using his sorcery and the Dire Wraiths' mutual genetic heritage with Skrulls to transform them into Skrulls. The Annihilators retaliation distracted Klobok sufficiently that Volx was able to spear the Skrull with her spike tongue and unraveling Klobok's spell. The two were drawn into the disintegrating energies of the spell.

Comments: Volx created by Evan Skolnik (writer) and Phil Gosier (art).

While posing as Jacqueline Zanca, Volx is seen smoking; when she changes disguises to the reporter Walter, she retains the cigarette. Did Volx become a smoker herself? Could a Dire Wraith become addicted to nicotine? Doubful, but hey, it would have been fun!

An "underground military base" in Nevada is where Volx got the Neoneutralizer from... could it be Area 51? The Neoneutralizer is a human (well, mutant)-derived extrapolation on alien technology afterall, it'd fit in perfectly there...

(Actually, Volx's later lack of mystical powers is probably more due to her creator Evan Skolnik's reputed dislike of same; Wraithworld's destruction is just a convenient explanation.)

Not sure why her skin went from crimson to green. Maybe a manifestation of her madness?
---Grendel Prime

In Rom#48 to events from 200 years ago and a character calling herself the "Queen of Wraithworld," sided with the technology-driven male Dire Wraiths for aggressive Dire Wraith expansion rather than the sorcery of her sisters. She is a charming pastel blue. Volx's entry cited her survival of the attempted genocide of Dire Wraiths. I think it's doubtful that there was a sudden coup and a new queen installed prior to the Spaceknights' crusade. Her siding with the the science-driven males may also account for Volx being more comfortable with technology than her sisters.
--Grendel Prime
   Unless Volx specified how long she was the queen and confirmed she was the queen 200 years ago, we can't assume it is her - never mind the coup option (which IS possible, given how treacherous Dire Wraiths are), the queen in the annual could have been slain by Spaceknights or some other foe during the intervening years.
--Loki

Profile by Flank McLargehuge (& updated by Grendel Prime)

Clarifications:
The Dire Wraiths, Volx's children, should not be confused with:

• Wraith, Philip DeWolff, the disembodied hero/villain who 'died' at the hands of of Scourge of the Underworld, and came back later @ Marvel Team-Up I#48
• Wraith, Hector Rendoza, the hispanic mutant 'visible man' who joined a team of temporary X-Men @ Uncanny X-Men#392
• John Wraith, a teleporting member of the Weapon X project @ Maverick I#1
• wraiths, the haunting spirits of the dead most commonly called ghosts, also known as revenants, spectres, etc.
• or any other "Wraith" characters/groups/races

Reban of Xandar was one of the two pilots assigned to Garthan Saal's earth-bound ship. He was the less careful of the two, earning him a warning from the other pilot Kanan while they were loading surveillance spheres onto their ship. On the pretense of getting his lucky Framii charm (which he said he never flies without), he skipped out on loading duties, and was ambushed and killed by Volx.

Jacqueline "Jackie" Zanca was the best City Editor that the San Francisco Observer ever had -- until Volx got to her, and appropriated her form to research the New Warriors and the Torpedo armor.

Walter ?? was an Observer reporter under Zanca, assigned to covering Garthan Saal's new-found career as Nova and his occupancy of San Francisco. He argued with Zanca when she reassigned him to a story he thought was cold, when the 'New Nova' was still selling papers. Volx decided to take his form and do his task herself, leaving his soupy remains sprawled on Zanca's desk.

Dan Jones may or may not have fallen victim to Volx; when she impersonated his identity, he seemed to be a fully-grown (okay, big and looming!) adult, of Mike's age or even older. Danny Jones was a child in the original Rom series, and only a few years have passed since then; according to Volx, Danny and his family have been in hiding throughout that time.

Michael "Mike" Jeffries, aka Turbo II of earth, was the second cousin of Brock Jones, the Torpedo II, slayer of Wraiths and protector of Clairton, West Virginia. When Brock was killed by Wraiths, the armor was packed up in a trunk and shipped to Mike's parents' house for safe-keeping. He stumbled on it in the attic during his freshman year of college, while looking for a halloween costume for his friend Michiko "Mickey" Musashi. When she wore it, some scientists who worked in the lab that created the armor showed up, clad in lesser knock-offs of it called the Rocketeer suits, and the confrontation with them showed Mike and Mickey the armor's power. Mike wanted to be a superhero, but he wasn't half as good with the suit as Mickey, who wanted to travel the world with it, and only reluctantly became involved with the New Warriors, eventually joining them full-time. Mike still got time with the suit, but still wasn't terribly good with it when he died.>/font>

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Other appearances:
Nova II#18 (June, 1995) - Evan Skolnick (writer), Phil Gosier (pencils), Mike Machlan, Pamela Eklund, Bob Almond & Greg Adams (inks), Tom Brevoort (editor)
New Warriors I#60 (June, 1995) - Evan Skolnick (writer), Patrick Zircher (pencils), Andrew Pepoy (inks), Tom Brevoort (editor)
New Warriors I#64 (November, 1995) - Evan Skolnick (writer), Patrick Zircher (pencils), Andrew Pepoy (inks), Tom Brevoort (editor)
New Warriors I#72-75 (June-September, 1996) - Evan Skolnick & Dwight Coye (#73) (writers), Patrick Zircher (pencils), Andrew Pepoy (inks), Tom Brevoort (editor)
Annihilators#2/1-#4/1 (June-August, 2011) - Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers). Tan Eng Huat (art), Bill Rosemann (editor)

Last updated: 03/19/14

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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