CELL TRANSMUTER
Classification: Extraterrestrial (Kree) technology
Creator: Unspecified Kree scientists/technicians
Users/Possessors: Captain Mar-Vell
First Appearance: Captain Marvel I#7 (November, 1968)
Powers/Abilities/Functions: The Cell Transmuter is a Kree device that uses finely-focused ultra-high frequency waves to redistribute living cells into new patterns. The process is apparently painless and does not harm the individual cells that are redistributed.
The device has controls that enable the operator to set it so that the redistributed cells will have specific densities and/or textures. It's presumably possible that improperly set controls could result in negative effects, like pain or damaged cells.
Limitations: Based on its size, the Cell Transmuter is (probably) only able to redistribute a fairly small area of living cells. While it is known to be capable of reshaping the pattern of friction ridges on a Kree's fingertips, it is unclear if it could be used to modify a larger area, such as a person's facial features.
History: The Cell Transmuter is a device developed by unspecified Kree scientists that has sometimes been used during covert operations on alien worlds.
(Marvel Super-Heroes II#12 - BTS) - One evening, a Kree starship landed on Earth just long enough to allow Captain Mar-Vell to disembark to begin his mission: to infiltrate the planet and determine if it posed a threat to the Kree Empire.
(Marvel Super-Heroes II#13 - BTS) - Later that night, as Captain Mar-Vell flew towards the starship, his treacherous superior, Colonel Yon-Rogg, tried to kill him by "accidentally" firing the starship's destruct-laser. However, Mar-Vell was saved from otherwise-certain death when a small private plane happened to fly between Mar-Vell and the starship just as Yon-Rogg fired. Although Mar-Vell was only stunned, the plane was torn apart and crashed. When Mar-Vell went to see if the pilot of the plane was still alive, he found the man's dead body in the wreckage and searched his body to find out who he was. After finding the pilot's identification papers on the body, Mar-Vell learned that his name was Walter Lawson and that he was an expert on missile guidance systems who had been heading for the nearby missile base on reassignment. Realizing that, if he altered those papers slightly, he could assume Lawson's identity and thereby gain entry to the Cape itself, Mar-Vell took the papers back to his hotel room.
(Captain Marvel I#8 - BTS) - Exactly what, if anything, Captain Mar-Vell did with Walter Lawson's dead body has never been revealed. However, when the wreckage of the plane was later found and inspected by Cyberex, an advanced robot assassin that was tracking Lawson by his scent, Lawson's body was apparently not in the vicinity.
(Captain Marvel I#5 (fb) - BTS) - Mar-Vell destroyed all the photographs of the real Walter Lawson that were part of Lawson's personnel file.
(Marvel Super-Heroes II#13 - BTS) - Later that morning, Mar-Vell was able to use the dead Earthman's altered credentials to enter the missile base as "Dr. Walter Lawson."
(Marvel Super-Heroes II#13 - BTS) - After a week of working at the Cape without being detected, "Lawson" was approached by the commander of the base, General Bridges, who wanted his help in examining the contents of the most secret and heavily guarded area in the Cape, a reinforced hangar that contained the presumed-destroyed (but merely inert) Intergalactic Sentry #459. This led to his first encounter with Miss Carol Danvers, the missile base's head of security, who was opposed to letting "Lawson" see the robot because his dossier was still being examined by her security division. Danvers got the feeling that "Walter Lawson" was hiding something and became determined to find out what he might be hiding and why.
(Marvel Super-Heroes II#13 - BTS / Captain Marvel I#1 - BTS) - That night, Yon-Rogg secretly and remotely reactivated Sentry #459, planning to pit it against Mar-Vell in order to kill him. When "Lawson" was informed that the robot was rampaging through the base, Mar-Vell went into action wearing his Kree battle suit and managed to defeat the Sentry and save Carol Danvers. Soldiers who had overheard "that masked guy" speak to the robot thought that he had said that his name was "Captain Marvel" and the Earthlings accepted that that was the name of the new hero.
(Captain Marvel I#3-5 - BTS) - Carol Danvers continued to be suspicious of "Lawson."
(Captain Marvel I#4 (fb) - BTS) - Mar-Vell was able to (covertly) expunge the "C. Marvel" that he had thoughtlessly written in the hotel guestbook when he first checked in. He presumably replaced it with the name "Walter Lawson."
(Captain Marvel I#6 (fb) - BTS) - Carol Danvers requested that the F.B.I. run a check on Doctor Walter Lawson.
(Captain Marvel I#6 - BTS) - When Carol Danvers spotted the briefly-visible starship and realized it was a UFO, "Lawson" tried to dissuade her from investigating the matter, including the three huge circular burns that the starship had made in the ground.
(Captain Marvel I#7 (fb) - BTS) - The F.B.I. had almost nothing on Walter Lawson so they were only able to send Carol Danvers a file card that contained his fingerprints and some sparse data.
(Captain Marvel I#7 - BTS) - When Carol Danvers returned to the area to investigate the scorch marks, Yon-Rogg tried to kill her by firing a tiny charge of cosmic energy at her, but Captain Marvel saved her. Danvers then spoke to Marvel about her suspicions about Lawson and revealed that the F.B.I. had sent her what little information they had on him. When she showed Marvel the file card, he dropped it, claiming that the wind had taken it from his hand, and then used the act of picking the card up from the ground to use his Uni-Beam to secretly take a photograph of Lawson's fingerprints without Danvers being aware of what he was doing.
(Captain Marvel I#7) - After "Walter Lawson" returned to his hotel room, Mar-Vell sat down on one side of the bed and deposited the secret photograph of Lawson's fingerprints into the cell transmuter that was sitting on top of the bureau in front of him. He then set its controls for the proper density and texture, turned on the power, and put his hands over (or into?) the machine. Making a shrill whining "REEEE!" sound, the cell transmuter began to generate finely focused ultra-high frequency waves that were projected at Mar-Vell's hands. These waves began to redistribute the living cells on all of his fingertips, reshaping the friction ridges on the pads of his fingers and thumbs until any fingerprints left by those digits would match the fingerprints on file for Dr. Walter Lawson.
Once it had done what it had been programmed to do, the cell transmuter shut itself off, and Mar-Vell lifted his hands away from it, thinking, "That's it! I'm Dr. Walter Lawson now, all right...clear down to the fingertips!"
(Captain Marvel I#7 - BTS) - That night, Captain Marvel went to the Cape in order to scatter his new fingerprints over Lawson's office but, after discovering that a weird series of fires had broken out there, he felt that he had to investigate them first and that led to him battling Quasimodo.
Comments: Created by Arnold Drake, Don Heck and J. Tartaglione.
Unfortunately, the artwork fails to make it clear exactly where Mar-Vell's hands were while their living cells were being redistributed. While it looks like he just held them over the orange (and possibly concave) area that occupied most of the top surface of the machine, it could be that there was actually a slot in the unseen front side of the device into which Mar-Vell inserted his hands.
The idea that the Kree had technology capable of reshaping their fingerprints is mildly interesting and makes a certain amount of sense, but it leads nowhere. As far as I know, there are never any scenes of Carol Danvers checking fingerprints to confirm that "Lawson" was Lawson. Also, while she continues to investigate "Lawson" and even breaks into his hotel room once, Danvers doesn't actually interact with him after issue #6, except for a brief scene in issue #10. By issue #12, "Dr. Lawson's strange disappearance" causes General Bridges to give Miss Danvers permission to order base security to arrest him on sight. However, with the exception of two small groups of MPs, no one ever saw "Lawson" again.
The use of the cell transmuter is probably the most significant thing that Mar-Vell had to do in order to assume Walter Lawson's identity. Everything else about his impersonation was basically glossed over. Marvel Super-Heroes II#13 established that Lawson, while known to be an expert in missile guidance systems and robotics, had always had a reputation for being a recluse and an eccentric. Furthermore, despite being a university professor, there were somehow almost no pictures of him available, except for those that were in the personnel file that he was bringing with him while on his way to the Cape, and Mar-Vell destroyed those photos before presenting that file to the base's security division. Even the F.B.I., which did have his fingerprints on file, doesn't seem to have had any pictures of him. This whole situation was weird and made it incredibly easy for Mar-Vell to assume his identity.
The story in Captain Marvel I#7 doesn't reveal how the cell transmuter ended up in Mar-Vell's hotel room. It's just there, for five consecutive panels, and then it's gone and we never see it again. My best guess would be that it was among the items that Mar-Vell kept in his carry-all cylinder but, unfortunately, there's no on-panel evidence of that idea. It would have been nice if the artist had just included that cylinder into the first panel of that scene, either on the bed beside Mar-Vell or on the floor beside the bureau, but he didn't.
I probably went into more detail about the history of Mar-Vell's impersonation of Walter Lawson than was really needed, but I felt that the extra data would be helpful in providing context. Plus, the fact that the cell transmuter only appeared in five panels meant that this would have otherwise been a very short profile.
The missile/rocket base that Mar-Vell was so determined to infiltrate was referred to only as "the Cape" during the early issues of the first Captain Marvel series. Although a NASA logo was visible on one of the base's buildings in Captain Marvel I#12, it would not be until Captain Marvel I#40 that the Cape was finally confirmed as being Cape Canaveral. However, the earlier Avengers I#89-90 did strongly imply that the Cape was Cape Kennedy.
In 2019, just over fifty years after Mar-Vell last posed as Lawson, the real Walter S. Lawson turned up, alive and well and seeking vengeance against the Kree, in Marvel Team-Up IV#4-6.
Profile by Donald Campbell.
CLARIFICATIONS:
The cell transmuter has no known connections to:
images: (without ads)
Captain Marvel I#7, page 10, panel 4 (main image)
page 10, panel 5 (fingers nearing the machine)
page 11, panel 1 (fingertips being altered)
page 11, panel 2 (living cells being redistributed)
page 11, panel 3 (task complete)
Appearances:
Captain Marvel I#7 (November, 1968) - "Super Nova" Arnold Drake (writer), "4th Dimensional" Don Heck
(artist), "Solar Swinger" John Tartaglione (inker), "Speed O'Light" Stan Lee (editor)
First Posted: 07/28/2024
Last updated: 07/28/2024
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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