"MARTIAN MASTERS"(from Reality-9507)
"MARTIAN MASTERS"
(from Reality-9507)
Membership: High Overlord (deceased), Navigator (name unrevealed, deceased)
Purpose: Conquest and domination of the planet Earth
Affiliations: None;
Would have allied with "pure knowledge" if not stopped by the Guardians
Enemies: Guardians of the Galaxy (Charlie-27, Aleta Ogard, Major Vance Astro, Martinex T'Naga, Nicholette "Nikki" Gold, Yondu Udonta, Hollywood/Simon Williams); Main Frame
Base of Operations: The planet Mars in Reality-691/9507
First Appearance: Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2 (July, 1995)
Powers/Abilities: "Martians" are non-humanoids who communicate with each other telepathically.
Weapons: Heat-rays; other directed-energy weapons
Vehicles: Flagship and Tripods
History:
Before their two timelines diverged on June 29, 2001 A.D.,
the history of these "Martian Masters" from Reality-9507 was presumably identical to that of the "Martian
Masters" from Reality-691.
Pre-Divergence Timeline (Reality-691/9507)
(Amazing Adventures II#18 (fb)) <1901 A.D.> - The "Martians" invaded Earth, with
their projectiles landing in a field outside London, England. Tripods emerged from those projectiles
and began the conquest of England. An army of hundreds of tripods ravaged the British countryside,
using their heat-rays to sear the earth as they swept the humans before them. Since human weapons were
ineffective against them, the "Martian" conquest seemed certain to succeed.
Unexpectedly, before their conquest could be completed, the "Martian" warriors in their great metal war machines began to die, one by one, struck down by the germs and bacteria of Earth against which they had no immunity.
(Amazing Adventures II#18 (fb) - BTS/Amazing Adventures II#36 (fb) - BTS) - Although all of the "Martians" who had landed on Earth died, those who had remained on Mars were unaffected. As the "Martians" watched the failure of their invasion, they learned from the deaths of their invasion force and began to develop innoculative fluids that could immunize them against Earth's microbes.
(Marvel Graphic Novel#7: Killraven, Warrior of the Worlds (fb) - BTS) - One member of the "Martian" Elite distinguished himself with a number of achievements. He was the decisive Select Forum member who persuaded the council of the feasibility of a Second Invasion of Earth, he was the Primary Force in continuing the research to develop an immunization program to protect "Martians" from Earth microbes, and he, in conjunction with other Select Forum members, developed a strategy for a second successful assault. As a result of these achievements, this "Martian" became the High Overlord: He was chosen to be the commander of the initial assault forces against Earth, known as Attack II, and he received the privilege of wearing the first BioChemech armor that countered Earth's gravitational pull and permitted ease of movement.
(Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2) <June 29, 2001 A.D.> - As the "Martian" strike fleet traveled through space from Mars and towards Earth, the navigator aboard the flagship detected a highly unusual temporal displacement off the bowsprit. He reported this to the High Overlord who criticized his analysis and demanded that the navigator provide him with precise facts or his life would be forfeit. The navigator asked for forgiveness but stated that the entity gave no discernible information.
Viewing the entity for himself, the High Overlord noted that it was remarkable in that its size dwarfed their advanced Tripod platoon and that it was even more unusual that it had located them despite their sophisticated cloaking shell. Then, after angrily declaring that generations of planning the re-invasion of Earth would not be undone, he asked what the sensors indicated about its composition. When the navigator replied that it could only be described as pure knowledge, the High Overlord ordered that it be absorbed so that they could use it against whatever it turned out to be.
A moment later, Reality-9507 diverged from Reality-691
Reality-9507
(Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2) - Before that order could be carried out, the navigator
reported a subsequent arrival of what seemed to be some sort of warship and that the original anomaly was
now retreating because it thought itself to have been ambushed. The High Overlord agreed that that was a
possibility, but then suggested that perhaps they were the ones who had been lured into a trap!
When the High Overlord demanded to be told about their new opponent, the navigator read his instruments and reported that the vessel was inconceivably advanced and sophisticated, with power readings off their scales. Then, with a gasp, he reported that they were receiving an incoming message!
(Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2) - With a two-way audio-visual channel open, the High Overlord and the navigator watched as a brown-haired humanoid who identified himself as Jupiter Militia Captain-27 ordered the "Martian Commander" to abort their invasion immediately or suffer severe consequences. Knowing that Jupiter was a lifeless gasball, the High Overlord mentioned that fact and asked what kind of a fool did the captain take him for as he pressed a button that caused the flagship to fire an energy beam at the enemy starship, to which Captain-27 replied, "A fool stupid enough to try that!" Completely unharmed by the Martian attack, the enemy starship responded with a blast from its proton pulse array that was meant to disable the flagship.
As the flagship shook, the navigator reported that they were suffering from surgical outages and that all systems were down except for auxiliary engines and communications. When the High Overlord insisted that that was impossible, Captain-27 delivered a final warning that they come about or perish. The High Overlord was unimpressed, stating that their foe was one while the Martians were thousands, and that they intended to conquer a world and would not be stopped. He then ordered that the Tripods be signaled to attack. When the navigator hesitated, pointing out their enemy's power, the High Overlord called him a coward and delivered a brutal backhand blow to the navigator even as he ordered the strike fleet to attack!
(Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2) - As the strike fleet deployed into battle formation, a lone white-haired humanoid was teleported out into space and immediately began flying through space like a living guided missile, smashing his way through tripod after tripod, destroying them without being harmed himself. Possessed by his rage, Hollywood quickly attained an impressive kill total.
Captain-27 then broadcast a message to the Tripod fleet, telling them that his ship was about to displace a concentric, high-density energy tsunami, and warning them to retreat or be disintegrated. The High Overlord defied that command, stating that he would not retreat or surrender but would die...a Martian!
As promised, Captain-27's vessel created an energy tsunami that destroyed the flagship and sixty-two percent of the Tripods. The remaining units were damaged in varying degrees and began returning to Mars.
With their mission thus accomplished, the enemy starship entered the timestream and disappeared.
What happened to the "Martians" after they returned to Mars has never been revealed.
Comments: Created by Michael Gallagher and Sandu Florea.
Based on elements from Killraven stories by earlier writers and artists.
During his run on the first Guardians of the Galaxy series, writer
Michael Gallagher tweaked the backstory of the 2001 Martian invasion a bit. First, in Guardians of the
Galaxy I#50/2, the "Future History" recounted by Uilig the Last Watcher revealed that the Martian conquest
was swift and effective because "Their tripods bore a mysterious aura of invincibility that puzzles
pundits and scholars to this day!"
Next, this idea was developed
further in Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2, when
Mainframe revealed that his analysis of the War of the Worlds had determined that the Martians had
received aid from outside of the galaxy in an event that he had spent decades chronologically
calculating in order that it might be interrupted. That event occurred on the date to which he
later sent the Guardians, June 29, 2001 A.D.
Finally, the part of that issue that was set on that 2001 date revealed that the
Martian strike fleet had encountered a highly unusual temporal displacement while on their way to
Earth, an anomaly that was composed of pure knowledge. It was implied that it was the fact that the
Martian invaders had absorbed that pure knowledge into their vessels that had somehow created that
"aura of invincibility" that had made their Tripods so unbeatable during the invasion.
So, with all that in mind, what exactly was this "pure knowledge"
entity/anomaly meant to be? The story doesn't say, but I've read online (somewhere) that it might have
been Era, the evil son of Eon, who was trying to bring about the oft-prophesied War of the Cosmic Beings.
However, since I don't know if there was any truth to this theory, I decided to only mention it here,
in the Comments section, and to not include it into the History section.
Although I'm not entirely sure
about this, I believe that those pink rings visible in space behind the
Martian fleet in the main image were meant to represent that entity/anomaly. I
have no idea what the anomaly was really supposed to be, but the fact that the
entity was associated with "a highly unusual temporal displacement"
indicates that it was not native to 2001 A.D., and so must have been a time
traveler from either the future or the past. A mystery that will probably never
be solved.
Additionally, since this profile is about the Martian Masters
from Reality-9507's year 2001, I chose to exclude anything that they didn't know themselves from
their History. This includes the name of the warship that devastated their strike fleet, the
identities of the people aboard that warship, and the reason why they had interfered, all of
which I am now going to recap here:
The "warship" that intercepted the Martian strike fleet while it was on its way
to Earth was the Icarus, an advanced starship that had traveled backwards in time from
Reality-691's year 3019 A.D. in an attempt to change the history by preventing the War of the
Worlds, a change that was hoped might also prevent the Badoon invasion of the Solar System in
the year 3007 A.D. The starship was the property of the Guardians of the Galaxy, and six members
of that team were aboard it for this mission into the past: team leader Charlie-27, Aleta Ogard,
Major Vance Astro, Martinex T'Naga, Nicholette "Nikki" Gold, Yondu Udonta, and Hollywood (Simon
Williams). The mission had been planned by the artificial intelligence known as Mainframe, formerly
the synthezoid called the Vision, who had spent decades calculating the best time at which the
invasion might be interrupted.
It should be noted that the Guardians REALLY should have known that any attempt to change their past would only have resulted in the divergence of an alternate timeline and would never have had any effect on their own timeline. Even if writer Michael Gallagher was definitely unclear on how time travel worked in the Marvel Multiverse, that issue was edited by Mark Gruenwald, who wrote Marvel's official rules of time travel.
As for what happened to the Guardians when they disappeared after supposedly accomplishing their mission, their attempt to return to their own time was sabotaged by a former enemy, the Inhuman named Wormhole, who had stowed away aboard the Icarus before it had left their thirty-first century. As the starship prepared for time warp, Wormhole used his ability to create fractal tunnels in quantum space to create a wormhole that the starship encountered upon entering the timestream. This caused the Icarus to fly out of control and come out of the timestream at some unknown random point in time, and to then crash on some unknown planet. With their starship completely wrecked, the Guardians were left stranded there.
As far as I know, those original Guardians haven't been seen since. At least, none of the Guardians who have appeared in any story published after Guardians of the Galaxy I#62 have ever made any mention of how they escaped the predicament in which they found themselves at the end of that story. To me, this implies that none of the Guardians seen in any story published since 1995 are the "original" Guardians.
Profile by Donald Campbell.
CLARIFICATIONS:
The "Martian Masters" from Reality-9507 are divergent counterparts of:
These (would-be) "Martian Masters" from Reality-9507 have no known connections to:
The High Overlord from Reality-9507 is a divergent counterpart of:
The High Overlord from Reality-9507 has no known connections to:
|
On June 29, 2001, as the Martian strike fleet traveled through the
black vacuum of space
between Mars and Earth, the Navigator read his instruments and reported the
detection of a highly unusual temporal displacement off the bowsprit. When the High Overlord reacted
to this analysis with displeasure and demanded that he immediately provide precise facts or his life
would be forfeit, the Navigator quickly replied, "Forgive me, Majesty! The entity gives no discernible
information!" After viewing the entity himself, the High Overlord commented on its size and the fact that it had located them in spite of their sophisticated cloaking shell, then demanded to be told what the sensors indicated about composition. The Navigator then reported that it could only be described as "pure knowledge." The High Overlord ordered that the entity be absorbed but, before that could be done, the Navigator reported and showed to him a subsequent arrival of what appeared to be some sort of warship. The Navigator then reported that the original anomaly was retreating because it had thought itself to have been ambushed, but the High Overlord suggested that maybe they were the ones who had been lured into a trap. After being ordered to provide information about this new opponent, the Navigator reported that it was inconceivably advanced and sophisticated, with power readings that were off their scales! He then gasped before reporting the reception of an incoming message which turned out to be from "Jupiter Militia Captain-27" who ordered them to abort their invasion or suffer severe consequences. The High Overlord ignored that demand and fired on the enemy warship, but it was undamaged and retaliated with a blast from its proton pulse array that struck the flagship, causing significant damage. |
The Navigator provided the High Overlord with the following
report: "Surgical outages, Eminence! All systems down except auxiliary engines and communications!"
The High Overlord found that to be impossible and reacted with anger when Captain-27 issued them with a
final warning to come about or perish. Refusing to allow their plan to conquer a world to be stopped,
the High Overlord ordered the Navigator to signal the Tripods to attack! However, concerned about the enemy's capabilities, the Navigator hesitated, saying, "B-but, my Lord...Their power --" The High Overlord interpreted this hesitation as cowardice, denounced him for daring to inhibit his (the Overlord's) destiny, and struck the Navigator with a powerful backhanded blow that seemingly slashed open the Navigator's body, causing him to cry out, "AIEEE!" as he was flung through the air. Whether or not the Navigator survived the High Overlord's attack soon became irrelevant when the flagship and most of the Tripod fleet were disintegrated by an energy tsunami generated by the enemy warship. --Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2 Note: The Navigator strongly resembles the "mucoid body" of the unidentified Martian Commander who appeared in Marvel Graphic Novel#7: Killraven, Warrior of the Worlds. |
Flagship
The command ship of the Martian strike fleet carried the High Overlord who was the commander of the invasion forces. Unlike the Tripods that made up the rest of the strike fleet, the flagship was roughly bullet-shaped, being a cylinder with a rounded nose. Although it seemed to be larger than any of the Tripods, no information about its exact size has been made available.
As a starship, the flagship possessed all the systems required for it to be able to safely transport Martians through the void of space, including life support systems, sensors, and navigational and communications equipment. It possessed both primary and auxiliary engines, both of which were capable of propelling it across interplanetary distances, and which may (or may not) have been capable to propelling it across interstellar distances.
Like the rest of the strike fleet, the flagship was equipped with a sophisticated cloaking shell that should have been able to hide it from any detection technology that was then possessed by the people of Earth in the early twenty-first century. However, the cloak did not protect them from thirty-first century Terran detection technology.
As a warship, the flagship was armed with a directed-energy weapon that was presumably the most powerful such weapon ever to have been developed by Martian weapon designers. However, that weapon was ineffective against a Terran warship from the thirty-first century.
The flagship had the capability of absorbing an entity that was only described as "pure knowledge" and then using what it had absorbed for its own purposes. However, due to alien intervention, this absorption process was never seen in action.
On June 29, 2001 A.D., while traveling through the void of space that separated Mars from Earth, the flagship encountered a highly unusual temporal displacement off its bowsprit. When it was determined that the entity was composed of pure knowledge, the order was given for the flagship to absorb it, but the appearance of a non-Martian warship caused the original anomaly to retreat, preventing the absorption process from being carried out.
When the new warship ordered the Martians to abort their invasion immediately or suffer severe consequences, the High Overlord responded by pressing the button that fired what was presumably the flagship's main weapon at the enemy starship. Protected by its superior technology, the enemy starship was unharmed and retaliated with a single blast from its proton pulse array that was meant to disable the flagship. The enemy weapons fire inflicted severe damage upon the flagship, shorting out all systems except for communications and the auxiliary engines. When the enemy later warned that they were about to create a concentric, high-density energy tsunami that would disintegrate them if they did not retreat, the High Commander refused to retreat or surrender. As a result, the flagship and sixty-two percent of the Tripod fleet were destroyed by the energy tsunami.
--Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2
Note: The Martian flagship appeared in a total of only five panels, none of which provided a good view of the starship. Aside from the two images in this subprofile, the other three images can be found in the main profile.
Tripods
The armored fighting vehicles that were the primary offensive weapons used by the Martians. Each Tripod consisted of a disc-shaped main body that was held aloft on three thin, articulated legs which enabled them to move over land by walking. Each leg was made up of two rigid segments with a joint in the middle. On some Tripods, aside from the three legs, there were also two multi-segmented tentacles hanging beneath them, presumably meant to be used as manipulator arms.
Aside from their ability to walk on solid ground, the Tripods were apparently also capable of flight within Earth's atmosphere. It is unclear why the Martians would have chosen to sacrifice the tactical advantage that aerial mobility would have given them.
The Tripods were also spacecraft capable of traveling through the void of space. As such, they possessed all the systems required to keep their Martian operators alive and well, including life support systems, sensors, and navigational and communications equipment. Nothing has been revealed about the propulsion systems of the Tripods, except for the fact that they were able of traveling from Mars to Earth. Whether or not they were capable of interstellar voyages as well as interplanetary ones has not been revealed.
Like the flagship, the Tripods that made up the rest of the strike fleet were protected by a sophisticated cloaking shell that should have been able to hide them from any detection technology that was then possessed by the people of Earth in the early twenty-first century. However, the cloak was unable to protect them from thirty-first century Terran detection technology.
The Tripods were also (presumably) equipped with a form of directed-energy weapon, possibly a heat-ray, that they could have used to easily incinerate large groups of people with a single blast. These beams would apparently be emitted from projectors situated within the saucer sections of the Tripods. However, none of the Tripods were seen using their energy weapons during their deep space encounter.
Although it appears that, with the exception of the flagship, the entire Martian strike fleet consisted of the advanced Tripod platoon, no verifiable information about exactly how many Tripods were involved has ever been presented. When confronted by a single enemy warship, the High Overlord declared that they were one while the Martians were thousands, suggesting that there could have been thousands of Tripods in the strike fleet. However, the High Overlord may have been greatly exaggerating the size of his fleet or he may have been referring to the total number of Martian military assets, not just those in his fleet.
On June 29, 2001 A.D., while traveling through the void of space that separated Mars from Earth, the strike feet encountered a highly unusual temporal displacement that soon retreated after a second spacecraft, a warship, arrived. Although the enemy starship soon demonstrated that it could easily withstand the flagship's main weapon, the High Overlord ordered the strike fleet to attack and the Tripods began to deploy in battle formation. However, before they could open fire, a lone white-haired humanoid was teleported out of the enemy vessel and immediately began flying through space like a living guided missile, smashing his way through tripod after tripod, destroying them without being harmed himself. At times, the figure also landed on individual Tripods and used his immense strength to physically tear them apart.
After a few minutes of this carnage, the commander of the enemy starship broadcast a message to the Tripod fleet, telling them that his ship was about to displace a concentric, high-density energy tsunami, and warning them to retreat or be disintegrated. The High Overlord defied that command, stating that he would not retreat or surrender but would die a Martian, and his subordinates apparently did not dare to disagree with him. As a result, when the enemy vessel created an energy tsunami, the flagship and sixty-two percent of the Tripods were destroyed. The remaining units were damaged in varying degrees and began returning to Mars.
--Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2
Notes: Tripods (or parts of them) appear in only five panels. Three of those images are part of the main profile and one is part of the Flagship subprofile. So, this subprofile's left image is a magnified portion of the main image and the right image shows the fifth image, that of a rampaging Wonder Man/Hollywood tearing a Tripod to pieces with his bare hands.
In most stories, the Martian invaders traveled to Earth in projectiles or spacecraft from which their Tripods emerged after planetfall. When seen flying through space with their legs dangling beneath them, the Tripods looks somewhat silly.
images: (without ads)
Guardians of the Galaxy I#62, page 27, panel 1 (main image)
page 29, panel 3 (Captain-27's message)
page 29, panels 5-6 (flagship firing on enemy spacecraft)
page 32, panel 3 (strike fleet being smashed by Hollywood)
page 34, panels 3-4 (majority of strike fleet being destroyed)
page 26, panel 2 (High Overlord motivating the Navigator)
page 29, panel 4 (High Overlord firing the flagship's main weapon)
page 26, panel 2 (Navigator close-up)
page 31, panel 1 (Navigator full body)
page 31, panel 5 (Navigator being disciplined)
page 28, panel 1 (Flagship with strike fleet)
page 30, panel 3 (Flagship taking fire)
page 27, panel 1 (single Tripod)
page 33, panel 3 (Tripod being torn apart by Hollywood)
Appearances:
Guardians of the Galaxy I#62/2 (July, 1995) - Michael Gallagher ("Won't Go Quietly" writer), Sandu
Florea ("I Just Arrived" artist), Mark Gruenwald ("Empathetic" editor in chief)
First Posted: 03/30/2025
Last updated: 04/02/2025
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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A Martian who had been chosen to be the navigator aboard the
flagship of the Martian strike fleet that was to carry out the second invasion of the planet Earth.
No personal information about him, including his name, has ever been revealed. Unlike the High
Overlord, the Navigator carried out his duties on the bridge while in his true Martian form. He
addressed the High Overlord as "Eminence" or "Majesty" or "My lord."