PROTONIC DISINTEGRATOR
Classification: Extraterrestrial (Kree) technology
Creators: Unspecified Kree scientists/technicians
Users/Operators:
Zarek and his
Lunatic Legion;
normally used by official executioners employed by the Kree Empire (perhaps
Accusers?)
Subjects: Captain Mar-Vell;
many other Kree criminals over the course of 900 years (none named)
Aliases: "the disintegrator"
First Appearance: Captain Marvel I#38 (May, 1975)
Powers/Abilities/Functions: The Protonic Disintegrator is an execution device that uses the process of protonic (or protronic) disintegration to kill those subjected to it by destroying their minds as well as their bodies. The damage that it inflicts on the brain patterns of its victims is so severe that those brain patterns can never reassemble themselves for reincarnation. It is for this reason that the rite is considered to be the ultimate termination.
The Protonic Disintegrator can be turned on or off simply by clicking a toggle switch located on the top of the helmet.
The Protonic Disintegrator helmet was equipped with a transparent purple visor that covered the top part of the condemned's face, like an eyeshield. What purpose it could serve on an execution device has not been revealed.
When the Protonic Disintegrator is activated, it generates a yellow glow around the helmet and around the body of the condemned.
Limitations: The Protonic Disintegrator could not affect Rick Jones because his "polarity" was Mar-Vell's opposite.
If the rite of protonic disintegration is interrupted before it is completed, then the effects are not permanent and the subject may recover. However, it's possible that only beings who possess Cosmic Awareness can recover from those effects.
History:
(Captain Marvel I#38 (fb) - BTS) - Nine hundred years ago, protonic disintegration became the official
mode of execution in the Kree Empire. Eventually, it came to be considered the traditional form of execution.
(Captain Marvel I#37 - BTS) - After having twice been attacked by agents of the Lunatic Legion, Captain Mar-Vell was informed by Ant-Man (Henry Pym) that there was a strong possibility that they were connected to the Blue Area of Earth's Moon. Mar-Vell then traveled to the Moon, defeating another agent of the Lunatic Legion on the way. Once in the Blue Area, Mar-Vell decided to seek entrance to the dwelling of the Watcher Uatu in order to discover what he may have known about anyone else who had been active in the area. However, just as he entered the Watcher's home, Mar-Vell began to be negatively affected by the "Vitamin C" that Rick Jones had ingested during their trip. In his now-altered state, Mar-Vell was unable to effectively fight Uatu when the Watcher appeared, revealed that he had allied himself with Mar-Vell's enemies, and began trying to kill him. Ultimately, Uatu realized that Mar-Vell was "ill" and could not bring himself to end his life while he was in that condition. Instead, Uatu rendered Mar-Vell unconscious and brought him to where the Lunatic Legion were waiting on a lower level of his home.
(Captain Marvel I#38 (fb) - BTS) - In preparation for his imminent execution, the helpless Mar-Vell was securely bound, hand and foot, by the members of the Lunatic Legion. Mar-Vell was positioned on a raised platform so that his execution could be clearly seen by the whole group.
(Captain Marvel I#38) - While Mar-Vell's mind was still distorted, Zarek indulged himself with
some gloating as he prepared to place the Protonic Disintegrator helmet on Mar-Vell's head. However, before the
execution could begin, Admiral
Sro-Himm demanded that Mar-Vell be told why he had been sentenced to death. Zarek agreed and spent a
few minutes recapping the parable
of the First Kree and the Plant-People and then complained about how interbreeding between Kree and other
humanoid races had led to the current situation in which few full-blooded Blue Kree remained.
Zarek then revealed
that the Lunatic Legion had returned to Earth's Moon to reclaim their all-but-lost heritage and how, fearing that
Mar-Vell, a mulatto and renegade with paranormal powers, would oppose their presence so close to his adopted
planet, they had sent their agents to destroy him. Once the helmet was fastened securely, Zarek wasted even
more time by telling Mar-Vell that the Watcher had welcomed and aided them, violating the most sacred credo
known by actually raising his hands in combat with Mar-Vell.
Zarek concluded his pre-execution speech with these words: "In the few seconds of life remaining to you, Mar-Vell - - you might ask yourself what you have done to inspire such an aberration in a Watcher! Such consideration would, at least keep you from anticipating the instant of identity's end!" Having completed his gloating, and to the cheers of his comrades, Zarek turned the helmet on with an audible click.
As the Watcher turned away, unable to bear to observe what was about to happen, Captain Mar-Vell began to undergo the rite of protonic disintegration, a procedure that would destroy his mind as well as his body. However, before this ultimate termination could be completed, the three-hour period that Mar-Vell could exist in the positive cosmos at a time ran out, causing him to automatically switch places with Rick Jones in the Negative Zone.
Since the polarity of Rick Jones was the opposite to that of Mar-Vell, the disintegrator could not affect him so Zarek switched it off with another audible click. Although killing Jones would have effectively murdered Mar-Vell, Zarek declared that he believed that they all wanted to see the traitor die the traditional death so he had the unconscious Jones removed from the bonds and carried off to security until they could bring Mar-Vell back from the Negative Zone. However, Mar-Vell's Cosmic Awareness enabled him to regain his mental faculties hours earlier than any other Kree could have and, while observing Rick's body being carried away, his wish to escape triggered his unexpected new ability to animate Rick's unconscious body, enabling it to bring the two Nega-Bands on his wrists together. This caused Rick and Mar-Vell to exchange places again.
As the Kree attacked the returned Mar-Vell, Zarek called out to Fer-Porr to hold back and to remember the protonic disintegration but Sro-Himm pointed out that the others would rather butcher their enemy. Sro-Himm then reminded Zarek of how any true Kree would prefer to kill than to watch an execution and that they were now following a tradition older than civilization's by following their instincts. Zarek agreed that Sro-Himm was correct and he abandoned any attempt to keep Mar-Vell alive so he could be properly executed. However, since recent events had made their minds more connected than ever, Mar-Vell and Jones were able to defeat all of the Lunatic Legion.
The Kree Empire presumably continued to use the Protonic Disintegrator as its official method of execution until it split during the Kree Civil War.
It has not been revealed if either the Kree/Skrull Alliance or the Utopian Kree use protonic disintegration to execute their criminals.
Comments: Created by Steve Englehart, Al Milgrom and Klaus Janson.
The full name of this execution device was never mentioned in-story and it was only referred to as "the disintegrator" once. As for the actual process, it is mentioned only twice, first as "protronic disintegration" in the Omniscient Narration on page 5, and then as "protonic disintegration" by Zarek on page 9. Given that "protronic" and "protron" have been used as names but aren't real words, it seems likely that the Omniscient Narrator actually misspelled the word "protonic." Alternately, maybe the Kree, with their advanced scientific knowledge, do know of some particle called a "protron" which they use during this method of execution.
I'm almost completely certain that the Protonic Disintegrator consists only of the helmet that Zarek placed on Mar-Vell's head, and that the metal gloves, metal boots, metal chest harness and metal shorts that Mar-Vell was wearing during his execution were only there to keep him restrained. However, since I could be wrong, I decided to include that full-body image of the bound Mar-Vell, just in case some of those restraints were actually part of the disintegrator.
According to this story, the Protonic Disintegrator could not affect Rick Jones
because his "polarity" was Mar-Vell's opposite. This is presumably some side effect of the fact that Rick and Mar-Vell
were then bonded together interdimensionally in such a way that only one of them could exist in the positive universe
at any given time and the other had to be in the Negative Zone. However, since I've never heard of them having
differing polarities in any other story, it sounds like something that was invented solely to keep Mar-Vell's execution
from being carried out successfully in this story.
Yes...this sort of
plot device is fairly common with Steve Englehart's stories. I have
REALLY enjoyed them for decades, but his stories often have such
less-than-logical rationalizations.--Snood
Since reincarnation is generally considered to be a spiritual/mystical process involving souls and the Kree (except for the Priests of Pama) have always been depicted as being pragmatic, scientific and decidedly non-spiritual, it seems odd that they would develop a technological method of execution that prevents those killed by it from being reincarnated. On the other hand, the Kree are ruthless enough that anything that was capable of destroying their enemies forever might be of interest to them.
Also, although the rite of protonic disintegration was described as being the official mode of execution in the Kree Empire for nine hundred years, that does not necessarily mean that it was actually developed by the Kree. The process and/or technology could have been discovered/developed on some alien planet that was later conquered by the Kree who then appropriated that knowledge/technology for their own use. Also, was that 900 Earth-years or 900 Hala-years? There should be a difference.
In this story, the Lunatic Legion proved themselves to be a self-defeating group of losers. They had Mar-Vell totally helpless and at their mercy, with his body securely bound and his mind distorted, and were all set to execute him. If they had just started the rite of protonic disintegration immediately, then it would have been completed before the three hour time limit ran out, and Mar-Vell would have suffered the ultimate termination. Instead, they insisted that Zarek should first tell him exactly why he had been sentenced to death, thereby delaying the execution just long enough for Mar-Vell to disappear from within the helmet before he could be completely executed.
The hallucinatory mind-storms that Mar-Vell experienced after he arrived in the Blue Area were caused by his link with Rick Jones who had ingested a capsule of "Vitamin C" that he had been given by Rachel Dandridge as a present for him to use if his personal business got boring. Since vitamin C is also known as ascorbic acid, I presume the capsule was meant to contain lysergic acid diethylamide, the psychedelic drug commonly known as LSD, a substance that would not have been approved by the Comics Code Authority. The effects of the drug pummeled Mar-Vell's mind, leaving it more flexible than it had been, and it also removed any remaining barriers between his mind and Rick's. This mind expansion essentially made them one and the same person, something which the Supreme Intelligence had been working towards ever since it had arranged for Mar-Vell to be assigned to Earth as part of its plan to absorb the latent mental powers that all humans possessed. Given that the Supremor has demonstrated the ability to secretly influence the minds of other beings even at intergalactic distances, I have to wonder how coincidental it was that "Dandy" chose to give that present to Rick.
Anyway, I included that last comment because I had thought that undergoing the rite of protonic disintegration had been at least partially responsible for the pummeling that expanded Mar-Vell's mind. However, after reading Captain Marvel I#38 more carefully, it seems that it was only the drug that was responsible.
It is an odd choice and perhaps a sign of the times for Zarek to use
the term "mulatto" to refer to Mar-Vell. This is a somewhat outdated
term now considered offensive to many in English and other languages,
although not so much in Spanish and Portuguese. Sometimes used to refer
to anyone of mixed races, it is most commonly used as the masculine
form of a mix between people of African and European/"Caucasian"
ancestry. Back in the 1970's it was less outdated, I suppose.
It's used in a few songs, like "Oye Como Va" by Santana and "Smells Like Teen Spirit' by Nirvana.
--Snood
Profile by Donald Campbell.
CLARIFICATIONS:
The Protonic Disintegrator has no known connections to:
images: (without ads)
Captain Marvel I#38, page 5, panel 2 (main image)
page 1 (Mar-Vell is bound with NO WAY OUT!)
page 5, panel 5 (Zarek clicks it on)
page 5, panels 9-12 (the rite of protonic disintegration)
Only Appearance:
Captain Marvel I#38 (May, 1975) - Steve Englehart (author and co-creator), Al Milgrom (artist and co-creator),
Klaus Janson (inks & coloring), Len Wein (editor)
First Posted: 06/04/2023
Last updated: 06/04/2023
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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