STELLAR PROJECTOR
Classification: Extraterrestial weapon of mass destruction
Creator: Thanos (as the person who created the Star-Gem)
Users/Possessors: Thanos
Aliases: "Thanos's star-burster" (Captain America)
First Appearance: Avengers Annual I#7 (1977)
Powers/Abilities/Functions: The Stellar Projector was designed by Thanos to be a weapon he could use to commit total stellar genocide. The weapon consisted of two parts: an ion-laser projector and a power source. The projector itself was unremarkable and could easily be replaced if destroyed.
When powered by conventional energy sources, the projector could only fire a normal ion-laser beam and its destructive capability was limited. However, the Stellar Projector could also be used to channel energies from certain incredibly-powerful objects, like the Star-Gem created by Thanos or an Infinity Gem. When powered by such objects, the Stellar Projector could fire a beam that would cause any star it struck to explode (as if it had become a nova). This beam could affect any and all stars, even those whose masses were low enough (i.e., less than eight solar masses) that the laws of physics would otherwise prevent them from ever exploding as supernovas.
Once a fully-energized beam struck a target star, that star would begin to flare and the light it radiated would quickly become brighter. As this brightening continued, the star's color would change from white to red, and it was soon after that change that the star would explode like a nova.
If the beam from the Stellar Projector was interrupted before the target star exploded, then that star would not explode and would begin to revert to its normal state. However, for some time afterward, the star would be somewhat less stable than it had been before being struck by the beam, and could experience solar flares of ever-increasing fury as it threw off excess energy that it had generated while being affected by the beam.
History:
(Captain Marvel I#26-33 - BTS) - Driven by his love for Mistress Death
(the cosmic manifestation of death), Thanos sought out and acquired the
Cosmic Cube. Then, once he was able to control it, Thanos wished that
the Cube would change him into all things in the universe. This granted
him control over the universe and everything in it, making him a god.
(Captain Marvel I#33 - BTS/Infinity Gauntlet#5 (fb) - BTS/Thanos Annual I#1 (fb)) - However, due to a combination of a subconscious belief that he was unworthy of possessing ultimate power and his own arrogance, Thanos underestimated how Captain Mar-Vell's abilities had been enhanced by his recent attainment of cosmic awareness. This foolish miscalculation enabled Mar-Vell to sense that the Cosmic Cube was the physical link to the power that was maintaining Thanos in his godlike state, and he used that knowledge to defeat Thanos by shattering the Cube and breaking Thanos's link to its power.
(Captain Marvel I#33 - BTS/Warlock I#10 (fb)/Thanos Annual I#1 (fb)) - Although Thanos seemingly died along with his conception of the universe that had been created for him by the Cosmic Cube, he actually survived but was returned to his mortal form, reincarnated to the flesh and in orbit above Earth's atmosphere.
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb)) - Following his defeat, Death abandoned Thanos. Desperate to regain Mistress Death's affections, Thanos began a quest to find some way to create a suitable love offering. He searched through the minds and libraries of a thousand worlds before he found a scroll from a dead world which told of six beautiful and deadly gems whose combined power could be used to accomplish his goal: total stellar genocide.
(Warlock I#11 - BTS/Avengers Annual I#7 (fb)) - Thanos may have been able to covertly acquire up to three of these six "Soul Gems" (as they were originally described, although they were actually Infinity Gems, each with a different field of power, of which one was the Soul Gem; see comments). but was unwilling to even try to steal Warlock's Soul Gem because it could have stolen his own soul. Instead, Thanos posed as Warlock's ally against the Magus, a future incarnation of Warlock who had been created by Lord Chaos and Master Order to be a Champion of Life against a recently-arrived and powerful Champion of Death who was secretly Thanos himself. During this brief alliance, Thanos was able to siphon off the elements he needed from Warlock's gem without Warlock being aware of it.
(Warlock I#11 - BTS) - By successfully blocking his future transformation into the Magus, Warlock caused a timequake that retroactively altered the past five thousand years of history. However, since they had been at the very eye of that explosive reshuffling of time, Warlock, Pip, Gamora and Thanos were the only four mortal beings who retained their memories of the Magus and of the universe as it had been.
(Warlock I#11 - BTS/Avengers Annual I#7 (fb)) - Thanos apparently also secretly retained possession of whatever elements he had siphoned from Warlock's Soul Gem (as well as whatever other "Soul Gems" he had already acquired).
(Marvel Team-Up I#55 - BTS) - In the Blue Area of Earth's Moon, Adam Warlock and Spider-Man encountered the Stranger and the Gardener, each of whom possessed a "Soul Gem" of their own (the Power and Time Gems, respectively). The Stranger was forced to leave before he could steal Warlock's Soul Gem and the Gardener, believing that his gem had been corrupted because he had used it in battle, left it behind when he departed the Moon.
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb)) - Thanos later acquired however many "Soul Gems" (at least two) that were not yet in his possession. It is known that Thanos covertly entered a starship or base belonging to the Stranger and managed to steal his Power Gem at a time when that cosmic entity was no longer wearing it on his forehead but was still nearby, and that Thanos traveled to Earth's Moon where he found the Time Gem that had recently been abandoned there by the Gardener. It is unclear if he acquired some or all of the other three Soul Gems at this time or if he had already acquired some or all of them.
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb) - BTS) - Thanos created a single large, synthetic gem which he called his Star-Gem. Then, as he had done with Warlock's Soul Gem, Thanos siphoned off whatever elements he needed from the other five "Soul Gems," and he transferred all of those "properties" into the Star-Gem.
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb) - BTS) - The fates of life (Lord Chaos and Master Order) whispered to Adam Warlock in the night and revealed to him that his former ally Thanos was a betrayer and a herald of Anti-Life, and that Warlock was the chosen champion of life and the evil Titan's natural foe. Accepting his quest, Warlock set out to stop Thanos.
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb) - BTS) - Thanos set up his Stellar Projector and the Star-Gem aboard his space ark, Sanctuary II
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb)) - When Gamora discovered the Star-Gem and learned of the purpose for which Thanos had created it, she tried to end his madness with a strong blade. Unfortunately, that blade was not strong enough so Thanos was able to turn and fatally injure her. Thanos then departed, leaving Gamora for dead.
(Avengers Annual I#7) - Adam Warlock arrived at the small planetoid that Thanos had been using as his base. While searching the ruins for some clue as to where Thanos had gone, Warlock found the barely-alive Gamora who told him that she had uncovered stellar genocide and that Thanos wanted to kill everyone and now had the power to do so. After Gamora told Warlock that he was the only person in the entire universe that Thanos feared, Warlock used his Soul Gem to take Gamora's soul into himself, thereby learning much of what Thanos had done. Warlock then set off towards Earth.
(Avengers Annual I#7) - On Earth, six Avengers (Iron Man/Tony Stark, the Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff, the Vision/"Victor Shade," Captain America/Steve Rogers, the Beast/Hank McCoy and Thor Odinson) just happened to be present at Avengers Mansion when a "predestined meeting" was about to take place. They were soon joined by both Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell) and Moondragon (Heather Douglas), who explained that they and the six Avengers had all gathered there due to a "siren call of fate" (or a strong premonition that their powers might be needed that night to oppose an oncoming horror that only a "gathering of eagles" could stop).
Soon afterwards and several hundred light-years away, Sanctuary II approached a certain bright young star and fired a beam at it. That beam caused the star to flare, blaze brighter, and change from a blinding white to a fiery red before finally exploding as a nova.
Back at Avengers Mansion, Moondragon said, "It has begun!" She
then told the others gathered there that she had just felt the "psychic screams of unbelieving millions"
as they died suddenly and unexpectedly. The Beast's cynical response was cut short when Adam Warlock
surprised everyone by entering the room. Thor was not pleased by Warlock's presence due to a past hostile
encounter, but Warlock explained that he had come seeking aid and not battle, and Moondragon confirmed
that she sensed he was speaking truly. Warlock then revealed that he had come seeking aid against a mutual
adversary, Thanos, and he saw by their faces that none of them had forgotten the monster from Titan.
After recapping Thanos's history, Warlock revealed that, after having been robbed of his godhood when Captain Marvel had shattered the Cosmic Cube, Thanos had been abandoned by Death and was now seeking to create a love offering to regain Death's affections. Warlock then revealed how Thanos had gathered the six "Soul Gems," which he had used to create his synthetic gem, and that he planned to blow every star out of the heavens.
(Avengers Annual I#7) - Meanwhile, still light-years away from Earth, a small shuttle piloted by Pip the Troll landed on and docked with Sanctuary II. Pip then boarded it, hoping to find Adam Warlock or Gamora. Unfortunately, Pip was soon greeted by Thanos who revealed that, although there had been a time when his plans had required that he be on friendly terms with Warlock and that had forced him to be civil with Pip, THINGS HAD CHANGED!!
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb) - BTS) - Thanos boasted of his plans to Pip, including how he was going to use Sanctuary III and its crew of murderous Thanos-thralls in order to divert the attention of the Avengers so that Sanctuary II could approach the Sun from the other side and blow it up without any interference. Thanos then destroyed Pip's mind and had his still-breathing husk of a body transported to Sanctuary III where it was left in that starship's inner sanctum for Warlock to find. Thanos apparently realized that Warlock would take Pip's soul into himself and so learn his plans, but he seemingly did so in order to lead Warlock into confronting him.
(Avengers Annual I#7) - Back on Earth, Avengers Mansion received a mayday sent from the orbital tracking station Starcore. When the Avengers responded, a Starcore officer revealed that they had detected a giant space armada that was just passing Pluto and heading straight for Earth. After stating that the armada was twice the size of the Skrull task force from a few years earlier, the officer then switched the video feed over to their radar screen that showed thousands of incoming ships. Although Warlock was soon found to no longer be in the mansion, the eight remaining heroes boarded Moondragon's space cruiser and blasted off into space to defend Earth against Thanos.
As Thanos had planned, the six Avengers and their two allies went right after the obvious threat posed by his fleet. Following Captain America's orders, Thor and Iron Man ran interference by destroying as many of the smaller ships as possible while the others went to what they believed was the flagship in order to knock out "Thanos's star-burster." After their cruiser had landed on Sanctuary III and Mar-Vell had blasted an opening in the space ark's hull, those six heroes boarded the supposed flagship and began battling the small army of aliens who were waiting to massacre them.
(Avengers Annual I#7 - BTS) - Meanwhile, with the Avengers thus being distracted battling Thanos-thralls, Sanctuary II approached Sol from the other side and prepared to fire on it.
(Avengers Annual I#7) - Back on Sanctuary III, the six heroes were being surprisingly successful against the Thanos-thralls, something that Mar-Vell realized even as he blasted his way into the starship's inner sanctum where the heroes believed the Star Gem was stationed. However, upon entering, Mar-Vell was surprised to find that no one was in that chamber room except for Adam Warlock and a dwarf. Warlock revealed that the dwarf was Pip, who had perhaps been his only friend, and that Thanos had destroyed Pip's mind and left him there for Warlock to find. After using his Soul Gem to take Pip's soul into himself, Warlock announced that he now knew where Thanos was hiding and invited Mar-Vell to come with him to stop their foe.
(Avengers Annual I#7) - Warlock and Mar-Vell then left the space ark, something that the heroes they left behind noticed.
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb) - BTS) -Thor and Iron Man both realized that wherever the duo was going was where the true battle was to be found, and they decided to follow in their wake.
(Avengers Annual I#7) - As they traveled through space to confront Thanos, Warlock revealed that he had learned where Thanos was because Thanos had boasted of his plans to Pip and taking Pip's soul into himself had transferred Pip's knowledge to his consciousness. When Mar-Vell pointed out that Thanos must have known that this would happen, Warlock agreed and stated that it wouldn't be the first seed to his own destruction that he'd seen Thanos plant. Then, as the two cosmic guardians spotted and approached Sanctuary II, the starship fired a beam at the Sun which caused it to begin to flare and erupt. Imagining what was soon going to happen, Mar-Vell flew through space at great speed and, acting like a living missile, drove straight into the stellar projector. Taken by surprise, Thanos, who was standing beside the weapon, exclaimed, "WHAT? Someone smashing into my projector? WHO?" Then, after seeing who it was, Thanos began to talk to himself, saying, "Captain Marvel!? I expected...Well, it matters little. Mar-Vell has rendered himself unconscious for his efforts and did no real damage. I need only place my Star-Gem onto a new ion-laser projector and continue at my task of stellar genocide."
Hearing this, Adam Warlock, who had arrived less dramatically, whispered, "will you?" Having again been taken by surprise, Thanos only managed to exclaim "WHO?!" before Warlock punched him in the face while announcing, "ADAM WARLOCK, the Godslayer, has come for you, demon! Prepare to die!!" Unfortunately for Warlock, Thanos recovered almost instantly and, while backhanding him away, responded by saying, "FOOL! Nothing stops death!" Thanos then fired his lethal lethal eye beams at Warlock while repeating, "NOTHING!" Then, as the mortally-wounded Warlock collapsed on the floor in front of him, Thanos continued his speech, saying, "Not even a poor deluded maniac who claimed to be the champion of life. So die, Adam Warlock. My mistress awaits you. Tell her I follow shortly behind you, bringing an offering of undreamed-of magnitude...the stars!"
With Warlock no longer a threat, Thanos used some device in his right gauntlet to cause the Star-Gem to levitate out of the wrecked projector.
(Avengers Annual I#7) - While moving the Star-Gem away, Thanos began to muse aloud, saying, "How strange...I never dreamed it would end so easily. He truly was the chosen hero of chaos and order...of life. Yet, for a champion, life abandoned him casually." Unexpectedly, Thanos then heard a voice from behind him, that of Thor, answer him, saying, "Yet it lingered long enough for us to reach you." Spinning around in surprise, Thanos saw the two new arrivals and exclaimed, "THOR?! IRON MAN?! HOW?!" As he struck Thanos with Mjolnir, Thor explained, "We did follow in Mar-Vell and Warlock's wake, for we realized where they be, the true battle would be found." Engaging the Asgardian in battle, Thanos replied, "Then you have come a grand distance only to greet destruction."
With Thanos thus kept occupied battling Thor, Iron Man began to talk to himself, saying, "I don't know if that monster has the clout to pull off his threat or not. But right now Thanos is not the true threat -- his Soul Gem is. So while he's busy with Thor, I'll just give it a taste of the ol' repulsor rays." Iron Man then fired both his repulsor rays at the Star-Gem, shattering the giant hollow gem. Witnessing this, Thanos cried out, "NO! My gem...You destroyed my Star Gem..." to which Iron Man replied, "...And saved the stars from mass destruction." When Thanos then said, "You...destroyed my one chance to regain that which...I love...", Thor replied, "...A perverse adoration for Death!" Offended by their words, Thanos angrily told the heroes that they could never hope to comprehend the concepts he embraced. Then, as he teleported away, Thanos declared that, since they had destroyed the means to fulfill his dreams, they had earned the enmity of Thanos of Titan and the minutes of life remaining to them were few.
Meanwhile, in the adjoining chamber, Mar-Vell regained consciousness just in time to witness an encounter between two Adam Warlocks, the dying present-day Warlock and his younger self from the past. As Mar-Vell watched, the two Warlocks spoke of how the younger one had come to steal his dying older self's soul so that it would never become the foe (the Magus) he had defeated months earlier. Once the younger Warlock had taken the older Warlock's soul into the Soul Gem and closed that time loop, he disappeared, leaving the dead body of the older Warlock behind.
Unseen by mortal eyes, the soul of Adam Warlock awoke within the Soul Gem where he was reunited with Gamora and Pip and many others in a land of peace and love.
(Silver Surfer III#7 (fb) - BTS) - The destruction of the synthetic master jewel caused the five Soul/Infinity Gems not then attached to Adam Warlock to be hurled through hyperspace. However, for some unexplained reason, most people who knew of the Star-Gem's destruction assumed that the five gems were destroyed in the battle, possibly as part of the destruction of the Star-Gem.
(Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2 (fb)) - After arriving on Sanctuary III, Thanos began aiding his thralls, and his direction transformed them from a disorganized, ineffectual mob into a well-oiled fighting machine who quickly rendered the five heroes unconscious. Thanos then used the starship's massive weapon batteries to fire a salvo of energy beams that struck and incapacitated Thor, Iron Man and Captain Marvel as they were returning from the other space ark. Thanos then had all eight heroes imprisoned within stasis beams that kept them a micro-second away from reality and thusly immobile. When his thralls then brought Adam Warlock's body before him, Thanos wrenched the Soul Gem from the dead hero's brow because, although it lacked the power to extinguish all of the stars of night, Thanos suspected that the Soul Gem still possessed the might to blow out the star Sol, causing Thanos to think that that act might perhaps be enough to appease Death.
(Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2 (fb) - BTS) - Despite being imprisoned, Moondragon was able to use her mental abilities to telepathically project a summary of recent events that was picked up by Peter Parker's spider-sense as he slept, causing him to experience those events as a nightmare.
(Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2) - As Spider-Man, Parker sought aid from the Thing who piloted an experimental space shuttle craft into space where they soon located the giant space ark which used a tractor beam to pull them inside. As the two heroes proved to be surprisingly successful at fighting his guardsmen, Thanos cut off the artificial gravity in that chamber, enabling his minions to then quickly overcome the duo.
When Spider-Man and the Thing regained consciousness, they found they had been placed beside the captive Avengers so that Thanos could gloat of his awe-inspiring power while his thralls prepared similar stasis beam accommodations for them. While boasting of how invincible he was, Thanos showed Spider-Man and the Thing the Soul Gem and revealed that his army was even then readying another "stellar projector," one which would bend the Soul Gem's power to his will so that he could focus that power on the Sun, causing it to go nova and destroy all life in the solar system. The Thing reacted by punching Thanos in the face, but the Titan was unharmed and effortlessly knocked him out. Seeing this, Spider-Man realized how outclassed he was and experienced a brief panic attack during which he fled from the chamber but, after battling a number of goons, soon realized that, if he couldn't fight Thanos on his own, then the only chance that might save everyone would be if he freed Thor.
(Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2 - BTS) - For some unexplained reason, Thanos then encased the Soul Gem within a glass globe.
(Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2) - Returning to the chamber, Spider-Man knocked himself out while using his own body to smash the machinery keeping the eight heroes in stasis. Now awakened and no longer immobilized, the eight of them, joined by the Thing, sprang into action and began battling both Thanos and his army of thralls. However, as Thanos began to prevail, Spider-Man regained consciousness and had the unexplainable feeling that everything depended on what he did next.
Elsewhere, on the edge of infinity, Lord Chaos and Master Order primed the final layer needed before their champion, Adam Warlock, could be called forth from the world within the Soul Gem.
Suddenly, Spider-Man's spider-sense began to go crazy, and he realized that it was drawing his attention to Warlock's Soul Gem, encased in the glass globe. Understanding that the only thing that mattered was "getting that jewel out of that fancy fish bowl," Spider-Man was made groggy by a blow to the back of his head but managed to knock the globe off its pedestal, causing it to shatter on the floor. With the Soul Gem no longer confined, Adam Warlock was pulled back to reality for one last mission of vengeance. Appearing above the Soul Gem and seething with cosmic power released through his physical death, Warlock proclaimed himself to be the Ultimate Avenger and stated that Thanos knew him and his purpose. Shocked to see an enemy he had personally killed, Thanos was in denial about what was happening and could do nothing but cry out that he couldn't be stopped even as Warlock laid hands on him and transformed his body into solid, unmoving granite.
With their leader beaten and seemingly dead, the Thanos-thralls quickly surrendered and the Avengers, after disarming them, let them go (because imprisoning them on Earth for their crimes would cause too many problems).
Later, at least nine of those ten heroes took part in a funeral for Adam Warlock as his body, and those of Gamora and Pip, were laid to rest in a row, with the Soul Gem left on Warlock's grave.
(Captain Marvel I#57 (fb) - BTS) - Although he had been defeated and his weapon had been destroyed, Thanos had already begun to tamper with the Sun before he was defeated. As a result of that tampering, the Sun began to flare with an ever-increasing fury and throw off excess energy which Mar-Vell's cosmic nature then drew to him. As that excess energy began to build up within him, Mar-Vell realized that he would eventually reach a critical mass and become a living conflagration that would destroy Earth. For some reason, Mar-Vell came to believe that this would be the beginning of a deadly chain reaction that would spread to and destroy the other planets in the solar system and then do the same to the rest of the universe.
(Captain Marvel I#57 (fb) - BTS) - As his body began to overload on the stolen energy, Mar-Vell experienced increasing pain which made it harder and harder for him to think and caused him to begin to lose control. He sought out Rick Jones for help but by the time he found Rick he was too far gone and could not make Rick understand the danger.
(Captain Marvel I#57 (fb) - BTS) - Rick contacted Dr. Don Blake for help, but the physician could do little without knowing what the problem was.
(Captain Marvel I#57) - Eventually, Mar-Vell began to freak out and started glowing. As he flew off and went on a rampage in a futile attempt to siphon off the energy within him before it reached critical mass, Blake transformed into Thor and confronted the Kree warrior. Realizing that the threat would be ended if he died, Mar-Vell attacked Thor while begging the thunder god to kill him. Unwilling to kill his former comrade, Thor used a lightning bolt to stun Mar-Vell, restoring him to rationality long enough to explain what had happened since the Avengers had defeated Thanos "less than a week" earlier. However, this brief respite soon ended as the raw power from the Sun that Mar-Vell continued to absorb caused his body to swell and vastly increase in size. Still unwilling to kill Mar-Vell, Thor took a desperate gamble and used Mjolnir to strike both of Mar-Vell's Nega-Bands, causing them to create a gateway to the Negative Zone that quickly sucked away all of Mar-Vell's rampant energy. Although the weakened Mar-Vell was nearly sucked into the Negative Zone as well, Thor managed to grab him and pull him back to Earth. Before the portal closed, Thor, Mar-Vell and Rick Jones saw that the power that had been drained from Mar-Vell had resulted in the creation of a new star in the Negative Zone.
Comments: Created by Jim Starlin and Joe Rubinstein.
The Star-Gem and/or the stellar projector have rarely appeared since Avengers Annual I#7, and those few appearances have all been just recaps. I've chosen to include data from Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2 in this profile because it is the only time in which Thanos called his star-killing weapon a "stellar projector." I've also included data from Captain Marvel I#57 because it serves as a sort of epilogue to the storyline and because it's the only comic in which the (unidentified) star-killing weapon is shown in its intact state.
Although I generally like Jim Starlin's stories, he does sometimes gloss over details that don't make much sense if one thinks about them. In this case, the chronology of events is the problem. After Thanos was apparently killed at the end of Captain Marvel I#33 (July, 1974), he showed up alive in Warlock I#9 (October, 1975) to help Adam Warlock against the Magus, and then Avengers Annual I#7 (1977) revealed that, after having been rejected by Death, Thanos had searched through the minds and libraries of a thousand worlds before he learned about the six beautiful and deadly gems whose combined power could accomplish his goal of total stellar genocide, and that his alliance with Warlock had just been a ruse to allow him to secretly siphon the elements he needed from Warlock's Soul Gem without risking his soul. This means that he did all that, including using his time probe to examine and classify every aspect of Warlock's present and future life and rescuing Gamora in order to raise her from girlhood to adulthood so he could remake her as the deadliest woman in the galaxy, in the time that elapsed between Captain Marvel I#33 and Gamora's first appearance in Strange Tales I#180 (June, 1975), published less than one year later. That's not much time, even if one ignores the fact that "Marvel Time" is supposed to pass at a rate that is about one-fifth to one-fourth as fast as time in the real world.
According to the story in Marvel Two-In-One I#61, the Avengers buried the bodies of Adam Warlock, Pip and Gamora on Counter-Earth because that was Warlock's adopted planet. This fact was confirmed in Marvel Two-In-One I#63 when the Thing, Alicia Masters, Moondragon and Starhawk accompanied Her to that planet and found the three graves there on a hilltop. However, the ending of Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2 doesn't mention Counter-Earth at all and the artwork for the funeral shows multiple planets or moons in close proximity to the planet on which the trio were buried, something that is totally inconsistent with what the space around Counter-Earth should have looked like.
Both of these annuals make it absolutely clear that Thanos was using two near-identical giant space arks, Sanctuary II and Sanctuary III, in his plan to commit stellar genocide. However, most stories that subsequently use Sanctuary II treat it as the only space ark that the Avengers had to deal with after Thanos was defeated. Sanctuary III only appears (and is named) in Silver Surfer III#38 & 45, after Nebula was previously shown acquiring Sanctuary II in Avengers I#252 and to be in command of that starship in Avengers I#255-260.
The story in Captain Marvel I#57, although based on a somewhat interesting concept, suffers from the fact that certain aspects of "Star Burst" aren't adequately explained. Specifically, what was it about Mar-Vell's "cosmic nature" that drew the excess solar energy to him? And how was that universe-threatening problem solved by having the Negative Zone suck away all of his rampant energy?
In the absence of any in-story explanations, I've come up with my own answers to those questions. It seems to me that it was probably the fact that Mar-Vell had destroyed the stellar projector by flying into it that somehow made him unusually attractive to the excess energy that the Sun had begun to emit after Thanos had tampered with it. In fact, maybe it was the presence of Mar-Vell, whose body may have been charged with whatever energy he had acquired from the projector, that was causing the Sun to flare up in the first place. As for why draining that accumulated energy into the Negative Zone stopped the problem, maybe that process had also drained that "charge" from his body as well, allowing the Sun to calm down to normal once it was out of Earth's dimension? Of course, these ideas are only speculation, but they're better than allowing those problems to go unexplained.
Another problem with the story in Captain Marvel I#57 is that Thor created a gateway to the Negative Zone by throwing Mjolnir so precisely that it hit first one and then the other of the Nega-Bands in quick succession. As far as I know, this is the first (and only?) time in which the Nega-Bands have been shown to be capable of opening a portal between the Earth dimension and the Negative Zone. Previous stories had always shown Mar-Vell and/or Rick Jones using them to exchange places between those two dimensions by slamming (or even just touching) the bands together. Why it would work if Mjolnir struck each band, without them striking each other, is a puzzle as well.
Finally, I just don't see how the solar energy that was sucked out of Mar-Vell's body and into the Negative Zone could have resulted in the creation of a new star. After all, while stars may generate energy by nuclear fusion in their cores, they are still made up of matter and are not themselves composed of energy. This would seem to indicate that the "new star" was not actually a true star at all, but...something else.
The Star-Gem and the Soul/Infinity Gems
I really enjoyed "The Final Threat" but I did find Jim Starlin's story to
be a bit vague when it came to describing exactly how Thanos had created his Star-Gem. According to what
Adam Warlock told the Avengers, Thanos had secretly siphoned off "the elements he needed" from Warlock's
Soul Gem, and then had done "the same to the other five jewels and transferred those properties into a
single large, synthetic gem." Years later, in Silver Surfer III#7, the Gardener would state that "Thanos
had gathered five of the gems and siphoned their energy, as well as the energy of the one in Warlock's
brow, to power a synthetic master jewel" that Iron Man subsequently destroyed. This reinforced the idea
that the Star-Gem was actually a containment vessel for whatever elements/energy Thanos had extracted
from the Soul/Infinity Gems, but it still didn't really tell us much, and the fact that the interior of
the hollow Star-Gem was apparently empty didn't help.
After the other five "Soul Gems" made their first joint appearance in flashbacks in Avengers Annual I#7, the Soul Gem that had belonged to Warlock was the only one seen (worn by the Gardener) or mentioned for over ten years, until Steve Englehart began using them in the first storyline in his Silver Surfer series. It was in Silver Surfer III#7 that the Runner mentioned that he thought that the other five "Soul Gems" had been destroyed in the final battle between Thanos and the Avengers, Warlock and Captain Marvel. It was the Astronomer (I think) who replied that that belief had been shared by everyone with a mind less evolved than his because very few could support the scope of mind needed to understand that those jewels could never die. The Collector later revealed that the missing five jewels had been hurled through hyperspace at the instant of the synthetic gem's destruction. While this is an acceptable explanation, it still doesn't explain exactly where the other five gems were at the time of the Star-Gem's destruction and why that destruction would have hurled them through hyperspace. Perhaps Thanos had integrated their physical forms into the shell that was the Star-Gem?
Also, the idea that the other five Soul/Infinity Gems had been destroyed puzzled me a bit because it seemed to have come out of nowhere. Then, while working on this profile, I came across what seems to have been the source of that idea. Early in Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2, during the briefing that the sleeping Peter Parker's mind received as part of that telepathic S.O.S. from Moondragon, the Synthetic Power Gem which powered the star-bursting machinery was described as being "the end product of combining the might of the five gems of power whose sole surviving mate (was) Warlock's Soul Gem." This description clearly implies that the other five gems did not survive either the process by which Thanos combined their might or Iron Man's destruction of the synthetic jewel. It seems odd because it's inconsistent with what Warlock had previously said about how Thanos had siphoned the elements he needed from them just as he had done with Warlock's Soul Gem. If the siphoning process had left Warlock's gem intact, why wouldn't the other gems have been similarly unaffected?
Then, two years later, in The Thanos Quest miniseries, Jim Starlin had Thanos discover and reveal the true origin and nature of the six jewels that he now called the Infinity Gems, including the fact that they were indestructible items that had existed since before all recorded time and that each of them granted their user total control over one of the six aspects of creation itself. However, that particular origin for the Infinity Gems has never been integrated into any official chronologies of the Marvel Universe, ones in which the universe began with a Big Bang. Plus, there has so far been no attempt made to reconcile that origin with the revelation that it was the Celestials who had mined the Infinity Stones in the original universe, the First Cosmos, and had then thrown them forward into the universes that were part of future multiverses.
Nova vs. Supernova
I first read Avengers Annual I#7 soon after it went on sale back in 1977,
almost fifty years ago. At that time, my knowledge of novas and supernovas mostly came from watching
Star Trek and was thus, sadly, not that accurate. I don't think that I then knew what the
difference between a nova and a supernova was, and it seems that Mr. Starlin didn't either. Basically,
although novae and supernovae are both massive explosions involving stars, there are significant
differences between them, and I think that what Thanos called causing the Sun to "go nova" should
more properly be called making it "go supernova."
In the real world, a "classical nova" only occurs in a binary star system where one of the stars is a stellar corpse, either a white dwarf or a neutron star, whose gravity has been pulling gases away from the surface of its companion star. Eventually, there is enough captured gas on the surface of the stellar corpse for the temperature to rise high enough to cause the hydrogen to begin to fuse as if it were in the core of a star. This fusion causes a release of energy that blows most of the non-fused gases away from the surface and creates an envelope that is seen as visible light, resulting in an extremely bright outburst of light that will last for several days or (rarely) for a few weeks before the brightness slowly begins to decline to its former level of luminosity. While such novae would probably have very negative effects on any planets orbiting them, they are transient events during which the stars themselves are not actually destroyed.
In contrast, supernovae (of either Type 1A or Type II) are much more massive explosions that blow the stars involved completely apart. Since this outcome sounds more like the "blowing every star out of the heavens" stellar genocide that Thanos was planning, I think it's probably safe to presume that the Stellar Projector actually caused its targets to go supernova.
Of course, in the real world, I don't think that there are even any theoretical methods by which a star could be made to go supernova (or even go nova), so we just have to accept that this fictional weapon of mass destruction only works because of the "comic book physics" that exist in the Marvel Universe.
With the exception of the main profile's main image, which is from Captain Marvel I#57, all the other images are from Avengers Annual I#7. However, I have chosen to use scans from the 1992 Warlock miniseries that reprinted that annual in issues #5-6 because they're of better quality than any scans I could make from my 47-year-old copy of the annual.
Profile by Donald Campbell.
CLARIFICATIONS:
The Stellar Projector has no known connections to
A large synthetic gem created by Thanos to be a repository for certain unspecified elements (sometimes described as the energy) that he transferred into it from the six Soul/Infinity Gems. The Star-Gem was the same shade of green as the Soul Gem and had a somewhat similar shape, but was much bigger, being almost nine feet tall instead of less than an inch long. Also unlike the Soul/Infinity Gems, which were solid objects and (as later revealed) indestructible, the Star-Gem was just a hollow shell that was maybe an inch thick and was fragile enough that it could be shattered by a single blast from Iron Man's repulsor rays.
The Star-Gem's power came from whatever those unspecified elements were that Thanos had siphoned out of the six Soul/Infinity Gems and transferred into it. When used in conjunction with an ordinary ion-laser projector, the energy drawn from the Star-Gem was emitted as a beam that could (somehow) cause any star it struck to heat up and go (super)nova within minutes. The Star-Gem was (allegedly) so powerful that it would have enabled Thanos to use his stellar projector to blow every star out of the heavens. In contrast, the Soul Gem alone could be used to power the stellar projector enough to enable it to destroy a number of stars, but not enough to extinguish ALL the stars in the universe.
Gamora discovered the Star-Gem and learned of her master's plan. She then tried to kill Thanos but failed and was mortally wounded instead. Left for dead, Gamora was still barely alive when Adam Warlock found her and took her soul into himself (or into the Soul Gem/World), thus learning all that she knew about the Star-Gem, how Thanos had created it, and what he planned to use it to do.
Thanos began his attempt to commit total stellar genocide by placing the Star-Gem onto an ion-laser projector aboard Sanctuary II, then used a beam of energy from this stellar projector to cause a bright young yellow star a few hundred light-years from Earth to explode as a (super) nova. Traveling to Earth's solar system, Thanos then fired the beam from the stellar projector at Earth's Sun, causing it to begin to flare and erupt as it prepared to go (super) nova. However, Captain Mar-Vell interrupted this process by smashing himself into the ion-laser projector, thereby cutting off the beam it was firing at the Sun. Although surprised by this, Thanos was not unduly concerned since he only had to place his Star-Gem onto a new ion-laser projector in order to continue his task of total stellar genocide, but he was delayed somewhat when Adam Warlock attacked. Once he had fatally wounded Warlock, Thanos used some sort of energy from one of his gauntlets to levitate the Star-Gem away from the wreckage of the stellar projector but he was then confronted by Thor and Iron Man. While Thor kept the Mad Titan busy, Iron Man took the opportunity to fire both of his armor's repulsor rays at the hovering Star-Gem, shattering it into useless shards that fell to the floor. Knowing that he would be unable to recreate the Star-Gem, Thanos teleported away from the battle to initiate his secondary plan of attack.
Given that the interior of the Star-Gem appeared to contain nothing but empty space, one would expect that there was some reason why that was so, but none has ever been provided. One possibility is that whatever "elements" were siphoned off from the Soul/Infinity Gems were just invisible. Another explanation would be that those "properties" were transferred into the physical shell that made up the Star-Gem itself.
--Avengers Annual I#7 (Avengers Annual I#7 (fb), Avengers Annual I#7)
Notes: Given how fragile his Star-Gem was, it's odd that Thanos didn't bother to surround it with some form of protection, like a force field, since it was the Achilles' Heel of his whole plan for total stellar genocide. This may have been another example of the idea that Thanos, deep in his black heart, knows that he doesn't deserve to win and thus subconsciously supplies his enemies with the means to thwart his plans.
It's also odd that Mar-Vell's Cosmic Awareness didn't let him know that destroying the unique Star-Gem would have thwarted what Thanos was planning more effectively than just smashing the easily-replaceable ion-laser projector would. Of course, if Mar-Vell had smashed the Star-Gem, then that would have made Adam Warlock's death at the hands of Thanos pointless because, with the Star-Gem destroyed, the fact that that battle had delayed Thanos long enough for Thor and Iron Man to reach him wouldn't have mattered at all. Then again, it was Warlock's death that led to his soul being transported into the Soul Gem from which he was later briefly released as the Ultimate Avenger who finally made Thanos pay for his crimes.
The first (and only) star that Thanos is known to have successfully
killed using his stellar projector was a bright young yellow star located located a few hundred
light-years away from Earth.
Its name and its precise location have never been revealed.
When Thanos decided to destroy this star, possibly as a test before using his new weapon on Earth's Sun, the starship Sanctuary II approached the star and, when close enough, fired a beam of energy into the star's brightness. This beam caused the star to flare, blaze brighter, change its color from a blinding white to a fiery red, and then finally explode as a (super)nova. Protected by its shields, the starship was unaffected by the nova, but everything else in that solar system was destroyed.
At the instant that the star went nova, Moondragon, on Earth, "felt the psychic screams of unbelieving millions -- dying suddenly...unexpectedly." This strongly indicates that that star had had a planetary system in orbit around it and that there had been at least one planet that had been inhabited by millions of sapient beings. However, nothing about this planet or the beings who inhabited it has ever been revealed. As such, it cannot be determined if these beings had been natives to the planet or if they were aliens who had colonized that planet.
--Avengers Annual I#7
Notes: Since the only four panels in which this unidentified star appears are all part of the main profile (here), I saw no reason to also include them in this subprofile.
For some reason, recaps of the events of Avengers Annual I#7 usually ignore the destruction of this star (and the millions of lives that were lost) and focus on the attempted destruction of Earth's Sun and the death of Adam Warlock. I guess that, since they weren't humans from Earth and weren't even shown or named, their lives (and deaths) just aren't that important.
images: (without ads)
Captain Marvel I#57, page 10, panel 5 (main image)
Avengers Annual I#7, page 6, panels 11-13 (star being attacked)
page 7, panel 1 (star going nova)
page 27, panels 9-10 (Sol being attacked)
page 28, panels 4-5 (Mar-Vell smashing into the projector)
page 31, panel 2 (Iron Man blasting the Star-Gem)
page 31, panel 3 (the Star-Gem in pieces)
page 11, panel 10 (the Star-Gem looming over Thanos)
page 30, panel 1 (the Star-Gem being levitated by Thanos)
Appearances:
Avengers Annual I#7 (1977) - Joe Rubinstein (finishing), Archie Goodwin (editing), Jim Starlin
(other manual labor [not including lettering or coloring])
Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2 (1977) - Jim Starlin (story & art), Joe Rubinstein (finished art),
Archie Goodwin (editor)
Captain Marvel I#57 (July, 1978) - Roger McKenzie (script), Pat Broderick & Bob Wiacek (art),
Jim Shooter (editor)
First Posted: 08/09/2024
Last updated: 08/09/2024
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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