THE SCATTER

Classification: Alien life-form, non-humanoid (insectoid)

Location/Base of Operations: Mobile/"Scatter Worlds"

Known Members: None (it is unclear if individual Scatter even have names or identities)

Affiliations: Broker, Century, General Kosrouschah, Lore, an unidentified P'tah and Pheragot

Enemies: Avengers, Force Works, the Hodomur, The Last, Monark Starstalker, Paradox, Skewer, Ulysses, Wolverine (James "Logan" Howlett)

First Appearance: Force Works#1 (July, 1994)

Powers/Abilities: The Scatter possessed strength, speed and reflexes of an undetermined above-human level, claws that could cut through tempered steel, and were armored in a chitinous metal alloy compatible to titanium. These body-shells were just host structures for communities of insectoid parasites, which were injected into victims through their talons.

The Scatter possessed advanced alien technology, including energy guns, and the Transmuter Chamber, an interdimensional teleportation array designed to open a rift large enough for an invasion host, a power core that controlled and powered their equipment, and energy-fields to protect their technology.

Traits: The origins of the Scatter are unrevealed. They come from an utterly alien facet of dimensional space. Even rudimentary communication with them is out of the question. They are impossible to reason with. The Scatter are interdimensional scavengers, moving from world to world, devouring each one and all on it. The Scatter usually feast upon vulnerable, crippled worlds.

History:

(Century: Distant Sons (fb)) - The Broker explained to Century how the Scatter followed in the wake of destruction left by Lore, an evil creature who liked to lay waste to worlds. Long ago they realized that the worlds Lore injured made easy pickings so they took to following her and finishing off her left-overs. Before their own destruction at the hands of the Scatter, Century's race, the Hodomur, had created him to track down Lore and destroy her, but the Broker enslaved him, blanked the mission of vengeance from his mind so he could not rebel against ownership, and sold him to the highest bidder: The Scatter used him as an interdimensional bloodhound to keep track of Lore, leading them to many worlds she had visited, all of which they destroyed.

Skewer recalled how when he was a child, the Scatter were led to his planet, Prashard, by Century, where they slaughtered the militia-men, and went on to destroy the entire world.

(Force Works#1) - Following Century's arrival on Earth, a swarm of five Scatter pods warped into space above Earth, falling at several times the speed of sound. Two of the pods crashed into the drifting Kree StarStealth ship, Retribution, causing substantial damage to the ship, and rupturing the main power cells of the ion cannon, threatening to destroy the Earth when it exploded. At the cost of his life, Wonder Man moved the cannon to a safe distance from Earth before it exploded, but the Retribution, and the Scatter pods onboard were presumably destroyed by the blast.

The three remaining pods fell to Earth, landing in the former Avengers West Coast Compound, where the newly-formed Force Works, together with Century, and the Avengers Black Widow and Vision, had just defeated the StarStealth. The Scatter burst out of the pods, yelling in an alien language. Century recognized them, but knew only that they were the Scatter, and they were evil. The Scatter grabbed Spider-Woman and U.S. Agent, dragging them back into the pods, holding Iron Man and Century back with fire from their energy weapons. In trying to free them, the Scarlet Witch was captured as well, and the pods were teleported away back to the "Scatter World."

(Force Works#2) - While Iron Man sought Century's aid to pursue the Scatter and rescue his comrades, the Scatter returned to the previous world they had attacked, simply leaving their three captives and walking away. As they learned from the surviving natives, there was nowhere to flee to; the Scatter simply came for them when they wished to feed. The leader of the aliens explained that the Scatter were led to their world by their harbinger, Century. Before he could explain any more, a group of Scatter arrived to feed, and attacked them all. U.S. Agent blasted one of the Scatter away with his photon-shield, and the Scarlet Witch's hex-power knocked another down, revealing that the Scatter were not single life-forms, but hosts for colonies of carnivorous insects, their talons injecting the bugs under a victim's skin and eating them from the inside out.

Spider-Woman attempted to pull one of the Scatter away from an alien child with her psi-web, but was overwhelmed by psionic backlash from the Scatter's mind, leaving her with a lasting fear of the aliens. Century teleported himself and Iron Man to the Scatter World, and helped turn the tide of battle against the Scatter. Pursued by a growing horde of Scatter, Century led the team to the Scatter's Transmuter Chamber, which augmented his abilities enough to teleport them back to Earth.

(Force Works#3) - As Force Works prepared to fight the coming Scatter invasion, Century explained, as far as his fragmented memories could recall, the aliens usually fed on vulnerable worlds, crippled by natural cataclysms (or so he believed, presumably no longer consciously aware of Lore and his pursuit of her), and they had never had as vital and alive a feast as Earth before.

Within two hours, an advance party of 25 Scatter had arrived in Houston, bringing rift-generating equipment with them to prepare for the invasion; the technology caused unnatural weather formations and an electro-static focus in the area.

Having determined where the Scatter would attack through the use of their Chaos-Mainframe, Force Works arrived in time to defeat the aliens, but the Scatter's machinery was protected by an energy-field they were unable to penetrate. Operating automatically, it opened an enormous wormhole in the sky, through which the previous world destroyed by the Scatter was forced, with chunks of debris being blasted down on Earth, using their last victim to murder the next.

Century informed Iron Man that he knew of no way to stop the Scatter without access to their machinery, and that the only way was to destroy their energy source, back on the dying Scatter World. While Iron Man and Spider-Woman attempted to hold back the falling debris, Century teleported himself, Scarlet Witch and U.S. Agent back to the Scatter World, homing in on the Power Core, but the area also stored the pods of the Scatter Elite, intended to be held in stasis for the rift-transport, but the intrusion awoke them, and they attacked. U.S. Agent held the Scatter off, but his team-mates were unable to disrupt the energy flow of the Power Core, and full rift transfer was about to occur. Scarlet Witch deduced that the Scatter had to navigate the route their rift-jumps took somehow, and Century explained that they did so automatically, their navigation controls pre-programmed to follow the Century's own journeys. She ordered Century to use his staff, Parallax, to plot a new pathway, as she used her hex-power to transfer the specifics of the route straight into the controls of the Power Core. Century returned them to Earth as the remains of the Scatter World were transported to the other side of creation, the far side of space-time.

The surviving Scatter left on Earth were impounded and presumably incarcerated. Whether the rest of the race managed to survive their journey or were destroyed remains unrevealed.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#9) - A Scatter served in General Kosrouschah's crew and aided him in battle against Monark Starstalker, Paradox and Wolverine. Though he decapitated Paradox with Kosrouschah's space glider, the Scatter was able to scratch Wolverine and lay eggs into him. The eggs hatched while Monark and Paradox got rid of the Scatter bugs on their ship's ground.

(Wolverine: The Best There Is#10) - Monark's falcon Ulysses purged the bugs from Wolverine's body while they hatched.

(X-Men V#9 - BTS) - The secret order of Black Judges wrote Supremor regarding the creation of a weaponized slave catalyst for hive species, noting they had some minor success to weaponize the Scatter. They however made major breakthroughs with the parasitical Brood and it was decided to follow that path instead.

Comments: Created by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning & Tom Tenney.

Although never actually confirmed, the Lore that the Scatter were following was almost certainly the same Lore already seen in the Scarlet Witch miniseries, an evil predatory variant of the Nexus Being, that traveled the dimensions, killing her counterparts and ravaging worlds. While it was believed that Century was brought to Earth by a freak accident involving the Scarlet Witch's hex-power, if he was indeed following the same Lore, his trail would have led him, and the Scatter, to Earth anyway.

Profile has been reworked and extended by MarvellousLuke.

Profile by Gauntlet: Dark Rider

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Scatter has no known connections to

• Scatterbrain, of the Technet/Special Executive--Daredevils#5
• Scattershot, of Peristrike Force--Darkhawk#16
• Scattershot, Technobot leader--Transformers: Head Masters#1
• or any other "Scatter" characters

Images: (without ads)
Force Works#3, p1 (main image)
Century: Distant Sons, p3, pan1 (Bugs)
Force Works#1, p32, pan1 (Scatter Pods)
Force Works#2, p29, pan2 (Transmuter Chamber)
Force Works#3, p15, pan2&3 (Power Core, Scatter World forced through wormhole)

Appearances:
Force Works#1 (July, 1994) - Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers), Tom Tenney (pencils), Rey Garcia (inks), Nel Yomtov (editor)
Force Works#2 (August, 1994) - Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers), Tom Tenney (pencils), Rey Garcia (inks), Nel Yomtov (editor)
Force Works#3 (September, 1994) - Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers), Tom Tenney (pencils), Rey Garcia (inks), Nel Yomtov (editor)
Century: Distant Sons (February, 1996) - Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning (writers), Jim Calafiore (pencils), Peter Palmiotti (inks), Nel Yomtov (editor)
Wolverine: The Best There Is#9 (October, 2011) - Charlie Huston (writer), Juan Jose Ryp (artist), Sebastian Girner (editor)
Wolverine: The Best There Is#10 (November, 2011) - Charlie Huston (writer), Juan Jose Ryp (artist), Sebastian Girner (editor)
X-Men V#9 (March, 2020) - Jonathan Hickman (writer), Leinil Francis Yu (pencils, inks), Jordan D. White, Annalise Bissa (editors)