FURIES

Membership: Ember (Alecto), Lady Ash (Megaera) and Dark Lady (Tisiphone)

Purpose: Goddesses of vengeance and retribution

Affiliations: Althaea, Black Rose, Carlie Colon, Paula Harris, Olympian Gods, Silenus, Uno

Enemies: Aeneas, Alcmaeon, Johnny Blaze, Ghost Rider (Daniel Ketch/Noble Kale), Matt Henry, Jennifer Kale, Gerald Kramm, Meleager, Orestes, Valkyrie (Brunnhilde), Zoe

Known Relatives: Ouranos (father, deceased), Gaea  (mother), Argus, Briareus, Brontes, Cottus, Cronus, Crius, Coeus, Gyges, Hyperion, Japet, Nereus, Oceanus, Ophion, Steropes, Typhon (brothers), Ceto, Dione, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Rhea, Theia, Themis, Tethys (sisters), Atlas, Eprimetheus, Helios, Menoetius, Pluto, Poseidon, Prometheus, Zeus (nephews), Calypso, Demeter, Eos, Hera, Metis, Vesta, Selene (nieces)

Aliases: (group) Erinnyes, Eumenides, Kindly Ones, Semnai Theai; (Ember) The Maiden; (Lady Ash) Crone; (Dark Lady), Matriarch,

Base of Operations: The Land of Shades, formerly Olympus

First Appearance: (Atlas) Adventures into Terror#11 (August, 1952); (Marvel) Avengers I#50 (March, 1968)

Powers/Abilities: The Furies possess the conventional attributes of the Olympian gods including superhuman strength (Class 25 at least), stamina, vitality, resistance to injury and a long life enchantment. They have certain mystical powers in carrying out vengeance upon mortals. They can conceal themselves from mortals except a person of their choosing and fly through the air. They can command powerful winds and channel energy similar to hellfire through their weapons. They can mystically move matter around as when Dark Lady caused a van to lift into the air and fall on Ghost Rider. In ancient Greece, they could inflict violent headaches, seizures and hallucinations. They are also brutal and merciless warriors in both armed and unarmed combat and often fight with swords or any weapons of their choosing.

History: (Greek/Roman Myth) The Furies are the daughters of the primeval gods Ouranus and Gaea. Among the few gods active before and after Zeus conquered Olympus, they punished offenders who turned against blood kin. Their principal function was to avenge fathers or most often mothers against their undutiful children. Often when a son failed to avenge a parent killed unjustly, the Furies haunted him until he made retribution on his parents' death. Althaea, Queen of Calydon, called upon them to avenge her brothers after they were killed by her son Meleager. The Furies then reminded her of the link the Fates had made to a cord of wood that was burning when Meleager was born. Burning the wood resulted in the death of the young man who had once been an Argonaut.

    The Furies also drove mad the warrior Alcmaeon who had been commanded by his father to kill his mother. He fled to Delphi trying to rid himself of their power and eventually came to the newly sifted delta of the river Achelous. The Furies could not affect him on land that did not exist at the time of his mother's murder and he remained there until Achelous, the river-god who controlled the river there, could expunge him of his sins.

    The Furies are best known for their torment on the Mycenaean prince, Orestes, whose mother had slain his father, King Agamemnon of Mycenae, for being unfaithful. Orestes sought resolution from Apollo through his temple at Delphi, but Apollo told him to seek solace in Athens. Standing at the Areopagus located there, Orestes pleaded his case to the Olympian Gods, and Athena voted for acquittal of his persecution. The Furies refused to stop tormenting him, but then Apollo promised to call off the Furies if Orestes stole the wooden statue of his sister Artemis from the Taurians and returned it to Athens. Orestes would have died in the mission had he not been recognized by his long lost sister Iphigeneia whom Artemis had spirited off years earlier to prevent being killed by their father as a sacrifice for favorable winds to Troy. With her help, Orestes returned with the statue and his sister to Mycenae to placate Apollo and escape his punishment from the Furies.

    In later years, Hera sought Alecto without the assistance of the other Furies to initiate hostilities between King Latinus of Latium against the Dardanian prince, Aeneas. Hera hated Aeneas because the Titaness Themis had predicted that his descendants would destroy her favorite city of Carthage. King Latinus, however, refused to see Aeneas as a rival to his kingdom and instead offered his daughter, Lavinia, as a bride to him. Aeneas, meanwhile, increased the size of the city and founded what would become Rome. In the First Century BC, Carthage was sacked by Romans just as Themis had predicted.

    Athena, the goddess of wisdom, eventually persuaded the Furies to surrender their primitive functions as bringers of retribution in favor of new roles as the gracious Eumenides. In this role, they were worshipped in various Greek cities and insured the fertility of the earth.

(Ghost Rider III#80 (fb) - BTS, Ghost Rider III#92 (fb) - The Furies overheard the cries of vengeance from the gypsy woman Magdelena as she was accused of being a witch and burned to death by Pastor Destin Kale. For seven days afterward, they make it rain blood and even killed the young brother of Noble Kane. To stop them, Noble's father made a pact with the demon Mephisto and bartered away Noble's soul. Noble became Ghost Rider and slew the physical forms of the Furies.

(Adventures into Terror#11) <1952> In a dream near death the embodiment of life Zoe protected Matt Henry, who had died on an operating table. The Furies, posing as Sirens, tried to lure Matt Henry to them, but Zoe destroyed their illusion by blasting them with a mystic bolt of flame from her hand. Zoe succeeded to lead Matt back to the land of the living.

(Mystic#39) <1955> - Zeus sent the most persistent Fury (possibly Alecto due to her youthful appearance) to Earth to make Gerard Kram confess and repent for a murder he had committed. She accidentally went after Gerald Kramm instead and made his life a living hell by constantly pestering him to confess the crime he had not actually committed and didn't believe him when he told her that he was not Gerard Kram. Eventually the gangster Gerard Kram confessed the murder after an encounter with the Fury when Kramm, running from the Fury, bumped into him at a subway station. When Kramm showed her an article about Kram's confession the Fury still wouldn't believe him because she couldn't read due to her bad eyesight. Upon learning from her about her bad eyesight Kramm put a dummy on a chair and just left his his apartment while the Fury kept trying to get a confession out of the puppet.

(Avengers I#50 (fb) - BTS) - The souls of the Furies ended up in the Land of Shades.

(Avengers I#50) - The Titan Typhon escaped from Tartarus from where he had been imprisoned and returned to Olympus. Putting out the Promethean Flame, he was able to send the Olympian gods to the Land of Shades. When the god Hercules was sent to the Land of Shades, he recognized the barely human form of one of the Erinnyes.

(Ghost Rider III#77) - Using mystical means to learn the identity of the Spirit of Vengeance inhabiting Danny Ketch, Doctor Strange and Jennifer Kale accidentally destroyed a cloaking spell around it and attracted the attention of the Furies from their eternal slumber. They then encountered Danny Ketch in the extradimensional void he entered when the Spirit of Vengeance took his body on earth to become the Ghost Rider.

(Ghost Rider III#78) - The Furies accosted Daniel Ketch in trying to learn the location of Noble Ketch, the Spirit of Vengeance. Jennifer Kale left her body in astral form to meet them in the void as she used her power to exile them from the void. The Furies then went looking for Mephisto to help get them to Earth, but instead they encountered Blackheart and Black Rose. He gave them the ability to appear on earth through three host bodies.

(Ghost Rider III#79) - Tisiphone appeared on Atlantic Airlines Flight 47 from Miami to New York to Paula Harris, a former girlfriend of Danny Ketch, the Ghost Rider. Claiming she was present to kill everyone on board, she told Paula that everyone would live if she were allowed temporary possession of her body. Offered the love of anyone she wanted, Paula gave in as Tisiphone took painful possession of her and called herself Dark Lady. Megaera meanwhile took possession of Paranormal Law Enforcement Team's Agent Uno, suffering from body wide burns in New York City's Our Lady of Mercy Hospital. Taking possession of her pain-filled body, she began calling herself Lady Ash. Alecto took possession of a woman named Carlie Colon -- the Bronx neighbor of Dan Ketch -- and made her into Ember. Reuniting, the sisters sought out and attacked Danny Ketch as the Ghost Rider.

(Ghost Rider III#80) - The Furies turned their attack on the Ghost Rider toward his half-brother, Johnny Blaze, in order to wipe his bloodline from the earth. The debacle attracted the attention of the Asgardian goddess Valkyrie who then laid siege into the Furies. During the distraction, Jennifer Kale theorized that Blaze must have been of Magdelena's bloodline as she called upon her spirit to revoke her call upon the Furies. The invocation released the Furies from their human hosts and removed them from the earth.

(Incredible Hercules#127) - The Furies protected Silly's Greek Diner as a sanctuary for Greek gods. Any god who raised a hand against another one would be punished by them. When Hercules ripped out a table the Furies appeared, but because he didn't actually attack another god, Silenus sent the Furies away. They returned shortly after Hera destroyed another table, but once again they weren't really needed.













Comments: Adapted by Ivan Velez Jr., Salvador Larroca and Sergio Melia

    In Greek myth, the Furies were born from the drops of the blood of Ouranus that fell to Earth and impregnated Gaea. The Giants and Meliades, faeries/nymphs of Earth, were also born in this manner.

    In the Gods of Olympus, there is also Nemesis, goddess of vengeance & punishment and daughter of Erebus and Nyx. She is sometimes described as being responsible for keeping the Furies in check. Zeus fell in love with her, but she avoided his advances by changing herself into animals. Some myths claim she was the true mother of Helen of Troy, but this is contradictory to the official account of the myth. Subsequently, it was claimed that Leda, Helen's mother, was taken into the gods and became Nemesis to explain this version. Nemesis was portrayed by Karen Witter and Teresa Hill in the TV Series "Hercules, The Legendary Journeys".

    In the "Xena" TV series, the Furies were portrayed by Asa Lindh, Sela Apera and Anne Marie Deis whom I'm assuming are local actresses in New Zealand much like many of the actors playing extraneous characters from the series.

Thanks to Gammatotem for pointing out a Fury's appearance in Mystic#39 and a dream appearance in Adventures into Terror#11.

Profile by Will U

Clarifications:The Furies are not to be confused with:

Alecto the Maiden is not to be confused with:

Megaera the Crone is not to be confused with:

Tisiphone the Matriarch is not to be confused with:

Alecto is the Maiden aspect of the Furies. She discovered a housekeeper named Carlie Colon being controlled by her shiftless brother "Choocho" and offered her solace. Uniting with her as her human vessel, she called herself Ember.

--Adventures into Terror#11 (Adventures into Terror#11, Mystic#39 (possibly), Ghost Rider III#77 (92(fb), 77-80, Incredible Hercules#127

 

 



Megaera, the Crone aspect of the Furies, located the body of former Paranormal Law Enforcement Team leader Agent Uno waiting to die in hospital and filled her body with her presence calling herself Lady Ash.

--Adventures into Terror#11 (Adventures into Terror#11, Ghost Rider III#77, 92(fb), 77-80, Incredible Hercules#127

 

Tisiphone is the Matriarch among the Furies. She took the body of Daniel Ketch's former girlfriend, Paula Harris, and made her over into the form of the Dark Lady.

--Adventures into Terror#11 (Adventures into Terror#11, Ghost Rider III#77, 92 (fb), 77-80, Incredible Hercules#127

















Images:

Ghost Rider III#79, page 29, full page (Main)
Incredible Hercules#127, p8, pan3 (at Silly's Greek Diner)
Ghost Rider III#80, pages 2-3, middle of pages (Alecto)
Ghost Rider III#80, page 26, middle panel (Megaera)
Ghost Rider III#79, page 18, top panel (Tisiphone)

Issues:
Adventures into Terror#11 (August, 1952) - Tony DiPetra (artist), Stan Lee (editor)
Mystic#39 (September, 1955) - Werner Roth (artist), Stan Lee (editor)
Avengers I#50 (March, 1968) - Roy Thomas (writer), John Buscema (artist), Stan Lee (editor)
Ghost Rider III#77-80 (September-December, 1996) - Ivan Velez Jr. (writer), Salvador Larroca (pencils), Sergio Melia (inks)
Ghost Rider III#92 (January 1998) - Ivan Velez Jr. (writer), Javier Saltares (pencils), Mark Texeira (inks)
Incredible Hercules#127 (May, 2009) - Fred Van Lente & Greg Pak (writers), Dietrich Smith (pencils), Cory Hamscher (inks), Mark Paniccia (editor)

First Posted: 10/04/2005
Last updated: 04/13/2019

Any Additions/Corrections? Please let me know.

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