the FORGOTTEN CELESTIAL

Real Name: Unrevealed

Identity/Class: Cosmic Being (Celestial) (Distant Past to present)

Occupation: Unrevealed

Group Membership: Celestials

Affiliations: Unrevealed

Enemies: Unrevealed

Known Relatives: Celestials

Aliases: The "great god" and "the old god" (to the Kree); "their fallen god" and "the demon" (to the Skrulls)

Base of Operations: The universe (the corpse has been drifting in space for an unspecified period of time)

First Appearance: Fantastic Four VI#21 (September 2020)

Powers/Abilities: The Forgotten Celestial is the name that has been given to the corpse of one of the Celestials, a group of beings created in the first iteration of reality by the First Firmament, the consciousness of that first reality. This Celestial presumably possessed all of the powers that a normal member of its "race" would have had.

   The Forgotten Celestial presumably possessed cosmic powers that seemingly had no limits, and could manipulate energy and matter at will.

   The Forgotten Celestial was unaging until it somehow died. It should have been so durable that killing or even harming it would have been almost impossible. However, if harmed without being killed outright, the Forgotten Celestial should have been able to instantly regenerate any damaged portion of its body.

   The Forgotten Celestial could presumably travel throughout space (and probably hyperspace) without need of a spacecraft. This Celestial could presumably also land on and launch itself away from planets without using any vehicles.

   The Forgotten Celestial presumably may have been able to teleport itself across space and/or time.

   The Forgotten Celestial was presumably able to generate energy blasts of vast power and possessed immense physical strength that was well beyond that of any non-Celestial being.

   The Forgotten Celestial was presumably linked by quantum telepathy to all other Celestials. As a result, all Celestials were connected no matter where or when they were.

   Although Celestials are usually known by their names and assigned functions, neither the Forgotten Celestial's true name nor its function have yet been revealed.

Equipment: The Forgotten Celestial carried what looked somewhat like a lance: a hilt and guard attached to a cylinder that slowly tapered to a blunt end. The Celestial apparently carried this device or weapon in its right hand and it remained there even after its death.

History: Nothing has been revealed about the life of the being now known as the Forgotten Celestial except for the fact that it somehow came to an end.

(Fantastic Four VI#21 (fb) - BTS) - At some point in the past, the being now known only as the Forgotten Celestial died. The causes and circumstances of its death have never been revealed.

(Fantastic Four VI#21 (fb) - BTS) - At some point in the past, this Celestial's left hand and both of its feet were apparently removed. Whether this was done before or after its death has not been revealed.

(Fantastic Four VI#21 (fb) - BTS) - At some point in the past, the corpse of this nameless Celestial was discovered by members of a star-faring race whose identity has not been revealed. As knowledge of this corpse spread throughout the universe, it came to be known as "the Forgotten Celestial."

(Fantastic Four VI#21 (fb)) - At some point within the past hundred years or so, a force of Kree warriors traveled to the Forgotten Celestial on a mission to obtain its raw power that could be used to fuel the entire Kree Empire for centuries. The Kree detonated Nega-Bombs on the torso of the Forgotten Celestial, cracking open its corpse in order to unleash its energies into the cosmos. However, before the Kree could begin to gather and store that raw power, they were attacked by a force of Skrulls who had learned of their plan and come to stop them.

   The Skrulls engaged the Kree in hand-to-hand combat along the Celestial's rib cage and held the line at its sternum. The Kree Captain Kal-Torr found himself battling the Skrull General J'Bahzz. Striking at the same time, the Skrull put out the Kree's right eye even as the Kree used his sword to sever the Skrull's left arm. Then, to prevent the Skrull from simply reattaching his arm, Kal-Torr grabbed it and threw it into the cavity of the Celestial's chest, then watched as it boiled away in what he called "the dying furnace of the shattered heart."

   As the two armies fought each other, the energy contained within the Forgotten Celestial continued to be released until it was all gone, leaving the Celestial as nothing more than an empty and worthless husk. With nothing more to fight over, the Kree and Skrull forces disengaged, with both sides having suffered losses of equal measure. The conflict came to be known by both Kree and Skrulls as the Battle of Shattered Heart.

(Fantastic Four VI#21 (fb)) - Years (or decades) later, the Supreme Intelligence of the Kree decided to create a Kree who would be the living history of their race, to be known as the Kree Chronicle of Blood. The Supremor chose (or created) a male Blue Kree infant named Jo-Venn and summoned many (or all) Kree warriors to give testimony about the battles in which they had fought. One of them was an aged Colonel Kal-Torr who spoke of the Battle of Shattered Heart. Once Kal-Torr had completed his testimony, the Supremor thanked him for his service and stated that his entry in the Chronicle was both noted and absorbed.

(Fantastic Four VI#21 (fb)) - At about the same time, the Skrull Empress (S'Byll?) began the creation of a similar living history of her race. As with the Kree, many Skrull warriors were summoned to appear before the empress and give testimony about the battles in which they had fought. One of them was General J'Bahzz who spoke of the Battle of Shattered Heart in which he had lost many of his men and part of himself. At the request of the empress, J'Bahzz gave more of himself in the form of blood that was then poured into a pool of blood where there were at least eight hatchlings, with the empress describing it as his triumphant refrain being added to their choir. The empress then spoke to the children in the pool, telling them to sing until one voice cried out and rose above the rest. S'Byll then picked up that female infant, N'Kalla, who had the war song of the Skrulls inside her and called her the Requiem of the Shapeless Soul!

Comments: Created by Dan Slott and Paco Medina with Sean Izaakse.

   I first encountered the Eternals in the Thor storyline that integrated them into the mainstream Marvel Universe. I found them mildly interesting but they weren't as intriguing as the Celestials. These "Space Gods" were huge and mysterious and so powerful that an editorial response stated that they constituted the next level of power in the Marvel Universe, above the previous uppermost limit of the physical power spectrum that was occupied by beings like the Watcher, the Stranger, Galactus and the Grandmaster. I found the Celestials to be very impressive, so much so that I didn't even mind that the armor they wore was SO humanoid.

   As time passed, the Celestials remained mysterious and vastly powerful entities. However, their position at the top of the power scale, below only Eternity and the Living Tribunal and the Creator of All Universes, made it difficult for writers to use them as anything other than observers.

   Unfortunately, in the past 20 years, Marvel writers began to downgrade the Celestials. The writers of the 2008 Eternals series chose to reveal that the Celestials were tools created by a GOD-analogue called the Fulcrum and that their seeding of life on planets was just part of a scheme to see if any of them would eventually overcome their "programming" and become an individual who could be the Fulcrum's companion instead of just one of its "devices." An Uncanny Avengers storyline had a young Thor use his own divine blood to make the axe Jarnbjorn capable of KILLING Celestials. The Time Runs Out storyline in Avengers had the Beyonders seemingly effortlessly wipe out almost all the Celestials. Knull was revealed to be the being who had decapitated the Celestial whose head became Knowhere and, most recently, his symbiotes were shown to be able to corrupt and control and weaken Celestials enough for Knull to kill them easily.

   However, it wasn't all bad. In the aftermath of the multiversal destruction and rebirth, it was revealed that the Celestials were actually the creations of the First Firmament, the consciousness of the First Cosmos, the original Marvel Universe that existed before the Marvel Multiverses. This reveal made the Celestials older and more powerful than Galactus, so that was good. Plus, during the Infinity Wars miniseries it was revealed that it was the Celestials who mined and dispersed the Infinity Stones throughout the multiverse.

   So, where does this appearance by the Forgotten Celestial fall on the spectrum of story quality? On the negative side, this is the death of yet another Celestial, beings who should be almost impossible to kill. On the positive side, since how it died was not revealed, it is not a case of a writer killing off a Celestial just to make one of his own characters seem more impressive. Assuming these two factors balance each other out, the quality will depend on why Dan Slott chose to kill it. If he created and killed the Forgotten Celestial solely to provide a setting for the history between Colonel Kal-Torr and General J'Bahzz, then I'd consider it to be something of a waste, a massive expenditure to accomplish comparatively little. On the other hand, if its death will be significant to some future story, like the upcoming Reckoning War, then maybe it will have been of value. Only time will tell.

Profile by Donald Campbell.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Forgotten Celestial may or may not have a connection to

• the Graveyard of the Celestials, a location in deep space where the corpses (or statues) of five Celestials float in close proximity to each another--Legendary Star-Lord#4

Additionally, the Forgotten Celestial has no known connections to

• The Forgotten, a collective being composed of many mystics who had merged together into a single non-human form after unknowingly cursing themselves by reading from the extra-dimensional book known as the Word of God--Doctor Strange and the Sorcerers Supreme#1
• The Forgotten, a group of humans (some with superhuman powers) who lived in hiding in the sewers of New York City under the leadership of the Abomination--X-Man#20
• The Forgotten One, an Eternal who roamed the world as a hero and monster-slayer until Zuras commanded him to remain in a small hut in Olympia as punishment for meddling too often in human affairs--Eternals I#13
• The Forgotten Zone, a realm in which dwell various pantheons of gods who are no longer associated with Earth--mentioned but not seen in Marvel Universe: The End#2
• Forget-Me-Not, a female "wonder of unknown origin" and member of the Sinners group in New York City in 1907 whose pheromones could make men insanely attracted to her and who claimed to have been alive for centuries prior to the early 20^th century--Runaways II#27
• ForgetMeNot, a mutant whose powers make him incapable of being perceived or remembered by almost all organic beings--X-Men: Legacy#300
• or any other "Forgotten" characters or groups or realms

images: (without ads)
Fantastic Four VI#21, pages 2-3, panel 1 (main image)

Appearance:
Fantastic Four VI#21 (September, 2020) - Dan Slott (writer), Paco Medina with Sean Izaakse (artists), Tom Brevoort (editor)

First Posted: 12/16/2021
Last updated: 12/16/2021

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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