HEDZEK raceHEDZEK race
Classification: Extraterrestrial humanoid race
Location/Base of Operations: The planet Randaa
Known Members: Kargus
the Deadly, King
Bellusk
Affiliations: None
Enemies: Red Hulk (Thaddeus Ross), the Tirenians (Alturi, many others)
First Appearance: (mentioned) Hulk II#34
(August, 2011);
(fully seen) Hulk II#35 (August, 2011)
Powers/Abilities: Members of the Hedzek race
do not seem to possess any inherent superhuman powers but they are
well-adapted to their planet's environment, their appearance reflecting
their diet and evolution. The Hedzek also have pointed ears, dark hair
(either black or dark brown, depending on the individual) and green
blood.
Some of the Hedzek possess skin webbing under their arms but what additional abilities this might provide the Hedzek who had the webbing remains to be seen.
Traits: Many of the Hedzek are known to be
fierce and cunning warriors, utilizing shields and spears in battle and
riding on their planet's Hydrekan creatures.
Type: Bilaterally symmetrical humanoids
Eyes: Two (red or gold irises)
Fingers: Five (four fingers and a thumb)
Toes: Five
Skin color: Yellow
Average height: Unrevealed (up to approximately 7'0")
History:
(Hulk II#34 (fb) - BTS) - The Hedzek were an alien race based off of
the planet Randaa.
(Hulk II#35 (fb) - BTS) - The Hedzek believed their first king came from the sky to build their society and lead by killing all challengers and usurpers. Their political system eventually became empirical.
(Hulk II#34 (fb) - BTS) - The Hedzek warred with the neighboring Tirenians from the planet Tiran.
(Hulk II#35 (fb) - BTS) - Over time, most of the
Hedzek and Tirenians forgot the original reasons behind the war between
the two alien races.
(Hulk II#34 (fb) - BTS) - At some point, the Hedzek
sent the monstrous Kargus the Deadly to Tiran but the Tirenians managed
to capture the beast and place it within their gladiatorial arena.
(Hulk II#34 - BTS) - When the Red Hulk was sent to the alien planet
Tiran by the Russian space shuttle Venski, a group of insectoid-riding
extraterrestrial Tirenians witnessed the Red Hulk's crash there and
assumed he was a monster sent there by their foes, the Hedzek. The
Tirenians ultimately attached a Mindroot plant to the Red Hulk, which
affected his mind and prevented him from further attacks, and a
Tirenian elder informed one of the warriors, Ry, that the Red Hulk
might be able to provide valuable information on his Hedzek "masters"
if they could somehow speak with the Red Hulk. As the Mindroot began
allowing the Red Hulk to speak Tirenian, the warrior Alturi wondered
about the Red Hulk's true allegiance, as he figured that if the Red
Hulk had been sent by the Hedzek, they would have coated the Hulk in
rootsalt to prevent the Tirenian Mindroot from affecting him. A short
time later, the Tirenian King Warka, nicknamed the Slayer of the
Hedzek, arrived and when the Red Hulk insulted Warka, Warka attacked
him but other Tirenians insisted that they believed the Red Hulk to not
be an agent of the Hedzek. Ultimately, Warka ordered the Red Hulk to be
placed in the Tirenian gladiatorial arena, where he was to fight the
Hedzek beast, Kargus the Deadly.
(Hulk II#35) - Upon overcoming the
Mindroot, killing
King Warka and forced into the role of king himself, the Red Hulk spent
a good amount of time with the Tirenian historian Allehk researching
the Hedzek and their legends and beliefs. While discussing that the
Hedzek's first king more likely came from Tiran instead of the sky, the
Red Hulk was interrupted by a report that the Hedzek had sent a force
from their planet Randaa, surprising a Tirenian camp and slaying
hundreds. Going out to investigate, the Red Hulk found the force
attacking with a large beast, demanding the death of the entire planet
Tiran and the installation of their own king, Bellusk. One of the
Tirenian soldiers informed the Red Hulk that the Hedzek's giant
creature was called an Hydreka and that one could destroy an entire
country, prompting the Red Hulk to order his men to shoot the Hedzek
controlling the Hydreka. Soon after, the Tirenians had killed the
Hydreka and were about the burn the bodies of killed Hedzek when the
Red Hulk instead had them save the Hedzek corpses for study.
Hours later, a Hedzek scout reported to King Bellusk
that the Hydreka was returning via the planetary slipstream connecting
Randaa to Tiran. Upon hearing that the Hydreka appeared slightly
wounded but missing a few riders, Bellusk cleared the Hydreka to pass
and commended his general on the timing of the earlier attack on Tiran.
The general expressed happiness at the Hedzek soldiers' victory and
admitted she did not expect the Hydreka to return. As some of the local
Hedzek noticed that the Hydreka riders seemed different, King Bellusk
himself noticed that the Hydreka was not writhing around as usual and
suggested something may be wrong with it. The general soon realized
that the riders were, in fact, different as the locals suspected, and
the Red Hulk soon emerged from the deceased Hydreka's mouth with a
squadron of disguised Tirenians posing as Hedzek. The Red Hulk ordered
his soldiers to focus on the Hedzek armories and King Bellusk bellowed
that the Hedzek would never fall, proclaiming himself the strongest
there was. The Red Hulk punched Bellusk, announcing the Bellusk was the
strongest there was and that Bellusk had just fallen for one of his
world's oldest tricks. Red Hulk then broke Bellusk's arms at the
shoulders, leaving him downed on the ground as the other Hedzek
proclaimed their king fallen.
With the king defeated, the Tirenians announced that
the Hedzek would now obey their "Red King" and one of the Hedzek even
demanded that the Red Hulk kill Bellusk so the Hedzek finally and
officially fall under Tirenian rule. The Red Hulk told the woman to
shut up and instead announced that neither the Hedzek nor the
Tirenians, both of whom had legends of their first king arriving from
the stars to rule by killing all others, would no longer live by their
legends. Red Hulk ordered the historians from both races to pass tales
of the day the kings left and proclaimed the war between the two races
to be over. He then announced he was leaving as some of the Tirenian
flying insectoids arrived with the Venski shuttle he had arrived in.
Taking the downed King Bellusk with him, the Red Hulk announced that
the Tirenians and Hedzek now had a choice in how they governed
themselves and suggested the Tirenian Alturi to be the first non-king
leader. As the Hulk departed, King Bellusk asked what would become of
him once they got out of the two planets' gravity and the Red Hulk
replied that Bellusk would have to learn to live on Earth if they made
it back. Bellusk then asked if it was true about the Tirenians having
the same legend of a king from the stars and the Red Hulk replied in
the affirmative, explaining that the Tirenians and Hedzek were
essentially the same people, looking different only through evolution
and what they ate on two different planets. As the shuttle entered the
gravitational vortex that had originally pulled him to Tiran, the Red
Hulk was attacked by Bellusk, who was fearful of becoming the Red
Hulk's slave. However, the Red Hulk was pulled from the fight into a
temporal shadow by a cosmic Watcher, who revealed himself as the one
that had originally pulled the Red Hulk into the gravitational vortex
to a different time period and Tiran in the first place.
Comments: Created by Jeff Parker, Carlo
Pagulayan and Danny Miki.
While the Hedzek's enemy race is called "Tirenians" by the Hedzek, the Tirenians' language was referred to as "Tirenean" by the Tirenians themselves. The way I see it, "Tirenian" refers to the race while "Tirenean" refers to the language in their extraterrestrial native tongues.
At the end of the story involving
the Tirenians and the Hedzek, the Watcher who pulled the Red Hulk
through time mentioned that the Red Hulk was placed within the temporal
scenario involving the two warring races and, according to the Watcher,
the scenario essentially didn't exist in the grand scheme of time and
space. The vague statement could mean a variety of things. The entire
scenario could've been constructed virtually by the Watcher or it
could've just meant that the Watcher picked that particular scenario
for the Red Hulk to experience via time travel through the temporal
shadow and that the actual war between the two races were not important
in the grand universal scheme/timeline. I chose to interpret the
Watcher's words as the latter, meaning that the two races did exist and
the Red Hulk's experience there did not change the grand timeline much.
Whether that means the war was destined to end on its own or if the Red
Hulk altered the events in some way remain to be seen...if that is
indeed how the Watcher's words should be interpreted. Then again, even
IF the Watcher had fabricated the entire scenario, the Hedzek did still
exist for a time, however short, and are therefore, still worthy of a
profile!
Profile by Proto-Man.
CLARIFICATIONS:
The Hedzek race has no known connections to:
Kargus the Deadly was a monstrous being sent by the Hedzek to Tiran, where it was ultimately captured and placed into the Tirenian gladiatorial arena. When the Tirenians managed to capture the crash-landed Red Hulk, they attached a Mindroot to him and Tirenian King Warka ordered the Red Hulk placed in the arena to battle Kargus. Arranging for the Tirenian elder Alturi to alter the potions that affect the Mindroot, the Red Hulk avoided fighting Kargus and instead went straight to King Warka, whom he killed.
--Hulk II#34
King Bellusk was the modern era leader of the Hedzek race and he ruled with strength. Arranging for various attacks on the Hedzek enemies, the Tirenians, Bellusk monitored the progress of the attacks until the Red Hulk, forced into the role of Tirenian king, used a deceased Hedzek Hydreka creature as a Trojan horse into the heart of Hedzek planet Randaa. Surprised at the attack, Bellusk proclaimed himself the strongest there was and claimed that Randaa would never fall but the Red Hulk easily defeated King Bellusk, breaking both his arms. After the Red Hulk ended the war between the Hedzek and Tirenians, and abolished the kings, he took Bellusk captive as he boarded his spaceship to depart Randaa. In the ship, the Red Hulk informed Bellusk that he would have to learn how to live on Earth and Bellusk asked about the shared legends the Hulk had learned about between the two warring races. The Red Hulk revealed that the two races were essentially the same aside from evolutionary traits but Bellusk refused to believe the Hedzek were like the Tirenians. Moments later, Bellusk attacked the Red Hulk, fearful of eventually being forced into slavery at the Hulk's hands. What became of King Bellusk after the Red Hulk was pulled from the ship into a temporal shadow by a cosmic Watcher remains to be seen...
Randaa was the home planet of the Hedzek race. Ruled by King Bellusk, Randaa was similar to Earth but had a smaller population of tribal villages. Bellusk often led attacks on the neighboring Tiran planet by sending soldiers through a planetary slipstream between the two planets and the Red Hulk, forced into the role of Tirenian king, traveled to Randaa by hiding inside the corpse of a Hedzek Hydreka creature. Emerging from the creature in the center of Randaa, the Red Hulk defeated Bellusk and announced an end to the war between the two planets. After also abolishing the kings, the Red Hulk departed Randaa with King Bellusk in tow.
images: (without ads)
Hulk II#35, p10, pan4 (Hedzek on Randaa, main image)
Hulk II#35, p5, splash page (a squadron of Hedzek soldiers riding in
the Hydreka)
Hulk II#35, p14, pan2 (Hedzek around the fallen King Bellusk)
Hulk II#34, p19, pan5 (Kargus the Deadly)
Hulk II#35, p10, pan3 (King Bellusk)
Hulk II#34, p7, pan2 (Randaa)
Appearances:
Hulk II#34 (August, 2011) - Jeff Parker (writer), Carlo Pagulayan
(pencils), Danny Miki (inks), Mark Paniccia (editor)
Hulk II#35 (August, 2011) - Jeff Parker (writer), Carlo Pagulayan
(pencils), Danny Miki (inks), Mark Paniccia (editor)
First Posted: 02/28/2023
Last updated: 02/28/2023
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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