KODABAK race
Classification: Extraterrestrial semi-humanoids
Location/Base of Operations: Kodaba, seventh planet from the sun in the Grosgumbique star system of the Milky Way galaxy
Habitat: Unrevealed
Gravity: Unrevealed
Atmosphere: Breathable by lifeforms from Earth
Known Members:
Sardan,
Thanos-thrall (name unrevealed), starship passengers
Estimated population: 59 billion
Affiliations: Unrevealed (except for the one who followed Thanos)
Enemies: None
First Appearance: (Unidentified) Avengers Annual I#7 (1977)
(race and homeworld named) The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe II (Deluxe Edition) #15 (March,
1987)
Powers/Abilities: The Kodabak have not demonstrated any specific abilities in their limited appearances.
Cultural Traits: Unrevealed
Type: Humanoid porcine
Eyes: Two (silver, multifaceted)
Fingers: Two (plus opposable thumb)
Toes: Two
Skin color: Pink
Hair: None
Average height: 6'2"
Type of government: Tribal
Level of technology: Inferior to that of the humans of Earth
History:
(The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe II#15: Kodabaks entry) - The Kodabaks are a
humanoid porcine race who apparently evolved on Kodaba, the seventh planet from the sun in the Grosgumbique
star system within the Milky Way galaxy.
(The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe II#15: Kodabaks entry) - Certain Kodabaks were recruited by Thanos the Mad Titan to serve in his army.
(Quasar#26 (fb) - BTS) - At some point, Sardan (and maybe other Kodabaks) joined the multi-species religious order known as the Mourners.
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb) - BTS) - Thanos had many in his army of thralls equipped with various weapons. A certain Kodabak Thanos-thrall was equipped with an energy weapon that fit over (or replaced) his left hand and forearm.
(Avengers Annual I#7 (fb) - BTS) - Thanos initiated his plan to destroy Earth's Sun by sending a giant space armada, seemingly commanded from Sanctuary III, to attack Earth. In actuality, this attack was just a massive diversion meant to keep the Avengers occupied while Thanos, who was aboard Sanctuary II, used his Stellar Projector to cause the Sun to go nova.
(Avengers Annual I#7) - While Thor and Iron Man ran interference for them by battling the smaller ships in the armada, Captain America, the Beast, Moondragon, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision and the Kree Captain Mar-Vell boarded Sanctuary III in the belief that it was Thanos's flagship where the "star-burster" would be located. After blasting their way into the starship, the six heroes soon found themselves battling a small army of aliens who had been waiting below to massacre them. One of those Thanos-thralls was the Kodabak who kept blasting at the intangible Vision until the Scarlet Witch hexed his gun-arm.
(Quasar#26) - A Kodabak (who may or may not have been Sardan) was one of the Mourners
standing nearby when their leader Fath greeted Quasar who had come to investigate the presence of their
cathedral-starship within the Eonverse pocket dimension.
Three days later, during the funeral service that the Mourners held for Eon within the Eonverse,
Sardan was present, seated behind Quasar. When Thanos disrupted the proceedings, Sardan angrily addressed the
intruder, telling him that he was not welcome there. One of his fellow Mourners quickly warned Sardan to not
antagonize Thanos, and Sardan heeded his advice.
(Quasar#35) - A Kodabak (who may or may not have been Sardan) was one of the Mourners who were present on The Mourning Star at the time they first attempted to hold a memorial service for the billions of Kree who had recently been killed by the Nega-Bomb. However, the service was disrupted when Wayopex the Interdite, the empath whose job was to commune with the souls of the dead to let them know that the Mourners were honoring them, suddenly cried out that the none of the Kree were dead!
(Avengers: Celestial Quest#2) - A pair of Kodabaks were among the 13 (or more) passengers on a starship piloted by Foster and Straker that, after coming under attack from three pirate vessels, dove into a Class 3 nebula, knowing that the pirates didn't have the shields they would have needed to follow them.
Comments: Porcine Thanos-thrall created by Jim Starlin and Josef Rubinstein.
Kodabak race created/named by the staff of the second volume of The Official Handbook of
the Marvel Universe (led by Head Writer Mark Gruenwald).
Despite what their entry in The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe II#15 stated, there don't seem to have been any Kodabaks present in Marvel Two-In-One Annual#2 (unless they were BTS in a crowd scene). I can say this with some certainty because I carefully examined every panel of that annual in search of a Kodabak and found nothing.
Although the Kodabak who appeared in Avengers Annual I#7 was shown to have a tail that looked to be about two feet long, no other Kodabaks have been depicted as having tails, not even the one from their race's entry in the Official Handbook. So, do Kodabaks have tails that they usually keep hidden beneath their clothing? Or was this particular Kodabak a genetic oddity whose tail was an atavistic feature that had been lost during the evolution of the Kodabak species?
The two Kodabaks who appeared in one panel of Avengers: Celestial Quest#2 also did not exactly match the Thanos-thrall or the handbook image. The one in the foreground had pink skin but his only visible eye, although multifaceted, was yellow instead of silver. Also, his right hand clearly had three fingers, presumably in addition to an unseen thumb. As for the one in the background, his left hand seemed to have two fingers and a thumb but his skin was grey in color instead of pink. Maybe where he was standing in the passenger starship's cabin was just not as well-lit as where his pink companion was?
The Kodabaks were one of several alien races who received quarter-page entries in the Official Handbook even though the only members of their races who had yet been seen had appeared in crowd scenes in which neither they nor their races were named. Other races who received entries even though their only representatives had only appeared for a few panels in one issue and had little (if any) dialogue were the Hujah, the Mandos, the Nymenians, and the Zundamites. It seems a bit wasteful to have given these races entries when there were probably other alien races whose appearances had been less minor.
According to the Official Handbook, the Kodabak population was 59 billion which was almost 12 times the population of humans (5.013 billion) on Earth in 1987, the year that the handbook was published. Since scientists believe that Earth's biosphere will not be able to support more than 9 to 10 billion (vegetarian) people, the idea of an alien planet capable of producing enough food to feed so many more seems unlikely. Of course, the fact that about 71% of Earth's surface is covered by salt water and about one-third of the land area is arid or semi-arid desert means that less than 10% of Earth's surface can produce food so Kodaba could potentially feed such a large population if it had six times more arable land than Earth. Still, since the Official Handbook's population figures were all just made up, it does seem like the writers may have been a bit too imaginative when it comes to some of the "facts" that they created. Other races whose listed populations are also unusually high are the Contraxians (17 billion), the Kamado (50 billion), the Nanda (26 billion) and the Sirusites (45 billion), but those races are capable of interstellar spaceflight and so could have colonized other planets, something that the Kodabaks, whose level of technology was inferior to that of Earth, could not have done (without outside assistance--Snood).
When one thinks about it, it's odd how many beings from races whose
levels of technology are inferior or equal to that of Earth humans manage to end up in outer space. More specifically,
since the Kodabaks (and the Hujah) don't possess the technology for interstellar spaceflight, how was Thanos able
to recruit members of those races to serve in his army? Did he just stop by their homeworlds and ask if there were
any malcontents who would be willing to join him in committing acts of violence and murder?
And what about the starship passengers? How did they get into space? As a "Star Trek" fan,
I grew up with the idea that beings from a space-faring race should not interact with civilizations that had not yet
developed the technology needed for interstellar travel. As a result, the idea that aliens might make contact with
less-advanced species and engage in trade with them, perhaps even enabling them to use commercial starliners
to travel from their homeworlds to other planets, seems inherently wrong. However, it's undeniable that things are
different in the Marvel Universe, what with so many aliens having visited Earth and so many "heroes" from Earth
having gone out into the universe to impose their values on the alien cultures they have encountered.
Right,
I think the Stranger or the Collector or any number of beings could
have grabbed any number of Kodabak and transported them somewhere, and
then perhaps lost interest in them, leaving a contingent to be active
in space, despite the level technology on their native world.
--Snood.
I had thought that the Kodabaks were one of the fourteen Type II civilizations known to exist within the Milky Way galaxy whose planets were projected as holographic images upon the star field as part of a class that Reed Richards was teaching aboard the Future Foundation's space station in FF I#20. However, the image of which I was thinking was actually labelled "Kobadaks" instead. And since Reed Richards is SO brilliant that he would never make a spelling mistake, that race must not have been the Kodabaks. Additionally, the fact that the level of technology possessed by the Kodabaks is inferior to that of Earth means that they could not possibly be a Type II civilization on the Kardashev scale, one that was capable of harnessing all the energy radiated by its own star. However, since one of the races whose homeworlds were projected was that of the Druffs, a race that has no technology, maybe the projected races were not meant to all be Type II civilizations after all. Or maybe the writer and/or artist just picked names from the Official Handbook without bothering to check their listed technological levels...
The Thanos-thrall`s first and only appearance was on page 23 of Avengers Annual I#7 (1977). I've used images scanned from page 2 of the 1992 Warlock reprint miniseries because those images are better than the originals, in part because they were printed on better quality paper.
This profile was completed 8/12/2021, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 20th anniversary 's celebratory event.
Profile by Donald Campbell.
CLARIFICATIONS:
The Kodabaks have no known connections to
The first member of his race knkown to have been encountered by beings from Earth, the name of this Kodabak has never been revealed nor have the circumstances in which he was recruited by Thanos. However, it was presumably Thanos who arranged for this Kodabak to be equipped with an energy weapon that fit over (or replaced) his left hand and forearm.
When Thanos initiated his plan to destroy Earth's Sun, he sent a giant space armada seemingly commanded from Sanctuary III to attack Earth as a decoy. This Kodabak was a part of the small army of aliens who had been stationed aboard the decoy who were meant to keep the Avengers busy when they attacked the supposed flagship.
Once Captain America, the Beast, Moondragon, the Scarlet Witch, the Vision and the Kree Captain Mar-Vell had boarded Sanctuary III, the Thanos-thralls who had been waiting to massacre them attacked. During the ensuing battle, this Kodabak began to fire his weapon at the Vision but, since the synthezoid had become intangible, the blasts simply passed through him and struck his fellow Thanos-thralls. As the Vision remarked upon how "this unusual-looking gentlemen" didn't seem to realize that his weapon was having no effect on his intangible form but was decimating his allies, the Scarlet Witch pointed out that, if allowed to continue unchecked, the Kodabak would destroy the armament control panel that the Avengers were trying to help Moondragon reach so she quickly cast a hex that caused his gun-arm to explode (or something).
--Avengers Annual I#7
Note: What happened to this Kodabak after that has not been revealed. He was not seen to be among those Thanos-thralls who fought the Earth heroes in later battles nor was he seen among the thralls who surrendered after Thanos was transformed into solid granite by Adam Warlock.
Aside from his purple boots, odd-looking yellow belt, golden necklace
and some sort of narrow yellow headgear with spikes, this Kodabak didn't seem to be wearing any clothes. Or
maybe he was wearing a one-piece, skin-tight bodysuit that just happened to be the exact same color as his
skin? The idea of going into battle while naked seems odd but, although most of his comrades were depicted
as wearing at least trunks, there were definitely a few other thralls who also seemed to be wearing nothing. To
each his/her/its own.
Porky Pig only wears a jacket, so if it's good enough for one porcine-humanoid...--Snood
A pair of Kodabaks were among the 13 (or more) passengers on a starship piloted by Foster and Straker. After coming under attack from three pirate vessels, the pilots took their starship into a Class 3 nebula, knowing that the pirates lacked the shields they would have needed to follow them.
As the starship traveled on without further pursuit, the passengers talked excitedly amongst themselves. One of the Kodabaks said, "--You feel--" (presumably asking his/her companion how he/she felt) while the other Kodabak stated, "--Great work--" (apparently commenting on the performance of the pilots).
--Avengers: Celestial Quest#2
images: (without ads)
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe II#15, page 46, panel 1 (main image)
Warlock II#6, page 2, panel 3 (Thanos-thrall trying to attack Vision)
page 23, panel 4 (Thanos-thrall being disarmed)
Avengers: Celestial Quest#2, page 9, panel 1 (starship passengers)
Appearances:
Avengers Annual I#7 (1977) - Joe Rubinstein (finishing), Archie Goodwin
(editing), Jim Starlin (other manual labor)
The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe II#15 (March, 1987) - Mark Gruenwald (writer/producer), Peter
Sanderson (writer/researcher), Kyle Baker (artist for the Alien Races Appendix)
Quasar#26 (September, 1991) - Mark Gruenwald (writer), Dave Hoover (guest penciler), Fred Fredricks (guest inker),
Kelly Corvese (new editor)
Quasar#35 (June, 1992) - Mark Gruenwald (writer), Greg Capullo (penciler), Harry Candelario (inker), Kelly
Corvese (editor)
Avengers: Celestial Quest#2 (December, 2001) - Stainless Steve Englehart (author), Jorge Santamaria (pencil artist),
Scott Hanna (ink artist), Tom Brevoort (editor)
First Posted: 09/24/2021
Last updated: 09/23/2021
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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