Posted in: Comics | Tagged: Ayesha, Comics, entertainemnt, guardians of the galaxy, her, Kismet, marvel

Comic Book History Of Ayesha

Published Sat, 14 Jan 2017 16:00:00 -0600

A recent toy photo revealed that the Marvel character Ayesha would be appearing in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 and was confirmed by James Gunn through his twitter account. Ayesha, who will be played by Elizabeth Debicki, has gone by many names and has crossed paths with many of Marvel heroes, both Earthbound and cosmic. But who is she?

To look at Ayesha's comic book history, you have to look back to Him. An actually character named Him. A group called Enclave, made up of Maris Morlak (nuclear physicist), Jerome Hamilton (medical biologist), Carlo Zota (electrical technician), and Wladyslav Shinski (geneticist), attempted to make a super-powered being in their secret lab called The Beehive. Their first creation, called Him, was very powerful but couldn't be controlled. The creature inadvertently killed Hamilton and destroyed most of the Beehive before leaving Earth.

Like any good scientist, this group shook off their failure and tried again, this time bringing in Stephen Strange to perform brain surgery to make the character more controllable. They called the creature Paragon and turns out that he wasn't any more controllable than Him. After fighting the Hulk, Paragon sank the Beehive and then encased itself in a cocoon.

I know what you're thinking… Ayesha is female, what does all this have to do with her? Just be patient. I'm getting there.

While in the cocoon, Paragon was still connected to the Enclave's computer system… that's some damn good wifi… and learned of Him. Deciding that the best course of action would be to mate with Him to create a superior race, Paragon transformed into a female and took the name Her. She came out of her cocoon and began searching for Him.

But Him wasn't Him anymore, he was now calling himself Adam Warlock and was quite dead at the time. Her was convinced she could resurrect him (Warlock) and did just that… except his soul was trapped in the Soul Gem (one of them pesky Infinity Stones) and basically was useless for mating. So she put him back. And set off to find another mate.

In the meantime, she pissed off the Consortium by helping the ecologically ravaged planet of U'si'pr recover. But she got aide in the battle against them from both Alpha Flight and the Avengers.

Having not found a mate at this point, she hears that someone else has resurrected Adam Warlock in both body and mind… but he rejects Her, leaving her sobbing on the ground. Kind of a dickish thing, but that's how Warlock rolls.

So she was back in the mate-finding mode and since there wasn't a Cosmic-mingle website, she decided to have a competition among some of the most powerful men on Earth: Quasar, Hercules, Wonder Man, Hyperion, Doc Samson and the Forgotten One. She put a reproductive pod on the neck of each one. And, as comic stories end up going, she battled with Quasar, was attacked by Jack of Hearts and eventually was saved by Quasar from Moondragon. The save, plus the fact he was the only one not to destroy the reproductive pod made him her choice. The problem is that Quasar had a girlfriend named Kayla Ballantine who just happened to be possessing the Star Brand (from the New Universe). She kicked Her's ass severely, forcing her back into a cocoon to heal.

But she doesn't give up easily, deciding while in the cocoon to continue to go after Quasar and to change her name to Kismet. (Can you say Stalker?) She would return and battle with Quasar in Operation: Galactic Storm, fighting Starbolt, Binary (Captain Marvel) and the Super-Skrull at different times. She was also taken by Soul-Eater but rescued by Quasar. She would finally fall under the control of the supervillain Crucible on Genosha and change her name to Ayesha.

In an alternate time line, Kismet and Quasar had a child… named Starhawk, part of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

The character has a very convoluted history, as most characters do, and it would be impossible to put all of this in one movie for a villain. It's more likely there will be some loose references to her past and ties to Adam Warlock… as it is possible we'll see Warlock in the film or at least hint at him if he'll be used against Thanos in the Avenger films. Like with Mantis, I'm sure Gunn is going to cherry pick what he wants from the history and make her fit how he needs.

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