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Abyss (Entity) (Earth-616)

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The Abyss. Existence with no desire. Unification through negation. A bottomless fall into a long nap through eternity.

—Max Fury[source]

The Abyss is a powerful dark entity that has been lying in slumber in the side-reality known as the Vanishing Point since, allegedly, long before the Celestials and Devourers of Worlds arrived. Though trapped there, the Abyss can reach the minds of others and make them do his bidding. It's believed that he will end the universe once he is free.[1]

History

Back when Mars was still a planet full of life, the Abyss made the Martians tainted by his touch create three crowns to channel the power of his Dark Children: the Crown of Tentacles, the Crown of Wolves, and the Thorned Crown. Under the influence of these crowns, the Martians tried to break their own world apart to awaken the Darkest Child, who would in turn awaken his brothers to free their nameless father from his prison. However, the Archons, a race of constructs created by the Watchers to guard the Abyss and wait for his eventual return, fought them and managed to thwart their plan at the cost of their own lives. The nearly destroyed planet was abandoned in the aftermath of the conflict, with the only Archon who managed to survive the ordeal remaining behind to guard the crowns.[1]

Thousands of years later, a portal connecting Mars to Earth was accidentally found in Texas by John Steele, a Union spy who was on the run after being discovered, and Aloysius Thorndrake, leader of a group of Confederate soldiers seeking revenge against Steele. As the portal was a pathway through the Vanishing Point, they ended up meeting the Abyss and being corrupted by him.[1][7] While Thorndrake started to work towards building an army to give the Abyss in the form of the Shadow Council, Steele somehow got free of the Abyss' control and actively fought in both World War I and World War II. Thorndrake later lured Steele into a trap and performed a ritual to rip reality open so the Abyss could take control of his mind again, making him join the Shadow Council soon afterwards.[8]

After the Shadow Council acquired both the Crown of Tentacles and the Thorned Crown decades later, Max Fury took over the organization and used their wealth to fund an anarchistic red light nation called Bagalia, where he gathered together a new incarnation of the Masters of Evil to serve the Abyss.[9] John Steele, who was working undercover for the Secret Avengers since they freed him from the Abyss' control, attempted to escape from Bagalia with the Thorned Crown when the location of the Crown of Wolves was discovered, but he was caught by the new Masters of Evil and subsequently murdered. Consequently, the Secret Avengers went to Bagalia to try and stop Taskmaster from delivering the Crown of Wolves to Max Fury as he was hired to do.[10] Taskmaster managed to deliver the package, however, and was paid with shots to the chest.[11]

Anthony Masters (Earth-616) and Abyss (Entity) (Earth-616) from Secret Avengers Vol 1 30 001

Possessing Taskmaster

Once in possession of all three crowns, Max Fury merged them together and donned the merged crown to become the Abyss' vessel, but that didn't work as he was a Life Model Decoy. The merged crown was then donned by a wounded Taskmaster, who proceeded to take control of the minds of both the Masters of Evil and the Secret Avengers.[11] The Secret Avengers Agent Venom and Ant-Man, who weren't affected by the Abyss' influence due to one being a symbiote host and the other secretly an LMD, fought against the Abyss as he tried to spread his influence beyond Bagalia and managed to severe his connection to Earth by bonding the Venom symbiote to Taskmaster and unmerging the three crowns.[4] The crowns were then confiscated by the Secret Avengers, who tucked them away, separated in remote vaults across the Microverse.[2]

Attributes

Powers

Mind Control:[6] The Abyss is capable of controlling the mind of whomever he has tainted with his touch,[1][7] the only exception being robots and symbiote hosts.[4] The eyes of those under his control turn pitch-black,[11] a trait shared by those enthralled by his Dark Children.[3]

Notes

  • Regarding the Abyss' age implied in Secret Avengers #3, the issue was released way before the Celestials' origin as creations of the First Firmament was established[12] (they had many dubious origin stories at the time, such as being spawns of Eternity).[13]
  • In Defenders (Vol. 6) #5, the Defenders travel back to the Third Cosmos and help destroy the Anti-All, a primordial manifestation of nothingness. When the creature is shattered into seemingly one piece for every universe, Doctor Strange theorizes that when heroes fight against "the great Nothing" in their own times, they're fighting back the Anti-All as well. This could mean that a being like the Abyss could have been born out of the Anti-All's fracture.

Trivia

  • The Abyss seems to be based on the Cthulhu Mythos, with Agent Venom even remarking that the people possessed by him were "other-dimensional Cthulhu-type nullification demons" while trying to prevent them from spreading his influence further.[5]
  • The period of time during which the Martians were under the Abyss' influence is seemingly known as "The Horror Times" and "The Lost Era of Null".[11]

See Also

Links and References

References

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