Marvel Database
Advertisement
Marvel Database
Marvel Database
254,008
pages
in: Vehicles, Guardians of the Galaxy (Earth-691)/Items, Earth-691/Vehicles,
and 5 more

Starship Captain America

Sign in to edit

History

The starship known as the Captain America began its existence on the Jovian moon Europa in the early 21st century. When the humans of Earth-691 sent an army of Sentinels to wipe out their world's mutants, Magneto gathered the survivors and offered to lead them to a safe haven in the stars. Although some refused and chose to stay on Earth, most of the mutants accepted Magneto's offer and were led by him to a small city that he had constructed under the ice of Europa's north pole. Once there, construction was begun on three starships that were to carry them all to some new world in another star system. However, when only two starships had been completed, the colony was attacked by Apocalypse who sought to enslave the mutants. To give the other mutants a chance to escape, Magneto fought Apocalypse in a battle that cost both of them their lives. The unfinished third starship was abandoned in the now-empty city.[2]

Over a millennium later, in the year 3007 A.D., the four original Guardians of the Galaxy (Major Vance Astro, Captain Charlie-27, Martinex and Yondu) crashed on Europa while fleeing from a Badoon battlecruiser that had been pursuing them. While traveling in an escape pod through the moon's glacier-covered ocean, they came across the long-forgotten city and sought refuge within it. While exploring the city, they discovered the unfinished third starship whose engines had been mounted but whose fuselage still needed to be completed. The Guardians spent the next six months making the starship space-worthy. Naming the vessel after the greatest fighter for liberty that Earth had ever known, they christened it the U.S.S. Captain America.[1]

In the year 3014 A.D., a woman named Tarin was accidentally transported back in time to the Baxter Building in the early 21st century of Earth-616 at a time when Captain America and Sharon Carter happened to be visiting the Fantastic Four. Tarin revealed how her future Earth had been conquered by the Brotherhood of Badoon in the year 3007 A.D. and that Captain America was their symbol of liberty, someone after whom the leaders of the Underground, the Guardians of the Galaxy, had named their ship. Captain America, Sharon Carter and the Thing all decided to accompany Tarin when Mister Fantastic returned her to her own time.[3]

The Captain America was in orbit around the Martian moon of Phobos when the Guardians received a communication from their ally Zakkor on Earth that included a visicorder tape of Captain America and the Thing fighting the Badoon on Earth. With the agreement of the other Guardians, Major Astro immediately set course for Earth where the Guardians joined with the heroes from Earth's past and the Resistance to take control of New York City.[4]

In 3015 A.D., after examining some captured Badoon historical records, the Terrans learned that a previous attempt to conquer Earth had been thwarted but the records were incomplete. Seeking to learn how humanity had been saved that first time, the Guardians modified the Captain America so that it could travel through time. Once in the past, Charlie-27 transported down to New York City from the starship before something caused it to lose altitude and crash in the woods near Saugerties, New York. It was soon found by Nighthawk who had witnessed the crash while flying in the area. After Nighthawk and the three occupants introduced themselves, Nighthawk, Vance Astro and Yondu used the ship's radio-teleport system to transport them to the vicinity of Charlie-27 who turned out to be in Times Square battling Eelar alongside Nighthawk's three fellow Defenders, Doctor Strange, the Hulk and the Valkyrie. Having stayed behind to work on repairing the starship, Martinex was soon surprised when another witness, a young boy, also found the crashed starship and he was even more surprised when the boy revealed that his name was "Vance Astrovik" but that he planned to change it to "Vance Astro" when he grew up.[5]

The following morning, while the Guardians were meeting with the Defenders at their headquarters, the Richmond Riding Academy in Nassau/Suffolk, they watched a T.V. broadcast that revealed that the crashed starship had been found by both television crews and the National Guard. After a reporter asked the commanding general if he knew why the words "Captain America" were inscribed in English on the hull of the U.F.O., Martinex and Vance both emerged from the craft. Seeing his younger self, Vance Astro called upon Doctor Strange to do something and the Sorcerer Supreme immediately cast an enchantment that teleported the Captain America, Martinex and young Vance from the crash site to the grounds of the riding academy. While Martinex and Charlie-27 got to work making the starship space-worthy, the major, while keeping his identity a secret from young Vance, told the boy and the Defenders the history of "his planet." During this history lesson, the major revealed that the Guardians had seized the last remaining ship of the star fleet to use as their travelling base. Once the lesson was over, Doctor Strange teleported young Vance home with a spell that also erased his memories of what he had learned. After the Valkyrie arrived with Jack Norris, Charlie-27 announced that they had repaired the ship as well as they could with the supplies available but that they couldn't launch it into space. Once the Defenders and the Guardians had all boarded the starship, Doctor Strange cast a spell that transported the Captain America and its occupants from the surface of Earth into orbit around the future Earth that existed in the year 3015 A.D.[6]

After Badoon sensors detected the Captain America in orbit around Earth, Koz dispatched interceptor-craft but Lordsire Droom ordered them to be called back because he had a different fate in mind for the Guardians. Droom began monitoring the starship and, upon detecting the activation of its teleportation circuits, he fired a high-intensity directional radio wave that bisected and deflected the teleport beams into sub-space, sending the four who were teleporting to two separate planets light-years from Earth. The discovery that the four were lost prompted Jack Norris, who had stowed away aboard ship, to come out of hiding. Once he was dealt with and Martinex had determined that some outside force was responsible, Doctor Strange had Martinex wire him into the computer system so that he could rapidly conduct an extensive scan with a far greater range than the sensors would normally have had. When the power of this joining caused the Badoon monitoring device to explode, Droom assumed that the Guardians had developed some new power source that could topple the Badoon Empire so he immediately ordered that it be destroyed. Soon afterward, two members of the Badoon Elite Guard and a force of Zoms beamed aboard and into the Teleport Chamber.[7] The battle between the Badoon and the starship's three defenders ended once Nighthawk was captured and Charlie-27 and Martinex were forced to surrender. After being taken to the new power source and mistaking Strange's body, with its decelerated metabolism, for a corpse, the Badoon teleported themselves and their prisoners down to Earth, leaving Strange's astral form to travel to Swampworld where he cast a spell to return Vance Astro and Valkyrie to Earth in time to prevent the execution of their three comrades.[8] After locating Yondu and the Hulk on the Drunkards' World and returning them to Earth as well, Strange's astral form reunited with his physical body aboard the Captain America. Although very surprised by Strange's apparent return from the dead, Jack Norris declared that he was now committed to fighting the Badoon. After arming Jack with a ray-rifle from the ship's arsenal, Strange and Norris teleported down to Earth and began liberating all of the fifty million Terrans from Badoon prison camps around the planet.[9]

In late 3015 A.D., after the Brotherhood of Badoon had been defeated by the Terrans and then removed by the Sisterhood of Badoon, the Guardians tried to live normal lives but soon found the prejudices on postwar Earth to be frustrating. With nothing for them there, they all agreed to join Starhawk on a mission and the Captain America then left Earth-orbit with the five of them aboard.[10]

The Captain America's journey to the center of the galaxy was briefly delayed when the Guardians decided to pay a visit to Centauri-IV so that Yondu could consult the gods of his race. Soon after resuming their course, the starship came across a small Earthship in their path. When it fired on them with its meteor-deflector beams, the Guardians used a tractor beam to bring it into the hold where they discovered that its sole occupant was Nikki, the last surviving Mercurian, who then joined their group. Soon afterwards, the starship came across the alien force that had been consuming the life on every planet it encountered. Starhawk teleported outside the starship to investigate and the readings he sent back before being swallowed by the creature enabled Yondu to identify it as Karanada which then attacked with an energy blast that somehow infected the starship's circuitry.[11] With the life-support systems failing, Martinex beamed the other four Guardians down to the nearest habitable planet while he made repairs. The planet turned out to be a giant mental institution whose Caretakers provided Martinex with the materials he needed to complete repairs, and then retrieved the four Guardians from the surface and teleported them back aboard the Captain America.[12]

While the Captain America was in close proximity to an inhabited alien planet, with the crew unable to do anything except watch as Karanada devoured the planet and its people, Nikki suddenly took control of the starship, set a course directly for the creature and accelerated to hyperdrive. However, upon entering Karanada, the starship was transported elsewhere and crashed onto a desert on some unknown flat surface. While most of the crew left to explore and soon encountered Starhawk, who had also been transported there, Astro remained aboard the Captain America where he soon battled and defeated a miniature Karanada. When Charlie-27 relayed Starhawk's instructions to start the engines, Major Astro reluctantly complied, causing the starship to pitch forward and burrow down into and through the planet until it came out the other side. Once out in space, Astro was able to view the immense Topographical Man from a distance.[13] After the Guardians had initiated the entity's destruction, Charlie-27 remotely activated the starship's teleport mechanism to transport the five Guardians back onboard.[14]

Soon afterwards, when the Captain America came across a Badoon mentocorder floating in space, Martinex and Charlie-27 exited the starship and conducted a space-walk to retrieve the ancient device.[15]

As the Captain America neared the Arcturian System, it was attacked by a fleet of ships manned by the Reavers of Arcturus who trapped the starship in a sphere of pulsating energy designed to slowly penetrate its hull. Once the energy-bubble was in place, most of the fleet dispersed, leaving the scout ship Kammar within sensor range to monitor the lifeforms aboard so as to determine the precise radiation dosage need to kill each of them. When Starhawk later teleported outside, the Arcturan ship took control of the teleport circuit and used it to beam a boarding party aboard.[16] The Guardians were able to swiftly deal with the three boarders, all of whom turned out to actually be ancient androids, but then, acting on orders from High Commander Ogord, the Kammar increased its disruptor output to the ultimate, causing the Captain America to swiftly be destroyed.[17] Although the Captain America was torn apart when struck by that protonucleic disruptor pulse, the Guardians had been able to get into an escape module and thus remained alive within the wreckage. Vance Astro then used his psyche-blast to propel the module against the Kammar, allowing the Guardians to board the scout ship via an aft airlock and quickly defeat the whole crew. Having commandeered the scout ship, the Guardians set course for Arcturus IV where they rescued Starhawk.[18] The Kammar carried that last fragment of the Captain America with it when the Guardians used it to escape from the Arcturian system and it remained attached when the Kammar encountered Drydock and landed in its docking area.[19] The Guardians later used Drydock's facilities to build a new starship, the Freedom's Lady.[20]

Several years later, while in orbit around the planet Courg, the Freedom's Lady was attacked and destroyed by a much larger Stark starship.[21] The Guardians who had been aboard survived by teleporting down to the planet just in time and Starhawk, who had not been aboard, then returned and single-handedly secured the Stark warship. After the Stark crew was teleported down to the planet, the Guardians flew up to the starship, took possession of it, and soon renamed it the Captain America II.[22]

Notes

  • This starship has a half-page entry (as "Guardians of the Galaxy's Starship") in Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe #4. However, although the four images are all clearly of the Guardians' original starship, this entry mistakenly identifies it as the Freedom’s Lady. Additionally, some of the new information that was created for this entry, like the idea that it was an Annihilator-Class battleship of 30th Century Earth design, may have later been made inaccurate when its origin was changed in Guardians of the Galaxy Annual #1.
  • The original Captain America was destroyed by the Reavers of Arcturus in Marvel Presents #10. It was was only referred to as the "U.S.S. Captain America" once, in that new origin story that was written by Jim Valentino over a decade after the starship itself had been destroyed.
  • Several other starships named the Captain America that were owned by teams of 31st century Guardians of the Galaxy have appeared in other storylines. Those that were in "What If...?" stories tend to resemble the original starship but versions from more divergent timelines, like those seen in Guardians of the Galaxy (Vol. 2) #16 and the short-lived Guardians 3000 series, had designs that were very different.

See Also

Links and References

References

Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.
More Fandoms
Advertisement