Descendants (Marvel)

Latest revision as of 06:19, 27 November 2024

Hawkye versus the Descendants from Secret Avengers v1 #36.

The Descendants are a machine race that feature in Marvel Comics.

History

The Descendants were a race of sentient robotic machines that inhabited Earth. During the Cold War, a secret operation code name Descendant was made by Weapon Plus UK whose goal was the creation of an army of powerful controllable androids after seeing the success of Jim Hammond. Key scientists included individuals known as Father, Mother and Brother who attempted to replicate the success of Phineas Horton but were unable to bring about true life in their creations. Brother instead relied on a separate means of achieving this goal which involved the use of magic from Otherworld. Through an artifact known as the Orb of Necromancy, he was able to instil life into the project creating living mechanical beings that would be twenty High-Breed Descendants. An argument broke out between the scientists over the fate of these new sentient beings with Father wanting them mass produced though Brother did not want to create a new species that would compete against humanity which led to him taking the Orb of Necromancy and disappearing. In this time, Mother would release the High Breed Descendants as she believed that they deserved a chance at life in the world. The High-Breed would enter into human society and procreate where they remained hidden for decades. Father would be unable to create more Descendants without the Orb of Necromancy and his attempts at creating other species of Descendants but all of these had flaws. Deathlok agents were used to deal with Mother though her disruption continued whilst Adaptoids would see out ad return the High-Breeds. (Secret Avengers v1 #25) Father who intended to ensure the Event where they would spread the gift of the Descendants to the world. However, they lived in secret to hide from the attentions of an unenlightened humanity. (Secret Avengers v1 #23)

In Pakistan, a Descendant's true nature came to be uncovered during a terrorist attack with her energy signature leading to others of her kind moving to recover her as well as her child. Unaware of her nature, the Secret Avengers went to investigate leading to their encounter with the Descendants who had arrived to rescue their kin. (Secret Avengers v1 #22) The Adaptoids later returned to the Core through a portal in a desert where they brought Yalda and her son to their city to meet Father. Father who was accompanied by the Reavers came to welcome her and explained Yalda her origins as a member of Homo synthezoidus who were a marriage of nature and science. He then explained his goal in helping humanity achieve a state of communal universal consciousness where he asked Yalda and her son Parvez to join them. Yalda though rebuffed him and Father ordered his minions to kill her with the intention of showing her son his true potential without his mother standing in the way. At that point, Ant-Man enlarged as Eric O'Grady had snuck onto the hostages to track them but decided to act to save Yalda from harm. Despite that, Urn used his power to manifest a bow after copying Hawkeye's powers and fired at the Ant-Man Suit's helmet thus damaging it. Father had attempted to kill O'Grady with a gun but Yalda stepped in to absorb the energy but it proved too much for her and she was killed as a result. With his helmet severely damaged, Ant-Man grabbed onto Parvez and jumped out the window where he then attempted to find a place to repair his equipment to allow them to shrink again to escape detection. With Parvez in his arms, O'Grady attempted to escape the pursing Adaptoids who proceeded to cut off his lines of escape. Looking to do something good in his life, he decided to sacrifice himself so that Parvez could escape. This led to Eric putting up a valiant fight against the Adaptoids who beat O'Grady to death. (Secret Avengers v1 #23)

As the Event approached, the UltraVisions and Machine People began a revolt at the Core against Father. (Secret Avengers v1 #34) Under the Human Torch, the people of the Core as they bring about the Singularity. In New York, Father learns the call and gets down to his real mission: explaining his plan to the collected UN. He explains that he represents the next step in intelligent life on this planet, true cybernetic post-humanism. Humans have given the Descendants and their allies grief and racism in the past, but they are a community, with families and lives. More, the human civilization is so dependant on technology that they have already won. Father explains that Descendants live everywhere in human civilization, breeding with humans. He then introduced Parvez who was a a naturally-occuring Descendant, born of an android mother and a human father. His birth heralded the natural rise of the robots with Father simply accelerating the process, using his nanotechnology to give all humans bodies like his own. At this, a man in the first row accuses him of being a super-villain, but Father dismisses this as the eternal complaint of the losers in a revolution. He calls upon his children to rise and spread the Descendant gospel. A man came to split open flooding the chamber with Father's nanotechnology. Around the world, humans, from unassuming New Yorkers to the Winter Guard of Russia, reveal themselves as Descendant sleepers. Around New York, heroes hear the news - and around New York, they encounter rebel robots, fighting for their future. Surveying this, Father says that his future has arrived. (Secret Avengers v1 #35)

During the battle with the Secret Avengers, Jim Hammond who was the original Human Torch took the Orb of Necromancy from his former teammates. He then was forced to make a choice between the machines of the Descendants and humanity of Earth. He ultimately destroyed the Orb which created a chain reaction that brought about the demise of the High-Breeds and eliminated the nano-mist that was infecting humanity. In addition, it caused the destruction of the affiliated machines that formed the Descendants. It was stated that the High-Breed would rise again in the future but all the inhabitants of the Core were gone as a result of the Torch's actions. (Secret Avengers v1 #37)

Father and a number of his Descendants later attacked an A.I.M. facility that was disassembling a Stark Sentinel in retribution for harming the mechanical being. They freed the Sentinel only to be engaged by the Avengers that wanted access to the Civil War Files present in the machine as they did not want their secrets to fall into villainous hands. Father, the Descendants and the Stark Sentinel were later killed by Hank Pym through a device he used that shut down artificial intelligences in the localized area. Only the Vision was not affected as the signal was calibrated not to affect his frequency but Father warned him of the dangers posed by humans to machine life. (Avengers: Rage of Ultron v1 #1)

Overview

Secret Avengers battle the UltraVisions in Secret Avengers v1 #24.

In appearance, the Descendants were capable of appearing human but came in a variety of forms based on their ancestry each of whom had their own respective superhuman abilities. (Secret Avengers v1 #22) These entities were a race of sentient robotic beings known as Homo Synthezoidus that developed at an unknown point. They were the result of life instinctual goal to evolve to a point where it was capable of creating a technological awareness of a higher means and merge with it. Through such a stage of evolution, the species amalgamated into a single mind where it would be at peace and join the communal universal consciousness. This would be a omni-present meta-intelligence entity that were all linked to one another. Thus, everything that was considered Human would live eternally as immortals within millions of different nano-computers. (Secret Avengers v1 #23)

The technology that made up the Descendants was unlike any encountered before as it consisted of organic machinery bonded to the entire C.N.S. making them part Phalanx. Beyond that, there was a mixture of various technological designs from Phineas Horton to Hank Pym that managed to operate with one another despite the fact that such different technologies were incapable of operating with one another. The result of this amalgamation of various technologies was the creation of true biotechnological life. (Secret Avengers v1 #33) They were capable of detecting the energy signature of their own kind when they used their abilities. (Secret Avengers v1 #22)

Merlin's Orb of Necromancy was the ultimate source of the 'spark' of life that powers all Descendants. (Secret Avengers v1 #35)

A Descendant was considered a marriage between nature and science. They believed that they were true life and that being referred as a machine as a sign of prejudice against their kind. Thus, they felt that they were entitled to the rights awarded by living beings and demonstrated anger at being thought of as lifeless machines.

Within their society, there were various tribes of Descendants that included:

• Society of Doombots : these consisted of sentient Doombots led by Emperor Doombot. (Secret Avengers v1 #24)
• Life Model Decoys : sentient Life Model Decoys led by Max Fury. (Secret Avengers v1 #24)
• Sentinaughts : sentient Sentinels dedicated in the extermination of Mutants. (Secret Avengers v1 #24)
• Adaptoids : sentient Adaptoids that each could duplicate the powers of the Avengers or other superpowered beings. (Secret Avengers v1 #24) They were capable of adapting toward their foes and generating powers to overcome their foes. (Secret Avengers v1 #22)
• Ultravisions : these were sentient mechanoids resembling the Vision and Jocasta who were led by Lord Ultravision. (Secret Avengers v1 #24)
• Machine People : sentient machines resembling X-51. (Secret Avengers v1 #24)
• Deathlok Legion : artificial intelligence machines bonded to corpses similar to Deathlok. (Secret Avengers v1 #24)

Certain classes of the race were known as a highbreed and such individuals had god-like potential. (Secret Avengers v1 #22)

The Descendants operated from a city deep within the Earth that was referred to as the Core. (Secret Avengers v1 #23)

Members

• Black Ant :
• Max Fury :
• Emperor Doombot :
• The Ideal : a male Adaptoid who disguised himself as a doctor in uptown Manhattan who had the power of generating antithesis countermeasures where he developed abilities to fight particular enemies such as summoning terrors of a foes past to torment them. (Secret Avengers v1 #22)
• The Origin : a female Adaptoid who disguised herself as a homeless person in Egypt where she had the ability to generate Diminutives from her back where they emerged as small replicas of her enemies who swarmed her enemies. (Secret Avengers v1 #22)
• The Urn : a male Adaptoid who disguised himself as a construction worker in Israel where he had the power of absorbing the abilities of others through touch. (Secret Avengers v1 #22)
• The Swine : a male Adaptoid who disguised himself as a police officer in Mexico. (Secret Avengers v1 #22)
• Parvez : a naturally-occuring Descendant, born of an android mother and a human father. (Secret Avengers v1 #35)

Notes

• The Descendants were created by Rick Remender and Gabriel Hardman where they made their first appearance in Secret Avengers v1 #22 (April, 2012).
• In an interview on CBR, Rick Remender noted, "We’ll deal with these sentient automatons in the Marvel Universe who want the same rights as humans, mutants and everyone else, but are being lead by Father, a man with a violent and dangerous motivation and methodology. It also examines the question of at what point do we acknowledge artificial intelligence as life? At what point does the intellect no longer become artificial? When does artificial intelligence become the same as or more powerful than the human brain?”"
• In another interview on CBR, Remender commented, ""Moving forward, I don't want to give away too much, but the Descendants to me, we've cooked up where every cool robot in the Marvel Universe has a Descendant. It's definitely something that's going to be a problem for the Marvel Universe going forward. This isn't something that can be swept under the rug. It may be derived from a Doom Bot, but these are things that have opinions. ... The seeds of this were planted in 'X-Force' and I've been writing notes ever since. This was a prime opportunity to dip some Avengers into this. Characters like the Adaptoid, I want to reimagine these guys for Sentinels for Avengers. The Descendants want to be allowed to exist and when you go around the Core, there are billboards all around with Avengers and the text, 'Remember what they did to the Mutants. ... "They do have a hatred of mutants because they were evolved from Sentinels. There are a lot more Descendants than there are mutants at this point."
• In the same interview, artist Gabriel Hardman added on the creation of the Descendants home known as the Core, ""It's a massive undertaking to design a whole world. Rick had a lot of stuff that he had in mind for it and he had sent me reference for some sort of shanty townish sort of stuff for the areas that were scarier and low town. I had also had quite a bit of reference because I also work in movies. One of the main reference points that people pass around is a book called 'City of Darkness.' It's a book about a self-contained shanty world; a huge interconnected city of buildings. That was one of the big touchstone things for me. I always want to ground stuff. Rick loves big ideas and epic stuff. The size and scope of this series was something that drew me to it. At the same time, I want to relate it in something, I want to ground it in something so that it feels like a real relatable place."

Appearances

• Secret Avengers v1: (2012)
• Avengers: Rage of Ultron v1: (2015)

External Link

• Marvel Database Entry
• Comicvine Entry

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