#shi'ar imperial guard

[merrymarvelite]

Cover of the Day: X-Men #107 (October, 1977) Art by Dave Cockrum and Danny Crespi

[ultradude13]

Classic X-Men #14 cover by Arthur Adams

[heckcareoxytwit]

In order to protect the Starjammers who are wanted as fugitives to the Shi'Ar Empire, Cosmo tries to fool the two patrolling Shi'Ar Imperial Guards - Gladiator and Manta during the inspection tour.

Cosmo the Spacedog Infinity Comic #5

[madamshogunassassin]

[elgaberino-mcoc]

Gladiator has graduated from the MCOC Wishlist

6,400+ Summoners ranked Gladiator (#18), behind only Bullseye (#8) among this year's #SummonersChoice options.

Yet another top-20 most-wanted for @MarvelChampions ! 

To upvote White Tiger (#79) (who lost to Gladiator in the final round of the official Summoner’s Choice 2023 voting event hosted by Marvel Contest of Champions), click here: http://tinyurl.com/mcocwishlist?page=3

[bringbackwendellvaughn]

[sebeth]

Fantastic Four Vs Gladiator

[gwydionae]

X-Men '97 Intro Callbacks (Phoenix Saga)

"The Phoenix Saga (Part 2): The Dark Shroud"

"The Dark Phoenix (Part 2): The Inner Circle"

"The Dark Phoenix (Part 4): The Fate of the Phoenix"

(Two of the Shi'ar Imperial Guard used in the '97 sequence aren't in the original scene, but the setting with the earth hanging in the sky and the face sculptures indicate this is the scene in question.)

"The Dark Phoenix (Part 4): The Fate of the Phoenix"

(Same rock face sculpture seen here as in the above image set.)

[spandexinspace]

Especially Legion-looking Shi'ar imperial guard shot tbh

[souurcitrus]

I want to talk about Kallark, Gladiator, because I like him a lot. Not as person, but more as a cool character.

He's present in the new ep of X-Men 97, don't have many lines and just standing there and being cool most of time. But, seeing Charles discussing with the Shi'ar about their government made me think about Gladiator's role in all of this, specially after he agreed with Charles about 'idealism being a sign of insanity', and because of his past.

I'm gonna try to put it into words as best I can. It's too long and i just want to ramble about one of my favorite underrated character(s).

Gladiator is the praetor, he's known for being extremely loyal to the Empire, to the person that sits on the throne, no matter who it is. Yet, hes known for being honorable and having respect for those who beat him up or have high morals, that includes Lilandra, for her kindness, Rachel, Charles and Cyclops (though we know he would not hesitate to fight them if it meant protecting the empire)

Right, he's too prideful, but that's because his powers comes from his confidence on himself. And what bugs about me in his character is that he's too loyal to this government, and they're the solely reason he's the last one of his species and he knows that what they do is wrong.

In War of Kings: Warriors we see Kallark thinking about his past while under the rule of Vulcan.

The Shi'ar are a imperialist and colonizing government. They invade other planets and force these civilizations to kneel under their ruler, and depending of the planet, these can people will end slaves for the Shi'ar without rights. This happened to Kallark's people.

The strontians are/were a very powerful species that even the Shi'ar were scared of their power, but they're mostly gone now, with Kallark, his son Kubark and his cousin Xenith being the last living ones.

Kallark was born to be a soldier and trained to serve the Shi'ar Empire, together with his peers, other strontians of his age, his close friends. And all of them were loyal to the Shi'ar, wanting to prove themselves worthy of being part of the Imperial Guard.

Of course, Kallark was chosen because he was the most dedicated. The only thing the Shi'ar didn't liked about him is that he would often leave the missions to save his peers.

So they test his loyalty by making him attack his own people and kill them to see which one he would choose, his family or his duty. In the end he ends dooming his people by doing exactly what the Shi'ar asked, and it's fucked up.

The elders even say that they knew that Kallark could never turn his back to his duty, because "he's a good soldier". His family dies knowing he had chosen the Shi'ar and not them, his friends die disappointed on him.

The flashback ends with Kallark wodering if he would still follow Vulcan if it meant the fall of the empire, and Kallark decides that he would, because Vulcan is the Emperor and Kallark is loyal to the throne.

And that's what makes me hate him! He's too loyal. To the wrong cause. He's so loyal to the empire he ends up forgetting things he actually cares about, like Lilandra's love for him and his own son.

He loves them deeply, he cares for his people, his friends from his home planet, his friends from the Imperial Guards, his soldiers, his son. However, he can't let go of being a soldier.

We don't know much about his past or what the Shi'ar Empire did to Strotia, but it's clear they forced and pushed their ideals and rules on the young strontians to turn them into loyal weapons. And after years and years of serving the crown, Kallark can't change.

He's fully aware of the atrocities the royal family, the elders, the people in the power do to other civilizations, yet he stays by their side.

That's why when he agreed with Charles in X-Men 97, and Charles started explaining to them how their system was harmful, I was wondering if Kallark feels guilty. If it even crosses his mind what he had done to his own people.

In the comics, when Lilandra is desposed from the throne and the elders try to kill her, Kallark, who has been working for Vulcan until now, despite hating doing so, stays on Lilandra's side.

He loves her, it's obvious, he respects her and knows she only has the best interests in her heart. He even refers to her as 'Majestrix Lilandra'. He mourns her death later, he goes in a blind rage massacre, he kills everyone in sight and Black Cloak even says 'it would be painful for him to live without her'.

Later in Watxm Annual, an issue that focus on Kubark, his son, he shows how much he cares for him, how much he loves and is proud of Kubark's strength and grow.

When Kubark shows he's unhappy in his situation, being the only strontian in a school where every student must stay with their own species, Kallark doesn't listen to him. Kubark says he wants to be unique and choose his own path, Kallark denies, because it's 'not the way of the empire'.

It reminds me that Kallark, who grew up brainwashed to obey the Shi'ar, to believe that being a soldier is his only choice, expects his son to do the same.

In the beginning, Kubark did want to be a soldier like him, he hated being on Earth because he believed his destiny was to be a warrior. Then he learned he would be lonely if he did and he decided he wanted to be a hero. To be himself. And to choose.

Kubark choose to be loyal to his friends and make his own choices. Kallark did not.

So, if he's willing to change his mind and leave his job as praetor aside to protect someone he loves like he did to Lilandra, why he can't do the same for Kubark?

In the end he allows Kubark to go back to Earth. Later Kubark is back on Shi'ar, so we don't know if he was allowed to stay on earth just until he graduated. But he allows Kubark to go back and be himself, because be loves him.

But he stays the same. He never changes. He keeps making had decisions and committing mistakes and doing bad things for the empire.

Kallark is a Shi'ar by citizenship, but he's a Strontian, he's not considerate a Shi'ar, and he might not even have the same rights the Aerie Shi'ar have. He might be the most loyal and powerful soldier of the Empire, but he's nothing more than a strotian, and nothing more than a soldier. He's a soldier first, then majestor, a father, a friend.

Later when I discovered about his past and started to read about him I just made the same questions all the time: Why he never tried to change the way the Empire works? Why he never changed the bad things that the Empire did?

It would be interesting if the writers acknowledged that (that would be expecting much from Marvel). Kubark shows that he cares for Earth and his friends, that he's genuinely good and wants to do goods things. It would be interesting to see him trying to fight his father's ideals and the Empire.

It will never happen. Both these characters are underrated and were already forgotten by the writers, but I wanted to see it.

[bimboficationblues]

I'm persuaded that the probable reason for Jonathan Hickman ducking out of X-Men / never reaching the "second act" of his long-game epic (Acts 2 and 3 were supposed to be a follow-up to the "Krakoan Age", rather than a continuation of it) was that the political climate of 2020, and the reception of Krakoa among the sort of millennial lib-leftish contingent of comics fans, made it feel extra distasteful/tactless to go further down the "Krakoa might be a fundamentally compromised project" rabbit hole that the project began with. which would also explain why so much of the rest of the line, especially after Hickman's departure, had like "Krakoa is a glorified gay bar" energy

apparently he would have written a Shi'ar Imperial Guard book in that second act, which sounds pretty awesome. rip.

[keepsmagnetoaway]

X-Men 137 (September 1980)

Chris Claremont/John Byrne

You know it's about to get real when this fucking guy shows up.

So, yeah, this is it: this, really, is the end of the Dark Phoenix Saga, with the next issue being a kind of epilogue. To accommodate it, this issue is double-length, an epic end to an epic story. Also...it's not very good.

So you know how Space Bullshit keeps invading X-Men stories? I have complained about this often, as you know. And here it's happening again, in an unforgivable way. At the very end of last issue, the X-Men were teleported off into space by Xavier's Shi'ar princess girlfriend, who is here to insist, on behalf of the entire universe, that Jean/Phoenix - who after all did just detonate an entire star, killing billions in the process - be dealt with.

The fact that Jean seems now to have mastered and suppressed the Phoenix is of no interest to them: in their opinion, she remains a threat. And this is fair enough! But also...who the fuck are any of these people and why should I care? We just had a story about characters we'd grown to know and love, about their relationships and personalities, playing out for huge and yet still personal stakes: and now we have green-faced non-entities deciding everything. This sucks, man.

What ends up happening is that Xavier manoeuvres Lil'Andra into accepting a duel for the fate of Phoenix, to be fought between the X-Men and the Shi'Ar Imperial Guard, their finest heroes. So now the X-Men have to have a very artificial fight with a bunch of characters we don't care about. There's plenty of nice character moments - for instance, Beast is back, both thinking about morality at length and being a horndog.

Or here's Logan, the night before the big fight.

And most importantly, here's Jean and Scott.

This is all lovely, and the double-length issue gives it all time to shine: but again, this is such an artificial, uninteresting situation they've all been jammed into. The art continues to be spectacular too, with the fight unfolding in a lost alien city on the moon. But, again, what has this got to do with any of the stuff that's been building this whole time? Not much.

The fight is very dull - it goes on way too long, and is full of meaningless, newly introduced alien grotesques clowning on the X-Men to establish the stakes. We don't care about any of this!

We care about this!

In the end, the logic of the story reasserts itself: under pressure, the Pheonix returns to control Jean, and she has to face off with her team-mates again, who are now trying to stop her so that the entire Earth won't be condemned for her crimes: but again, the Space Bullshit angle isn't what we find ourselves caring about her, it's the interpersonal stuff.

And so...

The issue should end there, of course, but instead Ol' Bighead shows up to bore us for a bit.

This issue was torture. It's a huge moment, and the bones of a great story that meets that moment are buried in there somewhere, but there's so much other stuff being introduced here, in the final part of the story, so much of it with little bearing on anything we've come to care about, that it feels like a failure: a big failure, because the stakes were so high. Man. This bummed me out.

[heckcareoxytwit]

Cosmo the psychic Space Dog saves the day by using his telepathy to stop Galactus from wrecking Knowhere.

Cosmo The Spacedog Infinity Comic #6, 2023

[lovecanbesostrange]

Uncanny X-Men Vol. 1 #105 (1977) writer: Chris Claremont penciler: Dave Cockrum inker: Bob Layton colorist: Andy Yanchus

For personal reasons - this was the very first X-Men panel I ever saw. Well, to me they were called "Die Gruppe X" and it was a collected format, smaller than the original comics, so I got to read #105-109.

Space adventure right away! Next to the X-Men I met the Starjammers, the Imperial Guard, the Shi'Ar with Empress Lilandra and had to make sense of the M'kraan crystal thingy. Then it ended with some domesticity, Jean tells her parents about the Phoenix (hooray for her roommate Misty Knight), Storm runs around naked and Weapon Alpha crashes a picnic, giving me a first taste of Wolverine backstory... Wolverine is always there!

Look at these panels from #109 *hearteyes*:

(writer: Chris Claremont | artist: John Byrne | inker: Terry Austin)

I was so into Nightcrawler's design. Looks demonic, but is a cutie. It took forever to get a hold of more and then to slowly make sense of everything, because suddenly there were a dozen more characters and I got things very out of order.

[elgaberino-mcoc]

ORACLE (LADY SIBYL) has been added to the MCOC Wishlist 

There was a “name game” preceding her announcement. (Follow on Twitter to participate in our next such game.) (winner here)

Check out a “respect thread” dedicated to Oracle (link here)

[docgold13]

365 Marvel Comics Paper Cut-Out SuperHeroes - One Hero, Every Day, All Year…

Supporting Character Supplemental - Princess Lilandra

Princess-Majestrix Lilandra Neramani was a member of the royal family of the Shi'ar Empire, which was governed by the extraterrestrial Shi'ar race and controlled all known inhabited planets in the galaxy in which the Shi'ar dwelled. Lilandra’s father had been killed by her sister, Deathbird, leading to her older brother, D’Ken, ascending to the throne.  

D’Ken’s quest to unlock the power of the M'kraan Crystal resulted in his losing his sanity at which point Lilandra was seated as Majestrix.  Lilandra had made allies with Charles Xavier and his X-Men through the ordeal with the M'kraan Crystal and she and Xavier became lovers for a short time.  

Lilandra was deposed when Vulcan conquered the Imperial Guard and made himself the emperor of the Shi’ar.  Fearing the Shi’ar’s loyalty to Lilandra, Vulcan sent out his agents to hunt her down.  The Starjammers and X-Men tried to protect Lilandra but the onslaught was too powerful and the princess was killed by the Darkhawk Raptor.  Lilandra would later be avenged when Vulcan fell in battle against Black Bolt.  

The character first appeared in the pages of X-Men Vol. 1 #97 (1975).