Thursday, January 27, 2011

Century: Distant Sons [Comics]


Century's a fairly obscure super hero, probably known only to hardcore readers of 1990s Marvel comics. Basically, he looks like a really wrinkled, angry, long-haired hippy (with a cosmic battle staff). The character first appeared in the short-lived super group Force Works, then had the one-shot discussed here, and then more or less vanished into limbo after a brief storyline in the Avengers. The one shot, Distant Sons, provides an origin for Century: he's the genetically-created combination of the one-hundred greatest warriors of a civilization that was facing annihilation from invasion. Century, in other words, is an instrument of revenge; but some unknown trauma erased his memories and left him clueless of his purpose. The story in Distant Sons is set entirely in space, as Century finds himself captain of a former slave ship and travels the galaxy to return the slaves to their home planets, one by one. The ship's former master, The Broker, manages to regain control of the ship through the old standby of mind-controlling parasites. He sells Century to a villainess named Imogen who is questing after some sort of artifact of cosmic power called the Crucible. Century escapes, of course, and decides to head back to Earth, and I don't think the deal with Imogen and the Crucible is ever resolved.

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