Voyager (comics)
Voyager is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in The Avengers #675 as part of the storyline. Voyager was initially presented as a "lost" founding member of the Avengers, but was subsequently revealed to be the daughter and ally of the Grandmaster, one of the Elders of the Universe, before truly defecting to the Avengers' side.
Concept and creation
The concept of a "lost founder" of the Avengers was initially suggested during the planning of Marvel Legacy, with writers tentatively attributing the idea to Tom Brevoort. The concept is similar to that of Triumph, a retroactively established founding member of the Justice League of America co-created by Mark Waid, one of the creators of Voyager; as a result, Waid was insistent that Voyager not be a "real" founder", not wanting to repeat his work on Triumph. The similarity between the two was alluded to in Voyager's fictional backstory, in which she claims to have been erased from history while fighting "Victory, the Electromagnetic Man", a pastiche of Triumph and member of the Squadron Sinister.Voyager's powers of teleportation were suggested by Jim Zub as abilities that were not widely represented among the Avengers, as well as being useful as a plot device for the story of No Surrender. Her name was suggested both to relate to her powers and allude to the naming conventions of the Elders of the Universe; other names considered included "Legacy", "Vector", "Apex", "Transit" and "Portal Princess". Her design was created by Mike Allred and Laura Allred, and was specifically intended to fit alongside the designs of Marvel characters from the 1960s, the era which Voyager supposedly hailed from.
Fictional character biography
Va Nee Gast was the daughter of the Grandmaster, travelling the galaxy with him and gambling for the fates of planets. However, she came to resent her father for treating her as a playing piece in his games.When Earth was chosen as the battleground for a contest between the Grandmaster and his brother, the Challenger, Voyager was secretly planted on the planet as the Grandmaster's "secret weapon", using her newly-granted powers to implant false memories in order to adopt the guise of "Valerie Vector", a founding member of the Avengers who was lost fighting Squadron Sinister member Victory the Electronic Man. When the truth of her identity was revealed by the Vision and Edwin Jarvis, Voyager turned on her allies and claimed the fifth "pyramoid" target of the contest for herself; however, during the Avengers' defense of their headquarters against the Hulk, Voyager found herself moved by their bravery and heroism, leading her to aid them in restoring Earth to its proper place and in defeating the Challenger, whose anger had been provoked by the Grandmaster's duplicity.
In the aftermath, the Avengers offered her membership, but she declined, feeling she had not truly earned it yet and vowed to return if the Grandmaster ever threatened Earth again. Wishing to make amends for her actions, Voyager took it upon herself to watch over the newly-imprisoned Challenger on the Far Shore of life and death, showing him the adventures of the Avengers in the hope that he would find the same inspiration in them that she did.
Voyager returns in after the goddess Nyx is released from her imprisonment by the contest between the Grandmaster and Challenger, causing global night to fall across the universe. Feeling responsible for Nyx's release, Voyager assembles a team of Avengers consisting of Spectrum, the Vision, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye, Hulk, Rocket Raccoon, and Hercules, but they are too late to stop Nyx from slaughtering the Olympian Gods. Voyager sends the Avengers across dimensions to stop Nyx's children from reclaiming the three shards of her power, but is captured by Nyx in the process and enslaved by the powers of Oizys, goddess of misery. Though Voyager is able to temporarily keep the shard kept in Omnipotence City away from Nyx by teleporting it, and the Scarlet Witch, through time to the Hyborian Age, Nyx follows them to the past and reclaims the shard.
Voyager is freed from Oizys' control when Hercules overcomes his despair and offers her his aid, crushing Oizys to death in the process and allowing the Avengers and Conan the Cimmerian to follow Nyx to the final shard, on the planet Euphoria. Though Voyager is brought to the point of collapse by overuse of her powers, she manages to transport the Avengers one final time, following the fully powered Nyx to the House of Ideas, the dwelling place of the One-Above-All, and allowing the Vision to enter the House and stop Nyx from rewriting creation in her image. With Nyx defeated, Voyager returned to the Far Shore, only to discover that the Challenger had escaped his imprisonment and disappeared.
Powers and abilities
Voyager has the ability to create portals that teleport herself and others through time and space with no apparent limitations on distance; she was able to take the Challenger to the Far Shore, the "furthest point of life and death", and transport the Avengers through time to the Hyborian Age. However, use of these powers repeatedly or on large numbers of people is draining on Voyager, requiring her to rest before using them again. Voyager is also able to fly through her quantum powers.Her powers also extend to the ability to "travel through memories", implanting new memories of herself and altering existing ones to include her. This ability was unable to affect the synthetic Vision, and when the truth was revealed to the other Avengers, they quickly realised that their memories were fake.
Other versions
- As established by the Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe, the fictional backstory that Voyager gave to the Avengers is true in the alternate reality of Earth-17122. On this Earth, Valerie Vector was the daughter of scientist Arthur Vector, who gained her quantum powers when she ran into the path of one of her father's experiments after hearing that her mother wanted a divorce. Voyager served as a superhero and Avenger for years until she was seemingly killed during a fight with the Squadron Sinister.
Reception
The reveal of Voyager's real origin in Avengers #684 received generally positive reviews from comics critics, with Adventures in Poor Taste complimenting the "painstaking thought about craft from the writing team" involved in making the truth unexpected to comics-savvy readers.