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History
THE BLACK ORDER (In Comics Full Report)
Also known as the Cull Obsidian, the Black Order is an elite group made up of the most powerful, wicked, and subservient aliens that Thanos could find. Their goal: to subjugate and quell resistance on any planet that the Mad Titan wishes to conquer.
The Black Order has had secondary goals as well, such as finding Thanos’s wayward son Thane, and locating the Infinity Stones. Their malevolent master can’t be everywhere at once, and the Black Order acts as an advance tactical team that paves the way for Thanos’s arrival. The members of the Black Order derive great pleasure from the destruction and chaos they cause.
ORIGIN OF THE ORDER
The Black Order was initially made up of five members. The first, Thanos’s right-hand man Corvus Glaive, wields a namesake blade that makes him difficult to kill—as long as the weapon is intact, he can regenerate from a single cell. Corvus acts as team leader and speaks for Thanos while in the field.
Next is Corvus’s wife, Proxima Midnight, who carries a spear with a sun trapped inside. This weapon is powerful enough to absorb gamma radiation from the Hulk and turn him back into Bruce Banner.
The third member is Black Dwarf, Corvus’s brother, who is huge in size, has impenetrable skin. and wields a variety of blunt and sharp cosmic weapons.
The fourth is Ebony Maw, the master of strategy and tactics and the most devious member of the group. He has unusual persuasive abilities and can also teleport the team from place to place.
The last member of the Black Order is Supergiant, an unstable mental vampire who can control, alter, and destroy the most powerful minds on Earth and beyond.
DESTRUCTIVE DYNAMIC
Thanos is absolute ruler of the Black Order and deploys them wherever he sees fit. Initially, the Mad Titan recruits the group to raid planets that would then give tribute to Thanos as the absolute ruler of the cosmos. The Black Order doesn’t hesitate to kill and destroy in order to quell any resistance they might find on the chosen world.
The Black Order is then deployed by Thanos to Earth with two main objectives in mind: find and capture his son Thane, who had gone rogue and was plotting against his father, and retrieve the Reality Stone, which was in the possession of one of the Illuminati somewhere on the planet. Thanos splits up the Black Order into smaller teams, each with a squad of combat troops, and sends them to where Illuminati members are based.
BLACK CHAOS
The Black Order is opposed to any Super Heroes or teams that stand in the way of their master or the destruction that earns them their foul reputation. Among those who that resist the Black Order are the Inhuman royal family, the X-Men, the Avengers, and Kree warrior Ronan the Accuser.
ORDER ALLIES
The Black Order is pledged to Thanos alone and carries out his orders to the letter. That said, the team makes a temporary alliance with Namor, offering to spare what remained of Atlantis in exchange for a lead on the location of the Reality Stone. Several members of the Black Order then ally with the Sub-Mariner again later and called themselves the Cabal.
LETHAL LOG
As part of the Black Order’s mission on Earth to find Thane and the Reality Stone, Ebony Maw was deployed to New York City, where he forcefully persuaded Doctor Strange to tell him where to go next. Black Dwarf and a small army met fierce resistance in Wakanda and were soundly defeated. Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive then headed to the Jean Grey School for Higher Learning, but after easily annihilating the X-Men that were there, they found no trace of the Stone nor Thane.
Proxima Midnight then made Namor a deal: he could tell her where the Reality Stone was or she would destroy what was left of Atlantis. Namor chose to spare Atlantis.
As the group besieged Earth, Thanos took a personal hand in things, facing off against Black Bolt in one-on-one combat and defeating him.
Learning that the Stone was in Wakanda, the Black Order and a larger army regrouped and attacked the African nation. The team discovered that the Illuminati had stored antimatter bombs in Wakanda’s Necropolis as a failsafe.
Ebony Maw fulfilled another Black Order mission, locating Thane in Greenland. The team departed in order to kill Thanos’ son, but with Black Dwarf having to atone for his loss, he was left behind to guard the Peak—an Atlantis colony—as the Avengers were on their way back to Earth.
The Avengers and Ronan the Accuser confronted Black Dwarf, and the Kree warrior killed him. Next, Maximus the Mad betrayed Supergiant and used Lockjaw to transport her and the antimatter bombs to another planet, where Supergiant met her demise. The Avengers headed to Greenland to confront Thanos directly and Hyperion killed Corvus Glaive.
Ebony Maw then double-crossed Thanos, freeing his son and allowing Thane to trap and preserve Corvus’ weapon, Proxima Midnight, and the Titan himself in cosmic amber, essentially condemning them to a “living death.”
Because Corvus’ weapon remained intact, Glaive later regenerated himself with the help of Maximu and, along with Proxima Midnight and Thanos, joined with Namor in a new group called the Cabal. The Cabal was formed to combat the incursions of alternate Earths that were threatening the Prime Universe.
After Namor atoned for his sins involving the Cabal’s ruthlessness and disbanded the group, and with Thanos missing following the Prime Universe’s reconstruction, Corvus created a new Black Order that expanded throughout the galaxy, using Titan’s moon, the Black Quadrant, as its home base.
Unfortunately for Corvus Glaive, Thanos returned and swiftly defeated his once and future servant, giving him a choice: either kill himself or have his master do it. Corvus chose suicide and Thanos swiftly dissolved this version of the Black Order, creating his own from the ashes.
This new Black Order included Thanos’ former teammate in the Cabal, Black Swan, along with Proxima Midnight. Their goal was to retrieve Ultimate Thor’s hammer, which had found its way into the Prime Universe. They failed, and Thanos’ ally Hela killed Proxima to prove herself to the Titan.
Later, two Elders of the Universe made a wager on a deadly game located on Earth, using two teams of Super Villains and the Avengers as obstacles. The Challenger reformed the original Black Order, resurrecting all the dead members, and pitted them against the Lethal Legion, controlled by the Grandmaster.
Supergiant, now a psychic projection and not a true being, was dissipated by Ferene of the Lethal Legion, and the remaining four members of the Black Order fled Earth after losing the contest to the Avengers. The Grandmaster approached them on planet Angargal with a new, mysterious offer.
These evil, powerful aliens work quite well together, and it is only a matter of time before they’re a team once again, free to menace worlds throughout the universe.
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