How two MCU Eternals heroes fell in and out of Marvel’s Ultraverse
Today, find out how Black Knight and the Eternal Named Sersi traveled from the Marvel Universe to the Ultraverse … and back!
It’s “Never Gonna Be the Same Again,” a feature where I watch how bold, seemingly “permanent” changes were finally reversed. This is not a criticism, mind you, because obviously things will always return to “normal” eventually. This is how superhero comics work. It’s just fun to see how some of these pretty big changes are reversed. This is different from “Abandoned Love”, which is when a new writer comes along and abandons the plot of the previous writer. Here we are talking about the writer who came up with the idea being the same who solved the change. This is also differentiated from “Death is not the end” which tells how the “dead” characters came back to life, as it is about things other than death.
THE LIMITED SOUL AND IT’S SO … GOOD?
Okay, I’ll try to keep it as brief as possible, especially since I’m planning on doing a “Never Gonna Be the Same Again” on Black Knight and Sersi’s Gann Josin Bond. But put simply, there’s this villain called Proctor who collects alternate Avengers from different realities (I guess I should say he “brings them together”, since his team is called the Gatherers). Proctor HATES Sersi and he also has a twisted vision of Black Knight.
Okay, so Sersi had formed a Uni-Mind with an alien race and after that, his mind seemed a bit hackneyed. Her fellow Eternals determine that she suffers from a deteriorating mental illness known as Mahd Wy’ry. The tradition among the Eternals is to kill any Eternal who suffers from this affliction, but instead they agree to simply form a soul bond between Sersi and Black Knight, hoping that his spirit can calm her down.
What no one knew was that Proctor had been in Gann Josin’s bond with the Sersi of HIS world, so he was the one who made her look mentally unstable, as he framed her for crimes. then laughed at his head. As it turned out, he was also his reality version of the Black Knight.
Well in Avengers # 375 (by Bob Harras, Steve Epting and Tom Palmer), Sersi ultimately killed Proctor, but the work he had done to disturb her mind had been enough and she was quickly falling apart. An Alternate Reality Watcher that Proctor had used to fuel his travels in different realities offered Sersi a way out of that reality so that she could face her issues. Black Knight insisted on going with her, as he felt guilty that some version of himself had caused this (and he WAS related to her, after all). So they left together in another dimension …
AN ENTIRELY NEW WORLD
Well, at that time, Marvel had bought Malibu Comics, which had its own universe of superheroes known as the Ultraverse. Marvel decided that they should bond between the Marvel Universe and the Ultraverse, and one of the ways that was done was to have Black Knight and the other dimension of Sersi that they ended up with. become, well, you know, the Ultraverse.
The Ultraverse equivalent of the Avengers was called the Ultraforce and in Ultraforce # 8 (by Marv Wolfman, Hank Kanalz, George Perez, Keith Aiken and Mark Morales), Black Knight showed up in New York City without Sersi. He meets the Ultraforce and helps them on a mission and in the next issue (by Wolfman, Kanalz, John Royle, Chris Alexander, Jeff Whiting and Stephen Baskerville) he agrees to join the Ultraforce, while continuing to search for Sersi. .
Sersi, however, we saw in the previous issue end up in Africa, acting like evil. And we see why, as in Ultraforce # 9, she is possessed by an Infinity Gem, which also ended up in Ultraforce …
A BRIEF MEETING OF THE AVENGERS
All of this leads to a cross between the Avengers and Ultraforce, where the Infinity Gem who owned Sersi turns out to be a hidden SEVENTH Infinity Gem and combines with the other Infinity Gems to form a new being known as Nemesis. Nemesis then reboots reality, with the Avengers and Ultraforce combined in Ultraforce / Avengers # 1 (by Warren Ellis, George Perez, Paul Neary and Al Vey).
Ultimately, however, Black Knight is willing to sacrifice himself to split Nemesis into various Infinity Gems and that reboots the Ultraverse and returns the Avengers to their reality as if nothing had happened …
Note that Sersi was now back in the Marvel Universe with no memory of the Ultraverse, and the entire ordeal of Infinity Gem left her healed of her insanity. Later writers seemed to pretty much forget this piece.
Black Knight remembered he was from an alternate reality, but he was now firmly a member of the Ultraforce …
LEAVE ULTRAVERSE
Ultraforce has therefore restarted with a brand new # 1, with Black Knight now leading the team. However, the Ultraverse was nearing its end and in the years 1996 Unlimited Ultraverse # 2 (by Len Wein, Kevin West, John Fang, Vinton Hueck, Shannon Gallant, Don Hillsman, Bob Almond, Philip Moy and David Mowry), the various heroes of the Ultraverse stop an alien invasion but discover that one of the creatures can send people through alternate realities and so Black Knight and two other Marvel characters (Reaper and Sienna Blaze, who had also been sent into the Ultraverse. CBR’s Dustin Holland recently wrote about their team here) have returned in the Marvel universe …
MEETING OF THE BLACK KNIGHT AND SERSI
Once he got back into the Marvel Universe, however, Black Knight’s soul bond with Sersi kicked in and she hooked up with him and the two of them sort of traveled through time and space in Dark Knight: Exodus # 1 (by Ben Raab, Jimmy Cheung and Andy Lanning) …
It really seemed like everyone thought Sersi was still in the Ultraverse with Black Knight, honestly. Anyway, I wrote about this little trip down memory lane last week, so suffice to say that they put an end to the problem by deciding to come back to the present.
THE BLACK KNIGHT AND SERSI RETURN TO THE PRESENT
Black Knight then appears in Heroes for hire # 2 (by John Ostrander, Pascual Ferry and Jaime Mendoza), where we see that he ended up in New York, separated from Sersi …
In Heroes for hire # 5 (by Ostrander, Ferry and Mendoza), we see that Sersi, meanwhile, ended up in the underwater kingdom of Lemuria) …
I’ll explore all of this mess in a future article on Black Knight and Sersi’s soul bond.
If anyone else has a suggestion for Never Gonna Be The Same Again, please convo me at [email protected]!
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