BIOGRAPHY
Adam Brashear came of age in 1950’s America. He did a tour of duty in the Korean War back in 1951. Adam served with honors and picked up two Silver Stars in the Marine Corps. Under fire and injured himself, Brashear carried three men to safety out of a hot zone. He attended Cornell University and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 1954 with a degree in Electrical Engineering before earning a PhD in Theoretical Physics. Outside the classroom, he was equally impressive on the football field, where he became an All-American fullback and led Cornell to a well-regarded win over Harvard in the ’53 season.
Racism was Adam’s constant companion in Korea, in higher education and everywhere he went in America. Despite this, he remained a true patriot who valued his country’s ideals, regardless of 
the attitudes of some of its people. Doctor Brashear received military funding to pursue his research in creating an “anti-matter reactor” after his doctorate was complete. Brashear had discovered a region of exo-space he called the Neutral Zone. Decades later, Reed Richards would pioneer exploration of a realm of total anti-matter called the Negative Zone, but the Neutral Zone was a place where matter and anti-matter co-existed in superposition. Adam’s theory was that stable anti-matter could be harnessed as a nigh-infinite power source. His best friend was Conner Sims, one of the men whose lives he saved in Korea. Conner was on-site as liaison to Army Intelligence when the anti-matter reactor became unstable. Adam and Conner were the only survivors after the reactor exploded, as Conner repaid an old debt and pulled Adam to safety. They were both changed by the experience, however, transforming into living anti-matter reactors.
Adam developed his massive physical and energy-based powers and wanted to use them as a super-hero to defend the planet. Still, when he became the Blue Marvel, he deliberately designed a costume that covered every inch of his skin to avoid triggering the prejudices of the time period. The Blue Marvel became an impressive and popular figure in America during the early 1960’s. However, Conner had a more difficult time. His transformation was more unstable, causing him to fade from existence as he shifted into the Neutral Zone. It took Adam ten months after the accident to locate Conner and bring him home. Conner’s mind was also affected by his unstable powers. His cosmic awareness, which was greater than Adam’s, caused Conner to experience 
past, present and future in a unique and disturbing mix. After his brother was killed while undercover with the Ku Klux Klan for the FBI, Conner became more radical. He believed humanity needed radical change forced upon it to overcome racism and social strife, and styled himself as a world-class threat known as the Anti-Man. The Blue Marvel and Anti-Man soon became archfoes, as Adam tried to contain his best friend’s madness. [Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel #1, Ultimates (2nd series) #4]
On June 4th, 1962, the Blue Marvel and Anti-Man had their last, fateful battle in the skies over New York. Their raw strength ended up collapsing a building on both combatants, and Adam 
believed Conner was dead. By the time he crawled free of the wreckage, Adam’s costume was thoroughly damaged. The grateful civilians, looking for a sign of their hero, saw his exposed skin for the first time. The Blue Bomber of Battle was revealed to the world as a black man. Public sentiment turned against him in the weeks that followed. White Americans felt betrayed and hurled rocks at the Marvel. Some cops even opened fire on him. The ricochet killed an old woman, and yet Adam got the blame. Black Americans were equally upset, with many of them expecting Blue Marvel to lead them in overturning Jim Crow and taking revenge on the majority.
Finally, the Kennedy administration reached out to Adam and called him to the White House. John F. Kennedy met with the Blue Marvel and asked him to stand down. He and his advisors believed the Civil Rights movement was too precarious at the moment to survive the existence of an Alpha-
class super-being of his skin color. JFK awarded Adam Brashear with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in honor of his service to the country, but only in the privacy of the Oval Office. Even with all his might, at heart Adam Brashear was a loyal American and soldier receiving an order from his Commander-in-Chief. He reluctantly did as he was told, and the Blue Marvel retired from public life.
The Blue Marvel’s last known mission was to protect the Earth from an alien envoy approaching the planet as frontrunner of an invasion force. Adam defeated the threat, but this encounter was used as the template for a cover story that the Blue Marvel gave his life in defense of our nation and the world. As word spread of his death, the public soon forgot the fervor surrounding his race, and the Blue Marvel disappeared from the public consciousness in the years to come as a mere footnote in history. Adam was privately furious over his treatment and was in the process of venting his rage on the moon when he met Uatu the Watcher. They became friends, as Adam witnessed the arrival of the forerunner’s full alien invasion force. Defeating this armada renewed his commitment to heroism, even if he could no longer act in public.
Some members of the Kennedy administration did not believe Brashear would remain pacified, and they arranged for a spy to keep an eye on him. A government agent named Marlene Frazier was tasked with getting close to Adam and reporting on his mood and intentions. After arranging for an innocent first encounter while using an alias, she and Adam began dating. Marlene 
educated herself on black history and current politics before first contact, and came to truly appreciate Adam’s good heart and the impact of racism on America. She fell in love with Adam and, after eighteen months, her contacts stopped asking for reports. She never told Adam the truth and, after they were married, Marlene Frazier only answered to “Candace Brashear” for the next several decades. [Adam: Legend of the Blue Marvel #1-3]
[Note: There’s a glitch in the Blue Marvel and Anti-Man’s timeline. Adam once said he and Conner were godparents to each other’s children, and their wives Jen and Candace were best friends. However, Adam only met Candace after the Blue Marvel was forced into retirement, after his last battle with Anti-Man.]
Adam Brashear went into retirement from super-heroics, but he was still a scientist who specialized in the fringe and esoteric. He may not have worn a costume, but the Blue Marvel was 
alive and well as a scientific adventurer. Adam had a regular contact in reporter Constance Molina, who often coerced him out of retirement for interesting cases. When a were-bat turned up dead in New York City, Brashear and Molina formed a confederacy to investigate along with the Bear, Kaluu of Kamar-Taj, Blade the vampire hunter and the NYPD’s James Lucas. “The Mighty Avengers” (as Constance called them) uncovered a scheme by the elemental sorcerers called Deathwalkers to gain ultimate power by sacrificing animal hybrids. The Blue Marvel buried the Deathwalkers in the catacombs under New York, and his allies confiscated the Talisman of Kamar-Taj necessary for their rituals. [Mighty Avengers (2nd series) #9,11-12]
Adam also became a family man, and his first son with Candace was born in 1970. Kevin Brashear loved his father and science equally, playing with his first chemistry set at age eight. As 
time went on, Adam had expected his powers would affect his aging process, but he was surprised that Candace seemed to age slower as well, perhaps from long-term exposure to his abilities. Still, Kevin (and their next children Max and Adrienne) didn’t show any signs of superhuman ability from being the heirs of a living anti-matter reactor. By the 1990’s, Dr. Kevin Brashear graduated from college and started working side-by-side with his father on strange cases against even stranger foes. Among Adam’s reoccurring opponents were the nihilist scientist Doctor Evald Skorpion and his followers in W.E.S.P.E., or Technocracy the Millennium Bug, a machine entity and eternal foe of humankind.
However, everything changed the same day Galactus first came to Earth and fought with Uatu and the new marvels of the age, the Fantastic Four. That day, the Drs. Brashear tracked Evald Skorpion to the hyper-technology hideout of the lost Pharaoh Rama-Tut. Doctor Skorpion was ready for the Blue Marvel, having salvaged neutronium from the Neutral Zone, crafting bullets of the only material that could hurt Adam. The nihilistic madman intended to call the Neutral Zone to Earth, using cascading anti-matter to bring about his dreams to annihilation. Kevin lashed out at Skorpion, but the evil doctor stumbled back onto the portal equipment. The expanding portal 
disintegrated Skorpion and swallowed Adam’s son. The crackling neutronium around the unstable portal left Adam unable to reach Kevin, and he was forced to destroy the portal equipment instead in order to save the Earth. The portal’s random calibrations were lost when the machine was destroyed, leaving Adam unable to confirm whether Kevin was alive or dead in the Neutral Zone beyond. [Mighty Avengers (2nd series) #9]