BIOGRAPHY - Page 2
Although defeated, the Master had planned an escape and survived the explosion of the submarine thanks to a protective capsule. Nevertheless, he was wounded and, without his helmet, he had no way of controlling the capsule. He sunk to the depths of Lake Ontario, where he would remain for some time. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #78] In the months that the Master was encased within the capsule, much happened. Marrina rejected her Plodex destiny and not only helped kill her Plodex mate but married the Sub-Mariner. When she became pregnant by her new husband, however, her Plodex genetic imperative reasserted itself, transforming her into a deadly Leviathan and had to be killed to prevent greater loss of life. Ultimately, the Master’s concerns about Marrina and the Plodex proved valid when it was revealed that, while a Leviathan, Marinna had laid three eggs. [Avengers (1st series) #291-293]
The absence of the Master had not meant that Canada was a safer place. Alpha Flight encountered dozens of villains and threats to their great nation following the Master's absence. However, it was one such threat currently plaguing them that came to benefit the Master. An ancient, evil being known as Llan the Sorcerer located the Master's missing helmet beneath Lake Ontario, and subsequently located the capsule containing the Master himself. The Master was revived when Llan physically placed the helmet on Eshu's head, which seemed to reactivate his connection to his alien technology. Although Llan only spoke with the Master from a distance, appearing to him as a fiery apparition, the Master learned from Llan about Marrina's death and her children and how they were of the mating of Marrina and Namor. Even more shocking was the revelation that Marrina was not in fact dead and that she would prove useful to the Master at a later stage. Already confused about the influx of information and about Llan himself, the Master wanted to know in particular about Alpha Flight. Llan assured the Master he need not worry about Alpha Flight, as they would be distracted for some time. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #78]
Indeed, Alpha Flight remained distracted as Llan's evil spread across Canada and the Master took advantage of their preoccupation by re-establishing himself. He also began to explore the limits of human pain – something he experienced in large degrees centuries ago. The Master was able to recreate an exact copy of the original Plodex space ark that was destroyed in the Arctic and this time positioned it deep beneath the Black Hills in South Dakota in the United States. As part of his experimentations, the Master somehow located a sample of the remains of Scramble the Mixed-Up Man, another of Alpha Flight's dead enemies. Mastering control over the enzyme Scramble created, the Master used it to manipulate the flesh of innocent people, transforming them into a mutated army of slaves called the Remnant Men. He created hundreds of these thralls, including Puck, whom the Master had acquired through a hospital where the former Alphan had been taken following injuries sustained in battle. Following this, the Master set his Remnant Men against a group of Alphans, consisting of Sasquatch, Shaman, Aurora and Talisman, all of whom were searching for Puck.
The Master observed from a distance as the Alphans were able to enter his space ark and locate Puck, who had been transformed into a deformed version of himself. They learned from Puck that part of the Master's reasons for this experimentation was to create the perfect brood mate for Marrina, as well as the ultimate warrior. As Sasquatch was a renowned biochemist, he was able to place Puck in a statis tank and modify his genes in an attempt to revert Puck back to his diminutive form. It was then that the Master revealed his presence, furious that his experiment was being tampered with. He spoke to the Alphans about faith, only this particular faith he was referring to was a faith in pain. He ordered a large army of Remnant Men to attack the Alphans, knowing that the heroes would be reluctant to harm his army. Utterly overwhelmed, the Alphans struggled, even with the assistance of Puck, who had been restored and was able to join the battle.
Ultimately, the battle ended when Talisman found within her medicine pouch a way to revert all of the Remnant Men back to their true selves, though at great cost to herself. Seeing this, the Master decided to abandon his location within the Black Hills, deciding that the information he had gathered from manipulating Puck and the Remnant Men was sufficient. With that knowledge and that of the Plodex, he believed he would be enough to create a race of beings who would be ultimate warriors, available at his beck and call and suitable for his world conquest. He teleported his space ark away, as Alpha Flight were returned to the surface. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #87-90]
From his new position orbiting the Earth in his space ark, Eshu developed a crisis of faith. Knowing that he had lived for thousands of years and, presuming he would live thousands more, he began to refer to himself as the Forever Man. His crisis also led him to wonder whether his inner quest to conquer the Earth could be satisfied and if the humans of Earth even deserved his attention. From his space ark, he was able to monitor events playing out below him on the Earth, as his alien technology allowed him to access every telecommunications system across the planet. One such event that particularly took his interest was an oil tanker carrying five hundred million gallons of crude oil. It had run aground on the Arctic peninsula called Kiillinnguyaq and was now not only ablaze but leaking oil into the peninsula. The Master's interest was piqued when Alpha Flight arrived on scene to assist with the disaster relief. He decided that, in order to rule over mankind, he had to become the perfect man, even if this meant enduring agonies of the flesh that he endured centuries ago. To ensure he would indeed become the perfect specimen of man, Eshu injected himself with the remaining amount of the Scramble enzyme. He was in agony for days, as his body was reformed at a molecular level.
Eventually, the Master's body was indeed reconstructed, becoming the perfect example of man. His body was muscular and even his deformed head was repaired. Gone were the bumps and groves that connected him to his helmet, and in their place was a full set of thick hair. He boasted that he was faster and stronger than Alpha Flight, and his desire to conquer the Earth and fulfill his destiny was renewed. He also decided that he was now in control of life and death, as he cared about neither. To demonstrate this, he casually snapped the neck of Vesivius, a pet falcon who had been his only companion since establishing his space ark in Earth's orbit. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #96]
With his plans of creating the perfect army of warriors not yet finalized, Eshu sought to form a team of super-powered beings that he could control. Taking its name from his greatest foes, Alpha Flight, he “borrowed” the name Omega Flight and his first recruit was a strange being called Brain-Drain, who would be the team's first member. Eshu claimed that Omega Flight were his favored sons and daughters and that they were the children that would inherit his Earth. Further, they were able to engage his foes in physical combat, something he considered beneath himself. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #108, 110]
When the heroes of Earth, including members of Alpha Flight, gathered for the impending Infinity War, the Master also sensed an approaching cosmic danger. Fearing that the arrival of the Magus would reduce him to become the Master of Nothing, he was forced to rush plans into motion, for fear of his planned Utopia never becoming a reality. To disrupt the Magus' influence, the Master sent his new Omega Flight to battle Talisman, now of Beta Flight, knowing the powerful mystic would be able to release the ancient beings called the Ska'ar, deadly demons whom the Master intended to use against the Magus. Even though his beloved Canada would fall in the process, the Master was, after all, the Master of the World – so what was one country to him in the grand scheme of things?
What the Master didn't consider, however, was that the Ska'ar, who feed on emotions of humans, would also cause problems for his own Omega Flight. When Talisman's teammates proved resourceful against Omega Flight, the Master realized that his rushed plans were becoming out of control. No longer able to monitor the Magus, keep Beta Flight at bay or deal with the Ska'ar, the Master was forced to abandon this pursuit and teleported away with Omega Flight, while Beta Flight quickly sent the Ska'ar back to their pocket reality. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #110-112]
Following the heroes’ defeat of the Magus, the Master became even more determined to see his Utopia and control over the Earth come to pass. This time, he decided on a more subtle way to carry out his machinations. Taking advantage of the wave of anti-superhuman paranoia that was washing across Canada, the Master posed as Joshua Lord, a billionaire industrialist and provided support to a conservative right-wing politician, Senator Robert Hagon, who was in the process of having his Super-Powers Registration Bill passed before parliament. Additionally, Joshua Lord saw to it to provide financial support to Reginald Tork, leader of the para-military organization known as the Hardliners, who were tasked with apprehending unregistered superhumans. In exchange, for Lord's financial support, Hagon would arrange for the registration of superhumans to fall to a private contractor – namely, Lord. However, when the Hardliners failed to apprehend a young mutant called Albert Louis, Lord was scolded by Hagon and, in an unusual situation for the Master, Lord found himself assuring Hagon that his Bill would pass. To Lord's dismay, the Hardliners failed again in their attempt to secure Albert Louis and were defeated in a humiliating manner by Alpha Flight, who tentatively opposed the registration of superhumans in Canada. Nevertheless, with time always on his side, Lord decided the stage was now set for his grand designs after all. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #118-119, 126]
It was around this time that the Master rescued James Hudson. As Vindicator, Hudson had recently sacrificed himself to save not only Earth but the entire race of aliens called the Quwrrln, who were responsible for saving him the previous time he “died.” The Master found Hudson in a trans-dimensional oblivion and used his own advanced technology to rebuild Hudson in mind and body. This process included some brainwashing to bring the heroic Hudson around to his way of thinking, particularly in terms of bringing peace to Canada, even if the Master's way of doing that was not what Hudson had originally envisioned when he created Alpha Flight. With anti super-being hysteria on the rise, to a great degree thanks to Joshua Lord's machinations, the Master finally made his endgame move. He set Omega Flight against Alpha Flight, moments after they had defeated the Hardliners. In the process, he also revealed himself to be Joshua Lord and, more shockingly, re-introducing Alpha Flight to their founder, James Hudson, now called Antiguard.
With Alpha Flight all that stood between him and his perfect world becoming a reality, the Master enjoyed his impending victory. Their spirits broken in having to battle their former leader, Alpha Flight were defeated by the Master’s Omega Flight. Unfortunately for him, the Master did not count on the power of James Hudson’s dream of a future, where people lived not only in peace but also with free will, unlike the future the Master offered. Heather Hudson was able to reach out emotionally to Antiguard, who in turn overrode the Master's mechanical programming. After a brief skirmish with Beta Flight, against whom the Master maintained a grudge for thwarting up his plans with the Magus and the Ska'ar, the Master found himself under attack by both Antiguard and Heather Hudson. Their combined efforts seemingly destroyed the ancient being. While it seemed that the Hudsons killed him, in truth the Master was the maker of his own fate and could never allow anyone else to kill him. Instead, he teleported away, leaving nothing behind but his helmet, his dream seemingly never able to come to reality.
Although the Master's perfect world did not become reality, the Master probably struck his most painful blow to Alpha Flight ever. In the wake of the anti-super-being hysteria and Joshua Lord's infiltration of government affairs, the Canadian government disbanded Alpha Flight and Beta Flight, meaning, for the first time in years, Canada no longer had an official team of super-heroes. [Alpha Flight (1st series) #129-130]