Clan Destine
Encyclopedia
The ClanDestine is a comic book
series about the Destines, a secret family of long-lived superhuman
beings, published in the United States by Marvel Comics
. It was created by artist/writer Alan Davis
, and first appeared in Marvel Comics Presents
#158 (July 1994).
genre in general, and the group book dynamic in particular, and was drawn to the opportunity to create a group of new characters unencumbered by a long and complex continuity, though he set it in the Marvel Universe
in order to use characters like the Silver Surfer
and MODOK
in cameo roles. Since the range of superhuman abilities is limited, and good gimmicks rare and short-lived, Davis observed that the greatest opportunity for originality is in character development and interaction. Davis chose to make the group a family because the familial bond is not one of choice, and can be either rewarding or painful. Davis was also interested in superhumans who used their powers to enhance their lives, but did not necessarily feel either any heroic obligations or megalomaniacal greed. Although he made the Destines an extended family in order to make up new family members as he went along, the core of the group would be Rory, Pandora, Samantha, Walter, Kay and Dominic. Although the family's full membership remains unrevealed for this reason, Walter has stated that there are "many" that eleven-year-old twins Rory and Pandora have not met.
England was ruled by Norman
conquerors. Adam's youth was unremarkable, and he grew content without ambition. When he was sixteen, however, he was accidentally impaled on a scythe
, but he miraculously recovered after a dream about a strange, inhuman woman. He was renamed Adam of Destine by the town, who felt the young man was destined for greatness. In 1189, Adam joined the Third Crusade
. During the battles, Adam was never once injured and he believed that the "angel" he dreamt about protected him. By 1191 he was a seasoned veteran of battles at Acre
, Arsuf
and Jaffa
. He became overconfident and reckless, and was captured by a warlord called Al Kadhdhaab. Kadhdhaab claimed that he needed Adam's help to defeat the wizard Sujanaa Min Raghbah. Centuries prior, Sujanaa captured a large gem with mystical powers that fulfilled his wishes. In a vision Sujanaa had seen that Adam was destined to kill him, and Kadhdhaab also knows this through a written prophecy. Adam traveled to Sujanaa's palace, but was captured by him. The wizard ranted that his gem loved Adam, and would not allow Sujanaa to hurt him. Adam managed to distract the wizard by telling him that Sujanaa had wasted his life, using all his power merely to protect his power. The wizard realized that he had become trapped by his own desire for power and during a moment of doubt, Adam was freed and killed the wizard. Adam then felt that there was something alive within the gem and tried to destroy its prison, but Kadhdhaab appeared and shot him in the back with a crossbow
. Kadhdhaab tried to take the power of the gem for himself, but Adam managed to destroy the gem with his last strength. Elalyth, the female being within, called a Djinn, appeared and destroyed Kadhdhaab. She then restored Adam, making him immortal and invulnerable, and the two became lovers.
Over the next few centuries Adam and Elalyth had many children, all of whom inherited superhuman abilities and were extremely long-lived. As civilization advanced, and the advent of modern technology made it more difficult for members of the family to disappear or pass themselves off as their own descendants, one of Adam's children, Newton, set up the Relative Stranger Protocol. The protocol would create new identities for the long-lived family members whenever they required it and would protect the family should one of them be uncovered. In the late 20th century, after Adam's son Vincent destroyed the family manor, Adam killed him, because Adam felt he had become "evil". The family fell apart after that. Dominic, who saw Adam's actions as unforgivable, became a hermit, living in solitude on a small island. Elalyth returned to her mystical home of Yden, and Adam, who saw his slaying of Vincent as a betrayal of her love, left Earth, traveling through outer space in a vehicle created by Newton. The newly born twins, Rory and Pandora, were left with Walter Destine, who posed as their uncle and guardian, and Florence, who posed as their grandmother.
, decided to become superheroes. As the Crimson Crusader and Imp, they set out to battle crime. One evening they found two groups, creature Lenz and his "children", and Dr. Hywel Griffin and his Omegans, fighting each other over a device called the Gryphon. Not knowing which side to help, the children grabbed the device, known as the Gryphon, and left the scene, intending to return the device once they found out who the rightful owner was.
The Gryphon turned out to be a device called the Genetic Realignment Yield Polarity Harmonizing Orientation Net, a device that could genetically remodel a fully developed organism, irrespective of age or genetic composition.
Lenz, a former human scientist mutated into a monstrous new form by Advanced Idea Mechanics
(A.I.M.), hoped to use the Gryphon to stabilize his "children", who usually died within several days. Griffin was an albino who hoped to cure himself with the Gryphon. Both parties tried to track down the Destine twins. During the twins' attempt to flee, Pandora had lost her cape, which had the name of their sister, Kay Cera, in it, who had designed it. Lenz sent his children out to kill Kay and they found the history of the ClanDestine in Kay's notebook. Kay herself survived by transferring her mind to a cat. Lenz creatures attacked the various members of the ClanDestine, killing Florence and Maurice. Most of the other family members united and tracked down Griffin, whom they thought responsible for the deaths of Flo and Maurice. Lenz appeared and kidnapped Rory, but they were all saved by Adam, who had felt the death of his children and returned to Earth. Adam defeated Lenz, but let him go when he realized that Lenz was not evil, just trying to let his species survive.
When the Destines returned home, Adam agreed to respect Walter's status as the twins' guardian, as Adam felt he relinquished that right when left Earth in grief eleven years previously. Walter wanted the children to return to school and live normal lives, even threatening to split them up after got into trouble at school. The children fled to New York to become full-time superheroes, but Spider-Man
convinced them to return home. Dominic and Adam convinced Walter to allow the twins to go out at night on "crime patrol" confronting only petty crime, with the adults taking turns chaperoning them.
and artists Pino Rinaldi and Bryan Hitch
. In these four issues, Adam tries to return the Gryphon to Griffen, and Lenz, now allied with MODAM
, tries to steal it again. MODAM is more interested in the Destine family, however, and kidnaps Cuckoo, leaving a girl named Myror in her place. Myror has the ability to reflect to people what they wanted to see. Wanting Cuckoo to return home with them, the Clan saw Myror as Cuckoo. Myror eventually tells the Destines that she wanted to help them defeat MODAM, who had used her as a slave for years. Back in the A.I.M. base, MODAM tries to switch minds with Cuckoo to get a beautiful, human body for herself.
Meanwhile, Rory was manipulated by the spirit of Vincent into resurrecting him. Vincent joined Rory and Pandora into saving the Clan from MODAM and A.I.M. Vincent used his powers to torment all non-Clan members with personal demons, including William and Myrror. Vincent then tells the others that with Adam's absence, he now has to take over the leadership of the family.
X-Men and the ClanDestine, the events of the last four issues were retcon
ned by Davis in a discussion between the twins in which Rory tells Pandora, "I had a weird nightmare...The family were all acting out of character. William came back from Australia and told us Kay wasn't our sister... Then Vincent came back to life." The series featured the first appearance of family member Gracie, who had been mentioned before. Years previously, Gracie and Cuckoo had banished a demon called Synraith from Earth many years ago with the help of a younger and less experienced Charles Xavier
. In the miniseries, the Synraith returns and tries eliminate the three who stopped him. The X-Men
and the Destines team up to stop the demon and save their family members.
A five-issue ClanDestine miniseries debuted on February 5, 2008, written and illustrated by Alan Davis. In this series, Dr. Griffin and the Omegans again attack the Destines. In the course of the story, what happened to Thaddeus in 1374 is revealed. Newton builds a device to help Dominic ameliorate the effects of his powerful senses. Dominic also travels through time and space, and encounters the superhero group Excalibur, in the middle of the "Cross-Time Caper" storyline that ran in their series in 1989-1990. The story also guest stars the Inhumans
. Walter struggles with his fears of becoming like Vincent. By the end of the story, Adam reduces Griffin to an infant, and tells the Omegans never to threaten his family again, before journeying to Yden to be with Elalyth, the mother of his children, with whom he is reunited. Dominic decides to relocate to the idyllic Etherea. In the closing panels of the story, a pool of energy emerges from the grounds of the Ravenscroft, and flies into Vincent's grave, causing the gravestone to crack.
, he rescued a Djinn named Elalyth that he first saw in a vision when he was sixteen. She made him immortal and invulnerable, and bore him numerous children. In 1374, Adam and his son Thaddeus were escorting his other son Albert to the Shalu Monastery
in Shigatse
, Tibet
, when they were attacked by the Geong Si, an army of zombies controlled by the Inhuman
Tral. During the battle, Thaddeus was knocked off a cliff, and the otherwise pacifistic Albert, in his grief, lashed out at their attackers, discovering that his healing ability could be manifested as a weapon, and killed them all, much to his subsequent regret. Other Inhumans then appeared, explaining that Tral was a criminal who escaped their hidden city. Adam traveled to Russia
in 1612 to help establish the Romanov Dynasty. While horseback riding through the Sayan Mountains
in 1615 en route to Japan
to aid Albert and Grace, he encountered a trio of armored insectoid extraterrestrials attempting to construct a teleportation
al portal through which to bring an army to claim the Earth. The aliens attacked Adam, but none of their weapons could harm him, and believing that his invulnerability represented the entire human race, they departed, fearing they could not conquer Earth.
Adam is immune to any injury, and cannot be harmed by any weapon or attack, including psychic attack. Attempts by his daughter Kay to read his mind, in fact, result in pain for her, because of the "clairvoyant insight" given by his age. He almost never feels pain. The only exception is when he senses when one of his children has died, or when his precognitive abilities lead him to believe that one of his children's death is imminent. He does not require nourishment, can survive in the vacuum of outer space
, and does not need to sleep. While he is visible in the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum
perceivable to humans, he is invisible to scans using higher wavelengths. Because Adam's abilities are magical in origin, he appears to the Silver Surfer
's cosmic senses to be human, without any biological or mechanical enhancements that the Surfer can perceive. At some point in his travels, he met Logan, who would later become the X-Man Wolverine
. Having watched his children grow old and die, he came to see his long existence as a curse, and finds that because of his invulnerability, his senses are numbed, and he feels neither pleasure nor pain. Adam even asked the Silver Surfer if he knew how he could die. Dominic has observed that Adam no longer exhibits the basic responses of survival instinct, such as scanning his surroundings or flinching in anticipation of danger, never twitching nor fidgeting because he never tires. Adam concedes that this gives only a vague awareness of what he touches. Dominic feels that what is worse is Adam's emotional detachment, his lack of expression, and aloofness, as if he is bored with human existence, and feels Adam is not applying the great intellect he accumulated over eight centuries to himself. Adam felt that Elalyth never forgave him for killing Vincent, but Albert did not believe this, pointing out that he still had her protection of immortality, though Adam feared that this was so that he could live a life tortured by guilt. He was reunited with Elalyth in ClanDestine (Vol. 2) #5.
, that met Adam in the 12th century, after she first appeared to him in a dream. She gave him the gift of immortality. After Adam killed Vincent, she left him, and returned to the mystical realm of Yden. Aside from flashbacks, Elalyth did not appear, nor was her name revealed, until ClanDestine (Vol. 2) #5, in which she was reunited with Adam, who went to live with her in Yden. A sketch of Adam and the core Destine characters on the first page of the sketchbook section in the 1994 ClanDestine Preview issue bears the caption, "She left and he got custody of the kids".
's conquistadores while inhabiting the body of a Spanish nobleman, with her sister Grace posing as her valet. At this point Cuckoo had begun to study magic, and learned to channel eldritch forces to enhance her powers. When the conquistadores attacked the Aztecs, Grace, whose emerging psychic gifts were too immature to use as weapons, fled with Cuckoo and some of the Aztecs that they had befriended, but the two were separated. In 1526 she was in Peru, and at some point during or prior to this, learned a Mayan
dialect. In the 1860s, she inhabited the body of Natsume Masako, the wife of Prince Sakai Masaaki. During this time, she was attacked by the vampire Marietta Borgezia, and reacted by killing Borgezia's spirit with her own consciousness, which resulted in the vampire becoming Jasmine's new host. As all the vampyr created by Borgezia were freed of their blood thirst with her death, they gratefully came to regard Jasmine as family, even as she would later move onto other host bodies. Her next known incarnation was among her most recent, when she inhabited the body of a Native American
woman, and helped Grace and a young Professor Xavier battle a demon called the Synraith. In recent years she has lived as fashion designer Kay Cera, creator of the Kay Cera label. She owns homes in Geneva
, New York City
, Los Angeles
, Tokyo
, and Rio de Janeiro
. When Adam killed Vincent, she was in her forty-third host body. She has switched bodies three times during Dominic's lifetime, and Samantha was a child when she acquired the last one prior to her current body, which formerly belonged to Barcelona
prostitute Pepa Perez. When healing this current body, Albert, appalled at the questionable ethics of Cuckoo's use of others' bodies, informed her that this would be the last time he would do this.
Cuckoo can read the minds of others, project telepathic illusions, project her astral body, bring the astral bodies of other people to her location, and when mortally wounded, transfer her mind to the bodies of other humans and even animals in order to prolong her life. She can also put someone into a coma in order to protect them from psychic attack, or use that person as a conduit through which she can psychically attack someone else. She is unable to read the minds of Lenz's creatures (though she was able to sense enough of their minds to be frightened of them), nor is she any match for Lenz himself. She is also unable to read her father's mind, as it causes her great pain, and is not as powerful a telepath as Charles Xavier, who easily repelled her unwanted telepathic advances. Jasmine can also project telekinetic blasts. She noticed that she lost a degree of control since transferring to her current host. Her psychic powers always experience "glitches" when she settles into a new host body, especially when the death of the previous one is particularly violent.
She is a hedonist
, and will use her powers for her own benefit, casually reading or manipulating the minds of others without their permission, out of curiosity, personal gain or anger, much to the disapproval of others. Walter does not approve of how she endulges the twin's superhero fantasies, or how she visits only when her lifestyle permits it, buying the twins' affections with gifts. Unlike Dominic, Kay supports Adam's killing of Vincent, saying that he was a "bad seed".
Alan Davis designed her out of his love of drawing "impossibly beautiful" women. He originally called her Mosaic (describing her fractured psyche), but DC
had just published a book with "Mosaic" in the title, so her codename was to be Kimera, but Namorita
's name was changed to Kymera just before the series was published, forcing Davis to again change her name. He describes her as "Confident. Non-conformist. Practical but stylish." Cuckoo's current body is sometimes depicted as a Caucasian
, and other times with brown skin of varying darkness.
, who has the ability to heal others. Albert suffered terribly when he attempted to use his powers to stem the Black Death
that had swept through Europe
, though the details of this part of his life have not been specified. In the winter of 1374, he was being escorted to the Shalu Monastery
in Shigatse
, Tibet
by Adam and his brother Thaddeus, and when Thaddeus was knocked over a cliff by an army of zombies led by the Inhuman
Tral, the normally pacifistic Albert lashed out, discovering his healing ability could be used as a weapon, and killed Tral, much to his subsequent regret. In 1615 Albert and Grace were in Japan
protecting the Shogun
Tokugawa
during a coup. On many occasions he has healed a mortally wounded human body that Cuckoo acquired as a host. After healing the fatal stab wounds incurred by her current host, he informed her that this would be the very last time he would do so, vowing that when she lost this host, she would die. Like Kay, Gracie and Nathaniel, he is a practitioner of the mystic arts, but has never been adept as they in using them. Among his mystical abilities is the ability to teleport
people across large distances. The range of this power is unknown, but he once transported his father from the United Kingdom
to Nepal
, and then from Nepal to Iran
.
's conquistadores, sixteen-year-old Grace, who easily passed for a boy, posed as his valet. When the conquistadores attacked the Aztecs, Grace, whose emerging psychic gifts were too immature to use as weapons, left with Cuckoo and some of the Aztecs that they had befriended, but the two were separated. Grace followed Cuckoo's example, and learned to channel eldritch forces to enhance her powers. In doing this, she accidentally unleashed a demon called the Synraith. She managed to seal the dimensional rift from which it came, but as it now knew where our dimension was, it would eventually return. In 1615 Grace and Albert were in Japan
protecting the Shogun
Tokugawa
during a coup. She later fought the Synraith a second time centuries later with Cuckoo (now in the body of a Native American
woman) and a younger Charles Xavier. They finally managed to destroy the creature during their third encounter with it, with the help of Adam and the X-Men.
. He prefers his original, more meek body for intellectual pursuits. In addition to teleportational devices, he has also built sophisticated powered armor suits and weapons. Newton wears a device called a "psi-shield" to prevent Kay from probing his mind. Time moves faster on Etherea than on Earth. Three Etherean days are equivalent to nine Earth hours, which often allows Newton to respond to the signal watch and build devices apparently quickly.
Walter is at least 200 years old, and has experienced conflict in numerous wars. He was in Shanghai
during the Opium War, in Balaclava
during the Crimean War
, in Delhi
during the Sepoy Mutiny
, in Passiondale during World War I
, and in El Alamein
during World War II
, during which he served with military intelligence. In 1944 his station was attacked by the Nazis with a large robotic war machine. The war machine was confronted by the Invaders
(Captain America
, the Submariner and the Human Torch), but rendered them unconscious. Walter then transformed and destroyed the robot before fleeing from Allied soldiers, who happened on the scene and thought him in league with the Nazis. As part of the Relative Stranger Protocol, he is known today to outsiders as the son of the Walter Destine who served in WWII. He is the guardian of Rory and Pandora, who were led to believe for years that he was their uncle. They gave him the codename "Wallop", though he refuses to accept this name. He is generally strict, and resents the appearance of the other siblings in the children's lives when it suits them, especially Kay, who he feels tries to buy the twins' affections with gifts when her hedonistic lifestyle allows. Alan Davis tried to design a costume for Wallop, but felt they all looked silly in some of his more extreme incarnations.
's Greenwich Village
, an encounter with a Chinese puzzle box
caused him to fall into an occult dimensional realm, from which he was rescued by Doctor Strange
. After Adam killed Vincent, and because Walter allowed him to, Dominic, who harbored resentment towards them for many years, retreated to a remote island for eleven years, in part because his enhanced senses are overwhelmed in more urban areas. Although Dominic moved to the Destine family estate following Adam's return to Earth, he refused a reconciliation with Adam, saying that he will never forgive him for killing Vincent. He went to live on Etherea with Newton at the end of ClanDestine (Vol. 2) #5.
Walter describes Dominic as quite brilliant, with a capacity for flawless deductive reasoning. This, and his enhanced senses, make him the ultimate sleuth. He is an expert hand-to-hand fighter with a slim, athletic build, and his knowledge of pressure points and nerve clusters makes him one of the few people who can hurt or subdue Walter in his transformed state. His sense of hearing allows him to hear through concrete and steel walls. His sense of smell is so acute that he can detect the scent of someone who has handled an object that he examines. He can also identify the specific food ingredients that someone has handled, even after they have washed their hands, and can smell the traces of other people that person has been near. When scouting the Griffin Technologies Complex from a nearby hill, he was able to ascertain that the complex included a large underground structure three levels deeps, which housed a lot of machinery, but no life forms, though it is unclear which senses he utilized to discern this. His sense of taste is so acute that a small bite of chocolate intoxicated him into unconsciousness, in part because of eleven years of eating only seafood. His eyesight allows him to see wavelengths of the EM spectrum outside the normal human range. He can also perceive the aura surrounding Samantha that she can tap into to utilize her armor. His senses can be occluded if they are overloaded by infra-red, microwave
and sonic
emissions from hi-tech security systems, and being scanned by high-frequency wavelengths can cause him great pain. When living at the Destine estate, he usually spent his time in an anechoic chamber
that his brother Newton built below the manor, which remained after the manor was destroyed. Newton also built an isolation shell generator for Dominic to wear on his wrist, which creates anti-stimulation aura, as a sort of portable anechoic chamber. Alan Davis describes him as "Aggressive. Volatile. A hunter." His original design was that of an animalistic wild man with a costume with animal skin patterns. In his sketchbook, he called the character "Vex", rather than "Hex".
, France
. Alan Davis, who describes her as "aloof, brooding [and] exotic", explained that he originally designed Argent in 1991 for a series that he and Paul Neary
tried to develop. Davis made her armor constantly changing, in order to alleviate the tedium of drawing its detail with accurate continuity.
Rory has the ability to manipulate gravity. This allows him to fly, to make objects extremely heavy, or light enough to float or throw them, to create forcefields that can protect him from bullets, and to crush small objects. He can crush a live grenade whose pin has been pulled, and keep it from harming others when it explodes. Since he is a child, the full potential of his powers is unknown. He can, for example, lift up Dominic and a transformed Walter, but when Walter lost control of his transformations and turned into a much larger incarnation of himself during the X-Men encounter, Rory could only lift him up slightly by his feet. Rory fights crime under the superhero codename the "Crimson Crusader", and loves following all the superhero clichés.
Pandora has the ability to manipulate light. She can project beams of light powerful enough to pulverize boulders or focus them to create laser
beams that can instantly cut through objects. She can bend light around her and other objects in order to make them invisible. Although she joins Rory on his superhero jaunts, she is not as obsessed with being a superhero as Rory is.
by the Inhuman
, Tral, while he and Adam escorted Albert to a monastery. While Albert believed him to have died at the time, whether he actually died remains unconfirmed. In his only appearance to date, Thaddeus' face and body were covered with striped fur, like that of a tiger, but it is unknown whether this was a permanent state or an adaptation that manifested itself when he used his abilities.
in the Swiss Alps
near St. Moritz
. Albert saw Maurice as an alive, passionate fighter, and a good man, but lamented that his temper would be the death of him.
volumes:
Comic book
A comic book or comicbook is a magazine made up of comics, narrative artwork in the form of separate panels that represent individual scenes, often accompanied by dialog as well as including...
series about the Destines, a secret family of long-lived superhuman
Superhuman
Superhuman can mean an improved human, for example, by genetic modification, cybernetic implants, or as what humans might evolve into, in the near or distant future...
beings, published in the United States by Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics
Marvel Worldwide, Inc., commonly referred to as Marvel Comics and formerly Marvel Publishing, Inc. and Marvel Comics Group, is an American company that publishes comic books and related media...
. It was created by artist/writer Alan Davis
Alan Davis
Alan Davis is an English writer and artist of comic books, known for his work on titles such as Captain Britain, The Uncanny X-Men, ClanDestine, Excalibur, JLA: The Nail and JLA: Another Nail.-UK work:...
, and first appeared in Marvel Comics Presents
Marvel Comics Presents
Marvel Comics Presents was an American comic book anthology series published by Marvel Comics originally from 1988 to 1995; it returned for a second volume in 2007-2008.-Volume 1:The first volume was released on a biweekly basis and lasted for 175 issues...
#158 (July 1994).
Production
Creator Alan Davis explained that he likes the superheroSuperhero
A superhero is a type of stock character, possessing "extraordinary or superhuman powers", dedicated to protecting the public. Since the debut of the prototypical superhero Superman in 1938, stories of superheroes — ranging from brief episodic adventures to continuing years-long sagas —...
genre in general, and the group book dynamic in particular, and was drawn to the opportunity to create a group of new characters unencumbered by a long and complex continuity, though he set it in the Marvel Universe
Marvel Universe
The Marvel Universe is the shared fictional universe where most comic book titles and other media published by Marvel Entertainment take place, including those featuring Marvel's most familiar characters, such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, the X-Men, and the Avengers.The Marvel Universe is further...
in order to use characters like the Silver Surfer
Silver Surfer
The Silver Surfer is a Marvel Comics superhero created by Jack Kirby. The character first appears in Fantastic Four #48 , the first of a three-issue arc that fans call "The Galactus Trilogy"....
and MODOK
MODOK
MODOK is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Tales of Suspense #93 MODOK (acronym for Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character...
in cameo roles. Since the range of superhuman abilities is limited, and good gimmicks rare and short-lived, Davis observed that the greatest opportunity for originality is in character development and interaction. Davis chose to make the group a family because the familial bond is not one of choice, and can be either rewarding or painful. Davis was also interested in superhumans who used their powers to enhance their lives, but did not necessarily feel either any heroic obligations or megalomaniacal greed. Although he made the Destines an extended family in order to make up new family members as he went along, the core of the group would be Rory, Pandora, Samantha, Walter, Kay and Dominic. Although the family's full membership remains unrevealed for this reason, Walter has stated that there are "many" that eleven-year-old twins Rory and Pandora have not met.
History
Adam of Ravenscroft was born in the village of Ravenscroft in the heart of England in the summer of 1168 A.D., when SaxonAnglo-Saxons
Anglo-Saxon is a term used by historians to designate the Germanic tribes who invaded and settled the south and east of Great Britain beginning in the early 5th century AD, and the period from their creation of the English nation to the Norman conquest. The Anglo-Saxon Era denotes the period of...
England was ruled by Norman
Normans
The Normans were the people who gave their name to Normandy, a region in northern France. They were descended from Norse Viking conquerors of the territory and the native population of Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock...
conquerors. Adam's youth was unremarkable, and he grew content without ambition. When he was sixteen, however, he was accidentally impaled on a scythe
Scythe
A scythe is an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass, or reaping crops. It was largely replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor machinery, but is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia. The Grim Reaper is often depicted carrying or wielding a scythe...
, but he miraculously recovered after a dream about a strange, inhuman woman. He was renamed Adam of Destine by the town, who felt the young man was destined for greatness. In 1189, Adam joined the Third Crusade
Third Crusade
The Third Crusade , also known as the Kings' Crusade, was an attempt by European leaders to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin...
. During the battles, Adam was never once injured and he believed that the "angel" he dreamt about protected him. By 1191 he was a seasoned veteran of battles at Acre
Acre, Israel
Acre , is a city in the Western Galilee region of northern Israel at the northern extremity of Haifa Bay. Acre is one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites in the country....
, Arsuf
Arsuf
Arsuf also known as Arsur or Apollonia, was an ancient city and fortress located in Israel, about 15 kilometres north of modern Tel Aviv, on a cliff above the Mediterranean Sea. The city site, Tel Arsuf, was intensively excavated from 1994...
and Jaffa
Jaffa
Jaffa is an ancient port city believed to be one of the oldest in the world. Jaffa was incorporated with Tel Aviv creating the city of Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel. Jaffa is famous for its association with the biblical story of the prophet Jonah.-Etymology:...
. He became overconfident and reckless, and was captured by a warlord called Al Kadhdhaab. Kadhdhaab claimed that he needed Adam's help to defeat the wizard Sujanaa Min Raghbah. Centuries prior, Sujanaa captured a large gem with mystical powers that fulfilled his wishes. In a vision Sujanaa had seen that Adam was destined to kill him, and Kadhdhaab also knows this through a written prophecy. Adam traveled to Sujanaa's palace, but was captured by him. The wizard ranted that his gem loved Adam, and would not allow Sujanaa to hurt him. Adam managed to distract the wizard by telling him that Sujanaa had wasted his life, using all his power merely to protect his power. The wizard realized that he had become trapped by his own desire for power and during a moment of doubt, Adam was freed and killed the wizard. Adam then felt that there was something alive within the gem and tried to destroy its prison, but Kadhdhaab appeared and shot him in the back with a crossbow
Crossbow
A crossbow is a weapon consisting of a bow mounted on a stock that shoots projectiles, often called bolts or quarrels. The medieval crossbow was called by many names, most of which derived from the word ballista, a torsion engine resembling a crossbow in appearance.Historically, crossbows played a...
. Kadhdhaab tried to take the power of the gem for himself, but Adam managed to destroy the gem with his last strength. Elalyth, the female being within, called a Djinn, appeared and destroyed Kadhdhaab. She then restored Adam, making him immortal and invulnerable, and the two became lovers.
Relative strangers
Imp and the Crimson Crusader
Rory and Pandora's powers activated far earlier than those of their siblings, because they were twins. The children, believing they were mutantsMutant (Marvel Comics)
In comic books published by Marvel Comics, a mutant is an organism who possesses a genetic trait called an X-gene that allows the mutant to naturally develop superhuman powers and abilities...
, decided to become superheroes. As the Crimson Crusader and Imp, they set out to battle crime. One evening they found two groups, creature Lenz and his "children", and Dr. Hywel Griffin and his Omegans, fighting each other over a device called the Gryphon. Not knowing which side to help, the children grabbed the device, known as the Gryphon, and left the scene, intending to return the device once they found out who the rightful owner was.
The Gryphon turned out to be a device called the Genetic Realignment Yield Polarity Harmonizing Orientation Net, a device that could genetically remodel a fully developed organism, irrespective of age or genetic composition.
Lenz, a former human scientist mutated into a monstrous new form by Advanced Idea Mechanics
Advanced Idea Mechanics
A.I.M. is a fictional terrorist organization in the . The organization first appeared in Strange Tales #146 and was created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.-Publication history:...
(A.I.M.), hoped to use the Gryphon to stabilize his "children", who usually died within several days. Griffin was an albino who hoped to cure himself with the Gryphon. Both parties tried to track down the Destine twins. During the twins' attempt to flee, Pandora had lost her cape, which had the name of their sister, Kay Cera, in it, who had designed it. Lenz sent his children out to kill Kay and they found the history of the ClanDestine in Kay's notebook. Kay herself survived by transferring her mind to a cat. Lenz creatures attacked the various members of the ClanDestine, killing Florence and Maurice. Most of the other family members united and tracked down Griffin, whom they thought responsible for the deaths of Flo and Maurice. Lenz appeared and kidnapped Rory, but they were all saved by Adam, who had felt the death of his children and returned to Earth. Adam defeated Lenz, but let him go when he realized that Lenz was not evil, just trying to let his species survive.
When the Destines returned home, Adam agreed to respect Walter's status as the twins' guardian, as Adam felt he relinquished that right when left Earth in grief eleven years previously. Walter wanted the children to return to school and live normal lives, even threatening to split them up after got into trouble at school. The children fled to New York to become full-time superheroes, but Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Spider-Man is a fictional Marvel Comics superhero. The character was created by writer-editor Stan Lee and writer-artist Steve Ditko. He first appeared in Amazing Fantasy #15...
convinced them to return home. Dominic and Adam convinced Walter to allow the twins to go out at night on "crime patrol" confronting only petty crime, with the adults taking turns chaperoning them.
Dream sequence
Series creator Alan Davis left the series after issue #8. The series continued for four more issues under the creative team of writer Glenn DakinGlenn Dakin
Glenn Dakin is a British cartoonist and author of children's books. He was a contributor to a number of British comics magazines including Escape and Deadline and was part of the British small press comics scene in the 1980s...
and artists Pino Rinaldi and Bryan Hitch
Bryan Hitch
Bryan Hitch is a British comic book artist. Hitch began his career in the United Kingdom for Marvel UK, working on titles such as Action Force and Death's Head, before gaining prominence on American titles such as Wildstorm's Stormwatch and The Authority, DC Comics titles such as JLA, and Marvel...
. In these four issues, Adam tries to return the Gryphon to Griffen, and Lenz, now allied with MODAM
MODAM
MODAM is a fictional character in the Marvel Universe.-Fictional character biography:AIM mutated one of their female agents into a large headed creature. This agent claimed to be Henry Pym's deceased first wife, Maria Troyvana. Pym took her in, believing she was his late wife, but she was secretly...
, tries to steal it again. MODAM is more interested in the Destine family, however, and kidnaps Cuckoo, leaving a girl named Myror in her place. Myror has the ability to reflect to people what they wanted to see. Wanting Cuckoo to return home with them, the Clan saw Myror as Cuckoo. Myror eventually tells the Destines that she wanted to help them defeat MODAM, who had used her as a slave for years. Back in the A.I.M. base, MODAM tries to switch minds with Cuckoo to get a beautiful, human body for herself.
Meanwhile, Rory was manipulated by the spirit of Vincent into resurrecting him. Vincent joined Rory and Pandora into saving the Clan from MODAM and A.I.M. Vincent used his powers to torment all non-Clan members with personal demons, including William and Myrror. Vincent then tells the others that with Adam's absence, he now has to take over the leadership of the family.
X-Men and The ClanDestine
In the 1996 two-issue miniseriesMiniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
X-Men and the ClanDestine, the events of the last four issues were retcon
Retcon
Retroactive continuity is the alteration of previously established facts in a fictional work. Retcons are done for many reasons, including the accommodation of sequels or further derivative works in a series, wherein newer authors or creators want to revise the in-story history to allow a course...
ned by Davis in a discussion between the twins in which Rory tells Pandora, "I had a weird nightmare...The family were all acting out of character. William came back from Australia and told us Kay wasn't our sister... Then Vincent came back to life." The series featured the first appearance of family member Gracie, who had been mentioned before. Years previously, Gracie and Cuckoo had banished a demon called Synraith from Earth many years ago with the help of a younger and less experienced Charles Xavier
Professor X
Professor Charles Francis Xavier, also known as Professor X, is a fictional character, a Marvel Comics superhero known as the leader and founder of the X-Men....
. In the miniseries, the Synraith returns and tries eliminate the three who stopped him. The X-Men
X-Men
The X-Men are a superhero team in the . They were created by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby, and first appeared in The X-Men #1...
and the Destines team up to stop the demon and save their family members.
ClanDestine Volume 2
Inhumans
The Inhumans are a fictional race of superhumans, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This race appears in various comic book series published by Marvel Comics and exists in that company's shared universe, known as the Marvel Universe....
. Walter struggles with his fears of becoming like Vincent. By the end of the story, Adam reduces Griffin to an infant, and tells the Omegans never to threaten his family again, before journeying to Yden to be with Elalyth, the mother of his children, with whom he is reunited. Dominic decides to relocate to the idyllic Etherea. In the closing panels of the story, a pool of energy emerges from the grounds of the Ravenscroft, and flies into Vincent's grave, causing the gravestone to crack.
Cast
There is a core group of family members, but Alan Davis has stated there are an unknown number of other family members who usually keep to themselves. All of the Destines, especially Adam, have a mental link to their family, allowing them to sometimes feel when other family members are in danger.Adam Destine
Adam was born Adam of Ravenscroft in 1168. While fighting in the Third CrusadeThird Crusade
The Third Crusade , also known as the Kings' Crusade, was an attempt by European leaders to reconquer the Holy Land from Saladin...
, he rescued a Djinn named Elalyth that he first saw in a vision when he was sixteen. She made him immortal and invulnerable, and bore him numerous children. In 1374, Adam and his son Thaddeus were escorting his other son Albert to the Shalu Monastery
Shalu Monastery
Shalu Monastery or Ṣalu Monastery is small monastery 22 km south of Shigatse in Tibet. Founded in 1040 by Chetsun Sherab Jungnay, for centuries it was renowned as a centre of scholarly learning and psychic training and its mural paintings were considered to be the most ancient and beautiful...
in Shigatse
Shigatse
Shigatse is a county-level city and the second largest city in Tibet Autonomous Region , People's Republic of China, with a population of 92000, about southwest of Lhasa and northwest of Gyantse...
, Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
, when they were attacked by the Geong Si, an army of zombies controlled by the Inhuman
Inhumans
The Inhumans are a fictional race of superhumans, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This race appears in various comic book series published by Marvel Comics and exists in that company's shared universe, known as the Marvel Universe....
Tral. During the battle, Thaddeus was knocked off a cliff, and the otherwise pacifistic Albert, in his grief, lashed out at their attackers, discovering that his healing ability could be manifested as a weapon, and killed them all, much to his subsequent regret. Other Inhumans then appeared, explaining that Tral was a criminal who escaped their hidden city. Adam traveled to Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
in 1612 to help establish the Romanov Dynasty. While horseback riding through the Sayan Mountains
Sayan Mountains
The Sayan Mountains are a mountain range between northwestern Mongolia and southern Siberia, Russia.The Eastern Sayan extends from the Yenisei River at 92° E to the southwest end of Lake Baikal at 106° E...
in 1615 en route to Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
to aid Albert and Grace, he encountered a trio of armored insectoid extraterrestrials attempting to construct a teleportation
Teleportation
Teleportation is the fictional or imagined process by which matter is instantaneously transferred from one place to another.Teleportation may also refer to:*Quantum teleportation, a method of transmitting quantum data...
al portal through which to bring an army to claim the Earth. The aliens attacked Adam, but none of their weapons could harm him, and believing that his invulnerability represented the entire human race, they departed, fearing they could not conquer Earth.
Adam is immune to any injury, and cannot be harmed by any weapon or attack, including psychic attack. Attempts by his daughter Kay to read his mind, in fact, result in pain for her, because of the "clairvoyant insight" given by his age. He almost never feels pain. The only exception is when he senses when one of his children has died, or when his precognitive abilities lead him to believe that one of his children's death is imminent. He does not require nourishment, can survive in the vacuum of outer space
Outer space
Outer space is the void that exists between celestial bodies, including the Earth. It is not completely empty, but consists of a hard vacuum containing a low density of particles: predominantly a plasma of hydrogen and helium, as well as electromagnetic radiation, magnetic fields, and neutrinos....
, and does not need to sleep. While he is visible in the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum
Electromagnetic spectrum
The electromagnetic spectrum is the range of all possible frequencies of electromagnetic radiation. The "electromagnetic spectrum" of an object is the characteristic distribution of electromagnetic radiation emitted or absorbed by that particular object....
perceivable to humans, he is invisible to scans using higher wavelengths. Because Adam's abilities are magical in origin, he appears to the Silver Surfer
Silver Surfer
The Silver Surfer is a Marvel Comics superhero created by Jack Kirby. The character first appears in Fantastic Four #48 , the first of a three-issue arc that fans call "The Galactus Trilogy"....
's cosmic senses to be human, without any biological or mechanical enhancements that the Surfer can perceive. At some point in his travels, he met Logan, who would later become the X-Man Wolverine
Wolverine (comics)
Wolverine is a fictional character, a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. Born as James Howlett and commonly known as Logan, Wolverine is a mutant, possessing animal-keen senses, enhanced physical capabilities, three retracting bone claws on each hand and a healing...
. Having watched his children grow old and die, he came to see his long existence as a curse, and finds that because of his invulnerability, his senses are numbed, and he feels neither pleasure nor pain. Adam even asked the Silver Surfer if he knew how he could die. Dominic has observed that Adam no longer exhibits the basic responses of survival instinct, such as scanning his surroundings or flinching in anticipation of danger, never twitching nor fidgeting because he never tires. Adam concedes that this gives only a vague awareness of what he touches. Dominic feels that what is worse is Adam's emotional detachment, his lack of expression, and aloofness, as if he is bored with human existence, and feels Adam is not applying the great intellect he accumulated over eight centuries to himself. Adam felt that Elalyth never forgave him for killing Vincent, but Albert did not believe this, pointing out that he still had her protection of immortality, though Adam feared that this was so that he could live a life tortured by guilt. He was reunited with Elalyth in ClanDestine (Vol. 2) #5.
Elalyth
A green-skinned being called a Djinn, similar to a genieGenie
Jinn or genies are supernatural creatures in Arab folklore and Islamic teachings that occupy a parallel world to that of mankind. Together, jinn, humans and angels make up the three sentient creations of Allah. Religious sources say barely anything about them; however, the Qur'an mentions that...
, that met Adam in the 12th century, after she first appeared to him in a dream. She gave him the gift of immortality. After Adam killed Vincent, she left him, and returned to the mystical realm of Yden. Aside from flashbacks, Elalyth did not appear, nor was her name revealed, until ClanDestine (Vol. 2) #5, in which she was reunited with Adam, who went to live with her in Yden. A sketch of Adam and the core Destine characters on the first page of the sketchbook section in the 1994 ClanDestine Preview issue bears the caption, "She left and he got custody of the kids".
Jasmine Destine
Also known as Kay Cera, also known as Cuckoo The first born of Adam and Elalyth's children, Jasmine is an 800-year-old telepath who has the ability to transfer her consciousness to mortally wounded host bodies when the one she inhabits is destroyed, and having her brother Albert heal the body's injuries, for which she is known as Cuckoo. In 1519 she was in the newly-discovered Mexico, exploring the territory with Hernán CortésHernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...
's conquistadores while inhabiting the body of a Spanish nobleman, with her sister Grace posing as her valet. At this point Cuckoo had begun to study magic, and learned to channel eldritch forces to enhance her powers. When the conquistadores attacked the Aztecs, Grace, whose emerging psychic gifts were too immature to use as weapons, fled with Cuckoo and some of the Aztecs that they had befriended, but the two were separated. In 1526 she was in Peru, and at some point during or prior to this, learned a Mayan
Mayan languages
The Mayan languages form a language family spoken in Mesoamerica and northern Central America. Mayan languages are spoken by at least 6 million indigenous Maya, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize and Honduras...
dialect. In the 1860s, she inhabited the body of Natsume Masako, the wife of Prince Sakai Masaaki. During this time, she was attacked by the vampire Marietta Borgezia, and reacted by killing Borgezia's spirit with her own consciousness, which resulted in the vampire becoming Jasmine's new host. As all the vampyr created by Borgezia were freed of their blood thirst with her death, they gratefully came to regard Jasmine as family, even as she would later move onto other host bodies. Her next known incarnation was among her most recent, when she inhabited the body of a Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
woman, and helped Grace and a young Professor Xavier battle a demon called the Synraith. In recent years she has lived as fashion designer Kay Cera, creator of the Kay Cera label. She owns homes in Geneva
Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
, New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, Tokyo
Tokyo
, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...
, and Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
. When Adam killed Vincent, she was in her forty-third host body. She has switched bodies three times during Dominic's lifetime, and Samantha was a child when she acquired the last one prior to her current body, which formerly belonged to Barcelona
Barcelona
Barcelona is the second largest city in Spain after Madrid, and the capital of Catalonia, with a population of 1,621,537 within its administrative limits on a land area of...
prostitute Pepa Perez. When healing this current body, Albert, appalled at the questionable ethics of Cuckoo's use of others' bodies, informed her that this would be the last time he would do this.
Cuckoo can read the minds of others, project telepathic illusions, project her astral body, bring the astral bodies of other people to her location, and when mortally wounded, transfer her mind to the bodies of other humans and even animals in order to prolong her life. She can also put someone into a coma in order to protect them from psychic attack, or use that person as a conduit through which she can psychically attack someone else. She is unable to read the minds of Lenz's creatures (though she was able to sense enough of their minds to be frightened of them), nor is she any match for Lenz himself. She is also unable to read her father's mind, as it causes her great pain, and is not as powerful a telepath as Charles Xavier, who easily repelled her unwanted telepathic advances. Jasmine can also project telekinetic blasts. She noticed that she lost a degree of control since transferring to her current host. Her psychic powers always experience "glitches" when she settles into a new host body, especially when the death of the previous one is particularly violent.
She is a hedonist
Hedonism
Hedonism is a school of thought which argues that pleasure is the only intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure .-Etymology:The name derives from the Greek word for "delight" ....
, and will use her powers for her own benefit, casually reading or manipulating the minds of others without their permission, out of curiosity, personal gain or anger, much to the disapproval of others. Walter does not approve of how she endulges the twin's superhero fantasies, or how she visits only when her lifestyle permits it, buying the twins' affections with gifts. Unlike Dominic, Kay supports Adam's killing of Vincent, saying that he was a "bad seed".
Alan Davis designed her out of his love of drawing "impossibly beautiful" women. He originally called her Mosaic (describing her fractured psyche), but DC
DC Comics
DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...
had just published a book with "Mosaic" in the title, so her codename was to be Kimera, but Namorita
Namorita
Namorita Prentiss is a fictional superhero in the Marvel Universe, commonly known by the name of Nita. She is a mutant clone of her mother, Namora, and a member of the New Warriors. She was killed in the explosion in Stamford that started the Superhero Civil War.-Publication history:Namorita first...
's name was changed to Kymera just before the series was published, forcing Davis to again change her name. He describes her as "Confident. Non-conformist. Practical but stylish." Cuckoo's current body is sometimes depicted as a Caucasian
Caucasian race
The term Caucasian race has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia , Central Asia and South Asia...
, and other times with brown skin of varying darkness.
Albert Destine
A monk in the Seventh Moon temple in NepalNepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, who has the ability to heal others. Albert suffered terribly when he attempted to use his powers to stem the Black Death
Black Death
The Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, peaking in Europe between 1348 and 1350. Of several competing theories, the dominant explanation for the Black Death is the plague theory, which attributes the outbreak to the bacterium Yersinia pestis. Thought to have...
that had swept through Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
, though the details of this part of his life have not been specified. In the winter of 1374, he was being escorted to the Shalu Monastery
Shalu Monastery
Shalu Monastery or Ṣalu Monastery is small monastery 22 km south of Shigatse in Tibet. Founded in 1040 by Chetsun Sherab Jungnay, for centuries it was renowned as a centre of scholarly learning and psychic training and its mural paintings were considered to be the most ancient and beautiful...
in Shigatse
Shigatse
Shigatse is a county-level city and the second largest city in Tibet Autonomous Region , People's Republic of China, with a population of 92000, about southwest of Lhasa and northwest of Gyantse...
, Tibet
Tibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
by Adam and his brother Thaddeus, and when Thaddeus was knocked over a cliff by an army of zombies led by the Inhuman
Inhumans
The Inhumans are a fictional race of superhumans, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This race appears in various comic book series published by Marvel Comics and exists in that company's shared universe, known as the Marvel Universe....
Tral, the normally pacifistic Albert lashed out, discovering his healing ability could be used as a weapon, and killed Tral, much to his subsequent regret. In 1615 Albert and Grace were in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
protecting the Shogun
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
Tokugawa
Tokugawa Ieyasu
was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan , which ruled from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. Ieyasu seized power in 1600, received appointment as shogun in 1603, abdicated from office in 1605, but...
during a coup. On many occasions he has healed a mortally wounded human body that Cuckoo acquired as a host. After healing the fatal stab wounds incurred by her current host, he informed her that this would be the very last time he would do so, vowing that when she lost this host, she would die. Like Kay, Gracie and Nathaniel, he is a practitioner of the mystic arts, but has never been adept as they in using them. Among his mystical abilities is the ability to teleport
Teleportation
Teleportation is the fictional or imagined process by which matter is instantaneously transferred from one place to another.Teleportation may also refer to:*Quantum teleportation, a method of transmitting quantum data...
people across large distances. The range of this power is unknown, but he once transported his father from the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
to Nepal
Nepal
Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...
, and then from Nepal to Iran
Iran
Iran , officially the Islamic Republic of Iran , is a country in Southern and Western Asia. The name "Iran" has been in use natively since the Sassanian era and came into use internationally in 1935, before which the country was known to the Western world as Persia...
.
Grace "Gracie" Destine
Born in 1503, Grace is an archeologist with strong telepathic and telekinetic powers. In 1519, when she and Cuckoo (inhabiting the body of a Spanish nobleman) were in the newly-discovered Mexico, exploring the territory with Hernán CortésHernán Cortés
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y Pizarro, 1st Marquis of the Valley of Oaxaca was a Spanish Conquistador who led an expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire and brought large portions of mainland Mexico under the rule of the King of Castile in the early 16th century...
's conquistadores, sixteen-year-old Grace, who easily passed for a boy, posed as his valet. When the conquistadores attacked the Aztecs, Grace, whose emerging psychic gifts were too immature to use as weapons, left with Cuckoo and some of the Aztecs that they had befriended, but the two were separated. Grace followed Cuckoo's example, and learned to channel eldritch forces to enhance her powers. In doing this, she accidentally unleashed a demon called the Synraith. She managed to seal the dimensional rift from which it came, but as it now knew where our dimension was, it would eventually return. In 1615 Grace and Albert were in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
protecting the Shogun
Shogun
A was one of the hereditary military dictators of Japan from 1192 to 1867. In this period, the shoguns, or their shikken regents , were the de facto rulers of Japan though they were nominally appointed by the emperor...
Tokugawa
Tokugawa shogunate
The Tokugawa shogunate, also known as the and the , was a feudal regime of Japan established by Tokugawa Ieyasu and ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family. This period is known as the Edo period and gets its name from the capital city, Edo, which is now called Tokyo, after the name was...
during a coup. She later fought the Synraith a second time centuries later with Cuckoo (now in the body of a Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
woman) and a younger Charles Xavier. They finally managed to destroy the creature during their third encounter with it, with the help of Adam and the X-Men.
Newton Destine
A superhuman genius whose talents include mechanical engineering, chemistry, medicine and surgery. He built the ClanDestine's advanced technology and set up the Relative Strangers Protocol. He vanished to Etherea, an alternate Earth in another dimension, during Rory and Pandora's infancy, but teleports back to Earth whenever Dominic calls him, using a special signal watch. While Warlord of the planet Ethera, he had another body engineered on Narcissus 4, one that is taller and far more muscular, and therefore more suited to the lifestyle of a leader, and when using this body, he keeps his original body in suspended animationSuspended animation
Suspended animation is the slowing of life processes by external means without termination. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold can be used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions; use...
. He prefers his original, more meek body for intellectual pursuits. In addition to teleportational devices, he has also built sophisticated powered armor suits and weapons. Newton wears a device called a "psi-shield" to prevent Kay from probing his mind. Time moves faster on Etherea than on Earth. Three Etherean days are equivalent to nine Earth hours, which often allows Newton to respond to the signal watch and build devices apparently quickly.
Walter Destine (Wallop)
Walter is a writer of romance novels under the pseudonym Sabrina Bentley, who has the ability to transform into a large, hulking blue creature with immense strength and invulnerability. He maintains his personality and intelligence in this state. When pushing his ability to transform larger and larger, his hair becomes aflame, and he is prone to losing his temper, and going berserk. He can also inadvertently transform if he loses his temper or if it is triggered by psychic attack. Transforming back to human form takes a long time, and is often not complete, as sometimes his ears or feet will remain in their monstrous state.Walter is at least 200 years old, and has experienced conflict in numerous wars. He was in Shanghai
Shanghai
Shanghai is the largest city by population in China and the largest city proper in the world. It is one of the four province-level municipalities in the People's Republic of China, with a total population of over 23 million as of 2010...
during the Opium War, in Balaclava
Battle of Balaclava
The Battle of Balaclava, fought on 25 October 1854 during the Crimean War, was part of the Anglo-French-Turkish campaign to capture the port and fortress of Sevastopol, Russia's principal naval base on the Black Sea...
during the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
, in Delhi
Delhi
Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...
during the Sepoy Mutiny
Indian Rebellion of 1857
The Indian Rebellion of 1857 began as a mutiny of sepoys of the British East India Company's army on 10 May 1857, in the town of Meerut, and soon escalated into other mutinies and civilian rebellions largely in the upper Gangetic plain and central India, with the major hostilities confined to...
, in Passiondale during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, and in El Alamein
El Alamein
El Alamein is a town in the northern Matrouh Governorate of Egypt. Located on the Mediterranean Sea, it lies west of Alexandria and northwest of Cairo. As of 2007, it has a local population of 7,397 inhabitants.- Climate :...
during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, during which he served with military intelligence. In 1944 his station was attacked by the Nazis with a large robotic war machine. The war machine was confronted by the Invaders
Invaders (comics)
The Invaders is the name of two fictional superhero teams in the . The original team was created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Sal Buscema in The Avengers #71 . A present-day incarnation was introduced by writer Chuck Austen and artist Scott Kolins in The Avengers vol...
(Captain America
Captain America
Captain America is a fictional character, a superhero that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in Captain America Comics #1 , from Marvel Comics' 1940s predecessor, Timely Comics, and was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby...
, the Submariner and the Human Torch), but rendered them unconscious. Walter then transformed and destroyed the robot before fleeing from Allied soldiers, who happened on the scene and thought him in league with the Nazis. As part of the Relative Stranger Protocol, he is known today to outsiders as the son of the Walter Destine who served in WWII. He is the guardian of Rory and Pandora, who were led to believe for years that he was their uncle. They gave him the codename "Wallop", though he refuses to accept this name. He is generally strict, and resents the appearance of the other siblings in the children's lives when it suits them, especially Kay, who he feels tries to buy the twins' affections with gifts when her hedonistic lifestyle allows. Alan Davis tried to design a costume for Wallop, but felt they all looked silly in some of his more extreme incarnations.
William "Oz" Chance
An actor who plays the role of Cap'n Oz in action movies. He has peak human strength and acrobatic agility. He first appeared in The ClanDestine (Vol. 1) #2.Dominic Destine (Hex)
As a child, Dominic, who has bright red hair and pale green skin, felt neglected by Adam, whom he saw as aloof. After developing his super senses in adulthood, he became an illusionist and escapologist named Hex. His costume is the one he used as a performer. Prior to Vincent's death, during one performance in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
's Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
, an encounter with a Chinese puzzle box
Puzzle box
A puzzle box is a box that can only be opened through some obscure or complicated series of manipulations. Some puzzle boxes may require only a simple squeeze in the right spot, whereas others may require the subtle movement of several small parts, to open the box...
caused him to fall into an occult dimensional realm, from which he was rescued by Doctor Strange
Doctor Strange
Doctor Stephen Strange is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was co-created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko, and first appeared in Strange Tales #110 ....
. After Adam killed Vincent, and because Walter allowed him to, Dominic, who harbored resentment towards them for many years, retreated to a remote island for eleven years, in part because his enhanced senses are overwhelmed in more urban areas. Although Dominic moved to the Destine family estate following Adam's return to Earth, he refused a reconciliation with Adam, saying that he will never forgive him for killing Vincent. He went to live on Etherea with Newton at the end of ClanDestine (Vol. 2) #5.
Walter describes Dominic as quite brilliant, with a capacity for flawless deductive reasoning. This, and his enhanced senses, make him the ultimate sleuth. He is an expert hand-to-hand fighter with a slim, athletic build, and his knowledge of pressure points and nerve clusters makes him one of the few people who can hurt or subdue Walter in his transformed state. His sense of hearing allows him to hear through concrete and steel walls. His sense of smell is so acute that he can detect the scent of someone who has handled an object that he examines. He can also identify the specific food ingredients that someone has handled, even after they have washed their hands, and can smell the traces of other people that person has been near. When scouting the Griffin Technologies Complex from a nearby hill, he was able to ascertain that the complex included a large underground structure three levels deeps, which housed a lot of machinery, but no life forms, though it is unclear which senses he utilized to discern this. His sense of taste is so acute that a small bite of chocolate intoxicated him into unconsciousness, in part because of eleven years of eating only seafood. His eyesight allows him to see wavelengths of the EM spectrum outside the normal human range. He can also perceive the aura surrounding Samantha that she can tap into to utilize her armor. His senses can be occluded if they are overloaded by infra-red, microwave
Microwave
Microwaves, a subset of radio waves, have wavelengths ranging from as long as one meter to as short as one millimeter, or equivalently, with frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz. This broad definition includes both UHF and EHF , and various sources use different boundaries...
and sonic
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
emissions from hi-tech security systems, and being scanned by high-frequency wavelengths can cause him great pain. When living at the Destine estate, he usually spent his time in an anechoic chamber
Anechoic chamber
An anechoic chamber is a room designed to stop reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves.They are also insulated from exterior sources of noise...
that his brother Newton built below the manor, which remained after the manor was destroyed. Newton also built an isolation shell generator for Dominic to wear on his wrist, which creates anti-stimulation aura, as a sort of portable anechoic chamber. Alan Davis describes him as "Aggressive. Volatile. A hunter." His original design was that of an animalistic wild man with a costume with animal skin patterns. In his sketchbook, he called the character "Vex", rather than "Hex".
Rik Destine
Nothing is known of Rik other than his name, and the fact that he is alive, as Kay mentions in ClanDestine (Vol. 2) #3.Samantha "Sam" Destine (Argent)
An artist who has the power to generate and shape a metallic ectoplasmic armor and weapons around her. The design of the armor is an unconscious expression of her artistic mind, as it reacts to her thoughts. The shape and hardness of her metal forms are varied, as she can also generate a set of wings like a hang glider. The armor's beauty and strength can make flesh seem repulsive to her, and as a result, she has grown apart from ordinary people. The armor acts as a second skin, with a sense of touch similar to her own flesh. She is the youngest of the known Destine adults. She was born in the early 1950s, and was about the twins' current age in 1963. She graduated from college in 1972, and as part of the Relative Stranger Protocol, goes by the name Samantha Hassard of PerpignanPerpignan
-Sport:Perpignan is a rugby stronghold: their rugby union side, USA Perpignan, is a regular competitor in the Heineken Cup and seven times champion of the Top 14 , while their rugby league side plays in the engage Super League under the name Catalans Dragons.-Culture:Since 2004, every year in the...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
. Alan Davis, who describes her as "aloof, brooding [and] exotic", explained that he originally designed Argent in 1991 for a series that he and Paul Neary
Paul Neary
Paul Neary is a British comic book artist, writer and editor.His first work was for Warren Publishing in the 1970s before working with Dez Skinn at Marvel UK as well as work for 2000 AD...
tried to develop. Davis made her armor constantly changing, in order to alleviate the tedium of drawing its detail with accurate continuity.
Rory (The Crimson Crusader) and Pandora (Imp) Destine
Whereas Adam's other children manifested their abilities in adulthood, 11-year-old twins Rory and Pandora manifested their abilities six months prior to The ClanDestine (Vol.1) #1 because as twins, their powers stimulate each other when in close proximity, and only manifest themselves as such. The exact maximum distance they can be separated and still use their powers is unknown, but they can be separated by a number of rooms and corridors and still use them.Rory has the ability to manipulate gravity. This allows him to fly, to make objects extremely heavy, or light enough to float or throw them, to create forcefields that can protect him from bullets, and to crush small objects. He can crush a live grenade whose pin has been pulled, and keep it from harming others when it explodes. Since he is a child, the full potential of his powers is unknown. He can, for example, lift up Dominic and a transformed Walter, but when Walter lost control of his transformations and turned into a much larger incarnation of himself during the X-Men encounter, Rory could only lift him up slightly by his feet. Rory fights crime under the superhero codename the "Crimson Crusader", and loves following all the superhero clichés.
Pandora has the ability to manipulate light. She can project beams of light powerful enough to pulverize boulders or focus them to create laser
Laser
A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of photons. The term "laser" originated as an acronym for Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation...
beams that can instantly cut through objects. She can bend light around her and other objects in order to make them invisible. Although she joins Rory on his superhero jaunts, she is not as obsessed with being a superhero as Rory is.
Thaddeus Destine
Thaddeus was a warrior born with the ability to adopt the aspect of any beast. He was a highly skilled fighter with great strength and speed. In the winter of 1374, he was knocked off a snow cliff in TibetTibet
Tibet is a plateau region in Asia, north-east of the Himalayas. It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people as well as some other ethnic groups such as Monpas, Qiang, and Lhobas, and is now also inhabited by considerable numbers of Han and Hui people...
by the Inhuman
Inhumans
The Inhumans are a fictional race of superhumans, created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. This race appears in various comic book series published by Marvel Comics and exists in that company's shared universe, known as the Marvel Universe....
, Tral, while he and Adam escorted Albert to a monastery. While Albert believed him to have died at the time, whether he actually died remains unconfirmed. In his only appearance to date, Thaddeus' face and body were covered with striped fur, like that of a tiger, but it is unknown whether this was a permanent state or an adaptation that manifested itself when he used his abilities.
Nathaniel Destine
All that is known about Nathaniel is that like Kay, Gracie and Albert, he is a practitioner of the mystic arts, but according to Albert, is far more adept with them than Albert.Vincent Destine
Vincent destroyed the Destine family Manor, and Adam was forced to kill him because, as Adam says, he was "evil". Dominic holds this against Adam, but Walter and Kay support Adam's actions, arguing that it had to be done. A 1963 photograph of the family depicts Vincent as a young man with brown hair and slight chin hair wearing teashade sunglasses. His powers have not been revealed, nor the exact circumstances under which Adam killed him.Florence "Flo" Destine
Flo pretended to be Rory and Pandora's grandmother. She was killed by Lenz's creatures. With her dying breath, she told Walter to inform the twins of the truth about the family.Maurice Fortuit
A red-haired man, the full nature of his powers has not been revealed, but he was able to generate some type of energy around his hands. He was killed by Lenz's creatures at his mountain top chaletChalet
A chalet , also called Swiss chalet, is a type of building or house, native to the Alpine region, made of wood, with a heavy, gently sloping roof with wide, well-supported eaves set at right angles to the front of the house.-Definition and origin:...
in the Swiss Alps
Swiss Alps
The Swiss Alps are the portion of the Alps mountain range that lies within Switzerland. Because of their central position within the entire Alpine range, they are also known as the Central Alps....
near St. Moritz
St. Moritz
St. Moritz is a resort town in the Engadine valley in Switzerland. It is a municipality in the district of Maloja in the Swiss canton of Graubünden...
. Albert saw Maurice as an alive, passionate fighter, and a good man, but lamented that his temper would be the death of him.
Garth, Sherlock and Lance Destine
All that is known about them are their headstones on the Destine property.Adam's parents
Their gravestones are seen in the family graveyard. Kay met them in 1209 on the family property, when it was a Saxon village.Collected editions
The series have been collected into two trade paperbackTrade paperback (comics)
In comics, a trade paperback is a collection of stories originally published in comic books, reprinted in book format, usually capturing one story arc from a single title or a series of stories with a connected story arc or common theme from one or more titles...
volumes:
- ClanDestine Classic Premiere (collects ClanDestine (vol. 1) #1-8, Marvel Comics Presents #158 and X-Men & ClanDestine #1-2, hardcover, 312 pages, February 2008, ISBN 0-7851-2742-9)
- ClanDestine: Blood Relative (collects ClanDestine (vol. 2) #1-5, 120 pages, hardcover, October 2008, ISBN 0-7851-2740-2, softcover, September 2009, ISBN 0-7851-2741-0)
Reviews
- http://www.comicsbulletin.com/reviews/120219605078946.htmGreen, Kelvin; Review of ClanDestine #1 at comicsbulletin.comComics BulletinComics Bulletin is a website with an emphasis on the American comic book industry, updated daily with news, reviews, interviews, and editorial content. Coverage ranges from mainstream to independent/small press comic book and graphic novel publishers.-History:...
; February 5, 2008] - Tate, Ray; Review of ClanDestine #1 at comicsbulletin.com; February 12, 2008
- Tate, Ray; Review of ClanDestine #2 at comicsbulletin.com; March 11, 2008
- Bari, Steven M.; Review of ClanDestine #3 at comicsbulletin.com; April 1, 2008
- Tate, Ray; Review of ClanDestine #3 at comicsbulletin.com; April 4, 2008
- Tate, Ray; Review of ClanDestine #4 at comicsbulletin.com; May 17, 2008
- Tate, Ray; Review of ClanDestine #5 at comicsbulletin.com; June 13, 2008
- http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=user_review&id=178Callahan, Timothy; Review for ClanDestine #5 at Comic Book ResourcesComic Book ResourcesComic Book Resources, also known as CBR is a website dedicated to the coverage of comic book-related news and discussion.-History:Comic Book Resources was founded by Jonah Weiland in 1996 as a development of the Kingdom Come Message Board, a message forum that Weiland had created to discuss DC...
; June 13, 2008]