Real Name: Unrevealed
Occupation: Would-be conqueror
Identity: Secret. His existence is unknown to the general public.
Legal Status: None
Former Status: None
Place of Birth: Somewhere in northern Asia.
Marital Status: Unknown
Known Relatives: None
Group Affiliation: None
Balm of Operations: Unknown
First Appearance: ALPHA FLIGHT #2

History: Forty thousand years ago, during Earth's Ice Age, an Asian tribe was migrating south in search of a warmer climate. One of the tribe's members, a skilled fighter, continually demanded more food, clothing, and women for himself at the expense of the other tribe members. Finally, the tribe wearied of his behavior and drove him out. The exile nearly died from having to live alone in the harsh, frigid environment, but he nevertheless survived and journeyed south.

One day he fell under a hypnotic command to journey far north. He did so until he came to the source of the hypnotic command, an immense starship. This was a colonization ship of the alien Plodex. The Plodex method of conquest was to send a colonization starship, which contained no adult Plodex but held millions of Plodex eggs, to a world whose dominant life form was in the early stages of cultural development. The starship would land in the area of the planet that its computers judged to be the most inhospitable to the native fauna, would rebuild itself into a massive complex, and then broadcast a hypnotic signal to cause representatives of the planet's native life form to come to the ship. The most intelligent creature to survive the journey to the starship would be judged by the ship's computers to be a representative of the planet's dominant life form. The starship would then capture, dissect, and analyze the specimen, and imprint its genetic pattern on the millions of Plodex eggs. The ship would then fire the virtually indestructible eggs on ballistic paths that would send them all over the planet. The creatures who would hatch from the eggs would be half-Plodex, and half members of the dominant natives species in their genetic make-up, and hence theoretically able not only to survive on the planet but also to dominate it.

In this case, however, one of the starship's drive units had exploded, causing it to crash on Earth. Damaged in the crash, the starship launched all of its eggs before it had captured a specimen of the dominant native life form. Nevertheless, the starship still rebuilt itself into a colonization complex, broadcast the hypnotic signal, and captured the exile when he arrived. For days the exile's flesh, muscle, and tissue were peeled away and his bones pulverized as the complex studied him. The pain was so great that the still living exile went insane. Only his brain was kept alive by the starship, which incorporated it into its computer matrix.

But over the next thirty thousand years the strong-willed exile overcame his insanity and came to take mental dominance over the starship's entire computer system. Finally, he was able to command the ship to construct a new, perfect human body for himself. His link with the starship's computers made him aware of everything that happened on Earth and gave him all of the knowledge on Earth. Moreover, it gave him all of the knowledge of the Plodex that had been stored in the starship's computers when it had been launched. After ten thousand years of mastery of the starship and the knowledge it gave him, the former exile was ready to embark on his mission of conquest. Having mastered so much knowledge and having achieved physical perfection, the exile believed himself worthy of making himself master of the world, and so he renamed himself the Master.

However, he was unable to free himself from the starship/complex, for he had become so integrated a part of the ship that it would not release him. Moreover, he determined that two of the Plodex who had been contained in the ship's eggs had hatched and survived and existed at the present time: Marrina, now a member of the Canadian organization of adventurers called Alpha Flight, and the Plodex who was intended to be her mate, although she as yet knew nothing of this other Plodex's existence, or even that she herself was an alien. The Master was determined to destroy both Marrina and her intended mate, in order to revenge himself upon the Plodex for the torture he had suffered, and also to thwart the Plodex plans for conquest of Earth through the Plodex who hatched on Earth and survived. Therefore, the Master formulated a plan to serve both these goals. He broadcast a hypnotic signal that unleashed Marrina's submerged savage Plodex instincts temporarily, and which forced her to come to the starship. The Master then directed the starship's mechanisms to take her prisoner and torture her (although not through the total destruction of her body or of parts of it, as had happened to him). While she was his prisoner, the Master informed her of her true, alien origin, as well as of his own origin and goal of world conquest. The other members of Alpha Flight came to her rescue and, as the Master had intended, destroyed so much of the starship's mechanisms that the Master was freed from the starship. When the starship exploded, the Master was hurled into the icy arctic waters below. He quickly swam to a large, fish-shaped submarine which he had begun constructing from the starship's resources five thousand years before. The Master had hoped that Marrina too would have been destroyed, but she survived along with the rest of Alpha Flight and their allies on the mission, the Invisible Woman and Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner.

The Master found the other surviving member of the Plodex on Earth, which had a monstrous form and was fully given over to its instincts to kill and to dominate. The Master permitted the creature to commit a series of murders in Canada as it studied human beings, Earth's dominant life form. The Master knew that eventually Alpha Flight, especially Marrina, would investigate the killings. Indeed, the Alpha Flight member called Puck summoned Marrina to search for the creature. As she approached the creature, she was greatly affected by chemical stimuli it gave off, which finally triggered her killer instincts once more. She returned to attack Puck, and then battled the Sub-Mariner, her lover who had followed her to Canada. The Master captured Namor, Puck, and Marrina and took them to his submarine.

There Puck placed himself into a deathlike trance, having learned to do so years ago in the Orient. Believing him dead, the Master took Puck from the cylinder in which he was imprisoned. Reviving, Puck freed Namor, and then wrested the Master's helmet from his and hurled it against the glass facing of the tank holding Marrina, damaging it. Namor them freed the still savage Marrina. Puck had not known that the Master's helmet served as his control link to the submarine and to all his installations, and was physically joined to his flesh. By removing the Master's helmet, Puck had unintentionally wreaked horrifying damage to the flesh on the Master's head that it had covered. Now, according to the Master, he could no longer control his vessel or the non-human Plodex, which began wrecking the submarine's automatic systems in its fury. Namor, Puck, and Marrina, who shortly thereafter reverted to her normal human personality, all escaped. The submarine exploded, and the non-human Plodex was apparently destroyed. But Namor found no trace of the Master.

In reality, the submarine (due to its technology from the Plodex ship) had placed the Master in suspended animation. Eventually, the Master was freed. Later, he kidnapped Puck who was hospitalized at the time in order to experiment on him in an effort to create a mate for Marrina. Puck escaped, however, with the help of Alpha Flight. At some point afterwords, the Master made himself a new body using an enzyme taken from the villain Scramble.

Somehow, the Master discovered Alpha Flight leader James Hudson in a dimension of null space after one of his supposed deaths. The Master rebuilt Hudson's body, brainwashing him into his slave and naming him the Antiguard. Using the alias Joshua Lord, the Master sought to usurp control of the Canadian government and reformed Omega Flight in an effort to help his cause. Attempting to use Hudson against Alpha Flight, his plan failed when Hudson's wife and teammate Vindicator managed to reach her husband and he turned on the Master.

At a time when many of Earth's heroes appeared to have died fighting the psychic menace known as Onslaught, the Master orchestrated a breakout from the United States super-villain prison, the Vault, by employing the U-Foes to free the imprisoned criminals. A new hero team was forming, Heroes for Hire, and the Master employed the hero Luke Cage to be an inside source in the new team. Similarly, he placed controls in the android brain of John Hammond, the former Human Torch, who administered the team. Ultimately, the Master's influence was revealed and the Heroes for Hire stormed his headquarters with the help of Cage and Hammond. The Master was forced to flee and remains at large.

Height (estimated): 6 ft. 4 in.
Weight (estimated): 275 lbs.
Eyes: Green
Hair: Black with white streaks

Strength Level: The Master is a perfect physical specimen, although he is not superhuman. He can lift (press) 800 pounds with great effort.

Known Superhuman Powers: None, however, the Master is virtually immortal, although he is not invulnerable. The white streaks in his beard are the only outward sign of his aging. As noted, he has been alive, either in his original body, as a disembodied brain, or in his current body, for forty thousand years.

Other Abilities: The Master has a genius level intellect, and, thanks to his former link to the Plodex ship computers, holds most of the knowledge of the Plodex (as of forty thousand years ago when the starship was launched) and of Earth humans in his mind.

The Master also retains his knowledge of hand-to-hand combat from his days as a tribesman forty thousand years ago. His knowledge of how to manipulate pressure points on humanoid bodies is so great that he has been able to use it to render the superhuman strong Sub-Mariner unconscious, even though he himself has no superhuman strength.