It was not a subject he liked talking about and yet it was one he wanted to give clarification on. No one had asked and he hadn't really wanted to just spout off to the press about it but he just wanted people to...to know.
"A few years back, shortly before the...incident at Stamford I was called up into space by the Nova Corps to face an unknown threat that was pushing in from what they called the Crunch, something that's...well, it's basically the edge of the universe, the part of it that presses into the Negative Zone."
Deep breaths.
"The threat was Annihilus. Some of you might know him as an occasional enemy of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. He was the ruler of the Negative Zone and saw our universe overlapping into the Negative Zone as an incursion of sorts. And he decided he was going to take back that territory by force so he launched a genocidal war against the rest of the universe, where his armies of giant space bugs destroyed everything and everyone in sight. It was kinda Starship Troopers on steroids."
Worse. That was fiction, that was trained soldiers going against the bugs, not civilians. So many civilians...
"Galactic civilization all but collapsed. Billions upon billions of sentient beings died, billions more were displaced, and whole planets disappeared. The Skrulls were devastated, which is partly what lead to the religious extremists among them gaining a foothold and trying to invade Earth to have somewhere to settle. Xandar was all but destroyed while I still was on it. Through a bit of dumb luck, I survived, because I got buried under the crashing spaceport without getting crushed. I was the lone survivor - every other Nova and civilian on the planet was dead. Since I was the last Nova and the Nova Force could only be carried by a Nova, I absorbed Worldmind and the entirety of the Nova Force to keep it out of enemy hands and use it against Annihilus's forces."
And even that wasn't enough, not on its own.
"At one point, Annihilus even figured out how to weaponize Galactus. The Kree, The Galadorian Spaceknights, the former Heralds of Galactus, Negative Zone rebels, some surviving factions of the Skrulls, and a huge spectrum of surviving alien species banded together in one United Front and made war on Annihilus' forces, trying to hold the wave back and keep it from taking anymore civilized worlds. I was the United Front's Commander-in-chief. For a time we managed to stall the Annihilation wave and almost managed to push back but we were outnumbered a few billion to one and eventually we were overcome and were reduced to guerilla tactics. As a last ditch attempt to take out Annihilus, myself and two others made a suicide run to try to take the wave down by taking out the head. With the help of the new Quasar - 'cause the last one was killed by Annihilus early on, even if he came back later - I managed to take Annihilus out before Annihilus' forces reached Earth."
no subject
"A few years back, shortly before the...incident at Stamford I was called up into space by the Nova Corps to face an unknown threat that was pushing in from what they called the Crunch, something that's...well, it's basically the edge of the universe, the part of it that presses into the Negative Zone."
Deep breaths.
"The threat was Annihilus. Some of you might know him as an occasional enemy of the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. He was the ruler of the Negative Zone and saw our universe overlapping into the Negative Zone as an incursion of sorts. And he decided he was going to take back that territory by force so he launched a genocidal war against the rest of the universe, where his armies of giant space bugs destroyed everything and everyone in sight. It was kinda Starship Troopers on steroids."
Worse. That was fiction, that was trained soldiers going against the bugs, not civilians. So many civilians...
"Galactic civilization all but collapsed. Billions upon billions of sentient beings died, billions more were displaced, and whole planets disappeared. The Skrulls were devastated, which is partly what lead to the religious extremists among them gaining a foothold and trying to invade Earth to have somewhere to settle. Xandar was all but destroyed while I still was on it. Through a bit of dumb luck, I survived, because I got buried under the crashing spaceport without getting crushed. I was the lone survivor - every other Nova and civilian on the planet was dead. Since I was the last Nova and the Nova Force could only be carried by a Nova, I absorbed Worldmind and the entirety of the Nova Force to keep it out of enemy hands and use it against Annihilus's forces."
And even that wasn't enough, not on its own.
"At one point, Annihilus even figured out how to weaponize Galactus. The Kree, The Galadorian Spaceknights, the former Heralds of Galactus, Negative Zone rebels, some surviving factions of the Skrulls, and a huge spectrum of surviving alien species banded together in one United Front and made war on Annihilus' forces, trying to hold the wave back and keep it from taking anymore civilized worlds. I was the United Front's Commander-in-chief. For a time we managed to stall the Annihilation wave and almost managed to push back but we were outnumbered a few billion to one and eventually we were overcome and were reduced to guerilla tactics. As a last ditch attempt to take out Annihilus, myself and two others made a suicide run to try to take the wave down by taking out the head. With the help of the new Quasar - 'cause the last one was killed by Annihilus early on, even if he came back later - I managed to take Annihilus out before Annihilus' forces reached Earth."