Ego the Living Planet

Ego the Living Planet is a supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe, and an enemy of the thunder-god Thor. Its first appearance was in Thor #132 (September, 1966) and its origin was told in Fantastic Four #235 (October, 1981).

Character biography

As its name suggests, Ego is a self-aware planet. Like all other celestial bodies, allegedly evolved from the gas and dust from the Big Bang. However, unlike other planets, Ego developed consciousness, and the ability to move at its own will. Ego is both organic and inorganic, effectively a giant organism combined with a solid planet, and has organs such as a colossal brain, while also containing rock and magma. He does not originate from the Milky Way Galaxy, but from another galaxy known as the "Black Galaxy". He is about the size of a small moon (4165 miles in diameter).

For reasons that only he knows, Ego has frequently created armies of superhuman warriors out of his own substance to go and travel to other solar systems and conquer entire worlds. He can also eat other planets.

Thor first encountered it in space, and sided with it in a battle against Galactus. At the time, Ego agreed to allow The Wanderers, an alien race whose homeworld had been destroyed by Galactus, to settle on its surface. But he soon devoured them; this caused Thor to side with Galactus, and they had a massive starship engine attached to the planet, intending to drive it away from known space. However, he managed to take control of the engine and tracked Galactus to Earth, and attacked it, causing massive damage, not realizing Galactus was no longer there. The Fantastic Four managed to defeat him, and the damage to Earth was repaired (as if it had never happened) by a super-psionic old man named "Skip" Collins (whose powers burned out due to the effort.)

Later Ego joined the Elders of the Universe for some of their schemes, claiming that he fulfilled the requisites for membership (that is, a unique being from the early ages of the universe.)

Eventually, Ego apparently went mad and began destroying worlds in his attempt to 'wake them up' so he would have the company of beings like him. He was captured using some alien technology that somehow condensed it to the size of a human being, and then sent to Earth with other alien criminals at the time when the planet was designated a universal prison (as seen in the Maximum Security mini-series.) Eventually Ego began to expand again, threatening Earth, until it was again condensed, and contained within the body of the superhero Quasar.

Powers and abilities

Ego has immeasurably high intelligence, immeasurably high psionic powers (including telepathy and telekinesis), and immeasurably high endurance. He travels through space of his own power and can do so at faster than light speeds. He can disguise his surface to appear to be an uninhabited planet. Though he has no true humanoid corporeal form with which to lift weight, he can manipulate billions of tons of matter psionically or by using various portions of his surface as his "arms". He can alter the shape of his surface and produce separate life-forms under his control.

Trivia

Stanisław Lem's novel Solaris, already published in 1961, also features a planet capable to scan a person's mind, extract thoughts from their subconsciousness and model another living person from these.
One song on Monster Magnet's album Dopes to Infinity is called "Ego, the Living Planet." The only line in the song is "I talk to planets, baby!"

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Character biography

Powers and abilities

Trivia