Brood

Brood
Cover art for Ms. Marvel (vol. 2) #2. Art by Frank Cho.
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	Uncanny X-Men #155 (March 1982)
Created by	Chris Claremont Dave Cockrum

The Brood are a race of insect-like, parasitic, extraterrestrial beings that appear in the comic books published by Marvel Comics, especially Uncanny X-Men. Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Dave Cockrum, they first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #155 (March 1982).

The Brood possess wings, fanged teeth and a stinging tail. They have a hive mentality and mindlessly follow a queen. To reproduce, they must infect other races with their eggs.

Brood species

Physical characteristics

Despite their resemblance to insects, the Brood have endoskeletons as well as exoskeletons. Also unlike insects, they have fanged jaws instead of mandibles. Their skulls are triangular and flat, with a birthmark (such as the battle axe which is most common in broodlings but are different for each Brood) between their large eyes. Their two front legs are actually long tentacles they can use to manipulate objects.

Due to their natural body armor and teeth, the Brood are very dangerous in combat. In addition, they have stingers that can deliver either paralyzing or killing poison.

Reproduction

The parasitic Brood have the ability to impregnate a host (of any lifeform) with an egg, making them somewhat similar to Aliens from the Fox franchise. When the embryo is grown, the host becomes a Brood, and is effectively dead.

They use a hive mind to pass memory to their hosts, which also passes an individual's knowledge, given to a broodling, to the hive and back to the queen, meaning newborn brood know what any member of a race knows. Until the embryo gains the host's body the embryo can only gain temporary control of the host, often without the host noticing as the host is unaware when it loses control.

If the host possesses any genetic powers, the resultant Brood will inherit them. What happens to the persona of the host once the Brood is "born" is not clear; it appears that it is extinguished, but in some cases if the will is enough, it survives and coexists with the Brood's.

Some Brood can switch back-and-forth between their host's form and their true one, even changing into a hybrid form if they wish.

Civilization

The Brood are savage, sadistic, evil creatures that enjoy the suffering they intentionally cause others, especially the terror their infection causes their hosts. They have been compared to "demons"^[1]. Given the incident with the Acanti Soulforce (see below) it may be that they have a supernatural origin.

The Brood have a civilization based on the typical communal insect societies, such as those of the bees and ants. The Queens are the absolute rulers, while the "sleazoids" do all the work; despite their evil, they never rebel against their Queens, perhaps due to the latter's telepathic abilities. It must be noted, however, that the Queens have no allegiance to each other. They also have developed, or stolen, advanced technology.

Their true planet of origin is unknown. They arrived in the Shi'ar galaxy long ago, and began infesting many worlds, becoming deadly enemies to the Sh'iar. In this galaxy they found certain large space-dwelling creatures that they decided to use as living starships. These include the whale-like Acanti, and the shark-like Starsharks. The Brood use a virus that effectively lobotomizes the creatures, then they use bionics to control them. The Brood hollow out part of the creatures (by eating them) and use the space created to live in, like termites eating a tree. This of course eventually kills the living ships, requiring them to capture new ones.

One of the Acanti they captured was of unusual size (its rib cage alone was the size of a mountain range.) They used it as their main base, and, when it died and crashed onto a planet, used it as their main city. (The corpse was so large, it took centuries just to rot halfway.) However, predators from the planet they landed on infested the area of the dead Acanti's brain, so the Brood avoided it.

Types

There are several types of Brood.

• Broodlings - brown, nearly the size of a human, and have transparent wings. Broodlings have flexible abdomens that they need to coil most of the time. They have an image on their forehead crest, though no meaning is known from symbol to symbol. These are nicknamed "sleazoids" by Kitty Pryde. Most infected hosts become Broodlings. Broodlings are only created by infecting another host with an embryo.

• Firstborn - "pure" Brood, they are born directly from hatched eggs and subservient to their mother, the Empress, only. They are green, black, and red in color, and are roughly the size of a human, but smaller than a queen.

• Brood Queens - Looking like the the Broodlings but slightly larger than humans the Queens are much rarer and infect hosts for the Brood Hive. Queens fulfill the mental command of an Empress, a unique alien who houses the hive mind. Queens can communicate with their spawn by telepathy, even across interstellar distances.

• Empress - The Empress, who houses the Brood's hive mind, is green with minor black and red colors. There is only one Empress at a time, and she is massive.

Encounters with the X-Men and other Marvel heroes

Cover to Uncanny X-Men #166. Art by Paul Smith. Featured are the X-Men (Kitty Pryde, Lilandra, Colossus, Cyclops, Wolverine, and Nightcrawler) fighting the Brood.

The first Marvel hero to encounter the Brood was the Kree warrior Mar-Vell, who is ordered to make contact with the stranded Grand Admiral Devros on an unnamed planet in the Absolom Sector, a region known to be infested with Brood. Mar-Vell's team, which includes the medic Una and the inflammatory Colonel Yon-Rogg, is ambushed by Brood warriors after landing on the planet and taken prisoner by the Brood-infected Devros. The colony's Brood Queen impregnates each captive with Brood, but Mar-Vell and Una manage to escape, destroy both leaders of the Brood colony, and rid themselves of their infections thanks to Una's modified omni-wave projector which is designed to eliminate Brood embryos. After rescuing Colonel Yon-Rogg, the trio escape the planet and are rescued by the Shi'ar royal Deathbird.^[2]

The Brood, now allied with Deathbird to help her depose her sister Lilandra as ruler of their empire; as a reward, Deathbird gives Lilandra and the Shi'ar allies the X-Men and the powerless (because Rogue stole her powers) Carol Danvers, along with Fang of the Imperial Guard, to use as hosts. The Brood infect the entire party, except for Danvers, who the aliens perform experiments on because of her half-human/half-Kree genes. Fortunately, Wolverine's healing ability purge him of his embryo, and he helps his friends escape. Unfortunately, he is unable to save Fang, who becomes a Brood warrior before they leave.

The Brood Queen orders her forces to find them, until she is contacted by the Queen embryo that is implanted in Cyclops. It explained that the X-Men are returning to Broodworld. Resigned to their dooms, the heroes help the Acanti race recover the racial Soul, a supernatural force that must be passed from one Acanti leader ("The Prophet-Singer") to the next. The Soul is located in a crystalline part of the dead Acanti Prophet-Singer's brain.

The Queen herself goes with her minions to that area, and battles the X-Men until they become more Brood warriors. The Prophet-Singer Soul is almost infected by the evil of the aliens, and Wolverine tries to mercy-kill his friends and the Queen but they are saved when Danvers, now a mighty being called Binary due to the experimentations, arrives and releases the Soul. Before it goes to its next host, the soulforce cures the X-Men and Lilandra, and turns the Queen into a crystal statue. It also causes the Broodworld to explode, but the X-Men and their allies, including Lockheed, escape alive. Some of the Brood also manage to escape before the planet explodes. The new Prophet-Singer then leads the Acanti to safety in deep space.^[3]

A Brood-filled star-shark later crashes on Earth, leading to the infection of several nearby humans by the Brood. One of the victims is allowed to live as a human assistant, but when he leads the aliens to some mutants, the Brood infect him and the mutants as well. This is the first Earth-based confrontation with the Brood and it is revealed that the Brood can morph into the host's form, or a hybrid of the two forms. In the course of the battle, an Earth woman named Hannah Connover is infected with a queen, though this problem would develop in the future.^[4]

Another branch of the Brood manage to land on Earth and infect more mutants, along with the Louisiana Thieves' Guild of which X-Man Gambit belongs to. The X-Men kill most of the infected people. Fortunately they, along with Ghost Rider, manage to rescue many of the Brood's other uninfected prisoners, only to have the "Spirit of Vengeance" become infected himself. Ghost Rider supernatural aspect eliminated the host and he and the X-Men saved New Orleans.^[5]

Hannah Connover, previously infected with a Queen, soon begins to demonstrate attributes of Brood.^[6] She uses her new-found "healing" powers to become a faith healer and cure many people with her reverend husband, but secretly her Brood nature causes her to infect many people with embryos. Across the Galaxy, on the "true" Brood Homeworld, the Brood Empress sends her "firstborn" Imperial Assassins to kill Hannah for going against the Empress's wishes. Unable to stop future waves of Assassins from coming, team member Iceman freezes her solid, putting her in suspended animation and causing the current firstborn to kill themselves, mission accomplished in their minds. Connover is assumed to still be in suspended animation with her Queen host in the custody of the X-Men.

During the Contest of Champions II, the Brood abduct several heroes and pose as a benevolent species willing to give the heroes access to advanced technology after competing against each other in a series of contests. However, in reality, the Brood intend to use Rogue, infested with a Brood Queen, to absorb the powers of the contest winners and become unstoppable. Fortunately, Iron Man realizes that the Brood are drugging food to amplify aggression and reveals the plot.

Although the Queen had already absorbed the powers and skills of Captain America, Thor, the Hulk, Spider-Man, Jean Grey and the Scarlet Witch the remaining heroes managed to defeat her. The Brood Queen was extracted from Rogue with the aid of Carol Danvers, who forced the Brood Queen to flee by threatening to kill Rogue. After confirming that Rogue was cured thanks to her old link to Carol from absorbing her powers, the heroes returned home.^[7]

The Brood return to Earth in the Ms. Marvel series and battle Carol Danvers, who as Binary played a key role in their earlier defeat. Strangely enough, none of the Brood present recognize who she is, possibly because of her apparent inability to fully access her cosmic powers, which also change her physical appearance. The Brood are also stalked and summarily exterminated by the alien hunter called Cru, with whom Ms. Marvel also came into violent contact.^[8]

Some Brood appear in the arena of planet Saakar in the Planet Hulk storyline of The Incredible Hulk, one of them even becoming a main character. A Brood referred to as "No-Name", who becomes a genetic queen because their race is becoming rarer, becomes the lover of insect king Miek and also appears in World War Hulk.^[9] When it is discovered that Miek was the one who let the shuttle that brought Hulk to Sakaar explode, "No-Name" and Hulk attack Miek.^[10] Near the end of the War the "Earth Hive", the shared consciousness of every insect on Earth, use Humbug as a Trojan Horse to deal a crippling blow to No-Name, rendering her infertile and poisoning the last generation of hivelings, growing in Humbug's body.^[11]

The Brood will appear in Warren Ellis' next arc for Astonishing X-Men.

Other versions

Bishop's timeline

According to the time-traveling X-Man Bishop there are benign factions of Brood in the future. It is speculated that these "good" Brood are originated from Hannah Connover.^[12]

Age of Apocalypse

In the Age of Apocalypse timeline, without the X-Men to aid them, part of the Shi'ar Imperium was consumed by the Brood, who infected its populace with Brood implants, including the still-captive Christopher Summers. Escaping to Earth, Summers fought to control his Brood implant, but was captured by Mister Sinister. Sinister turned him over to the Dark Beast, who would then proceeded to experiment upon him for years. Summers eventually escaped, and began infecting other humans (Including the AoA version of Joseph "Robbie" Robertson, as well as friends of Misty Knight and Colleen Wing). Ultimately Corsair was killed by his son Cyclops after he transformed into a Brood Queen and almost killed Alex.

Amalgam Comics

In Amalgam Comics, the Brood is combined with Brother Blood to form Brother Brood, and with the Cult of Blood to form the Cult of Brood. The Brood appear alongside Brother Brood, but are presented as supernatural rather than extraterrestrial.^[13]

Ultimate Marvel

The Brood appeared as a Danger Room training exercise during the Tempest arc of Ultimate X-Men. The Brood are later revealed to be creatures native to the mindscape, where the Shadow King dwells.

X-Men: The End

In X-Men: The End, taking place in a possible future, the Brood hatch a plan with Lilandra (possessed by Cassandra Nova). Nova plans to solidify her rule over Shi'ar space by smuggling an other-dimensional pure-Brood queen from an alternate universe. This realm is one where the X-Men failed to ever fight the Brood, they are described as 'pure'. This Brood Queen is implanted in Lilandra's sister, Deathbird.

JLA/Avengers

The Brood have a brief cameo scene, where they are seen attacking Mongul and apparently invading Warworld.

Other media

Television

• A heavily altered version of the Brood (called The Family) appears in the X-Men animated series episode "Love in Vain". The Family is formed by insectoid aliens that spread by infecting other beings with spores. Classic Brood appear in the episode "Mojovision", as generic aliens that fight Beast and Rogue in one of Mojo's shows as well as the Japanese intro for the X-Men Series. A classic Brood Queen also appears in the episode "Cold Comfort" as an illusion projected by Professor X to scare away the soilders attacking Iceman.

Video Games

• The title of one of the tracks in X-Men 2: Clone Wars is "The Brood Queen & Her Claws", and phalanx clones are enemies in the later levels.
• In X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, a Super NES game, the Brood and the Brood Queen are enemies characters.
• In X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, the Cerci are a race of insect enemies which are based on the Brood from the comics; they are referred to as such in the game's viewable concept art, and one type of Cerci is called a "Brood Queen". However, while the Brood are highly intelligent aliens, the Cerci are genetically engineered creatures with animal-like intelligence. As you fight the Cerci, some have a name with "Brood" in the title, as well.

Collectibles

• One of the Marvel Milestone statues features Marc Silvestri's famous Brood-infected Wolverine cover for Uncanny X-Men #234.
• Brood Queen is one of the "build a figure" toys in the Marvel Legends series.

See also

• Brother Brood
• Tyranids
• Alien (Alien franchise)
• Zerg

References

External links

• The Brood at Marvel.com