Their Minds To My Mind

Can YOU

Name This Marvel Villain??

The being known as Kamo Tharnn always seems to be in great demand--or, rather, it's his mystic runestaff that everyone is usually after, with Tharnn vowing to destroy those who seek to take it away from him. We first meet him when Jane Foster, the woman that Thor first fell in love with, fell critically ill and was lying near death--and the lady Sif, learning of the runestaff's power, journeyed to Tharnn's world with the god Hercules in order to procure it to save Jane's life for the sake of Thor. But Tharnn reacts to the intruders to his dead world viciously--and despite Sif's earnest plea, they find they must take the staff by force in the defense of their lives.

Bringing the staff back to Earth, Sif uses it in a ritual that restores Jane to full vitality--though, unknown to Thor, the task was accomplished by infusing Jane with Sif's life force, effectively merging the two with Jane as the dominant personality.

Sif would later supplant Jane while in Asgard--but the question of how to free both women would remain a mystery for some time.

Tharnn, meanwhile, is slowly but surely moving his planet closer to Earth in order to reclaim his staff, when the staff becomes involved in the Stranger's attempt to stop his null-life bomb's expansion and subsequent detonation. To secure the staff, the Stranger sends the Champions to Tharnn's world, unaware that the staff now resides on Earth--but Tharnn, finding his enemy Hercules conveniently delivered to his doorstep, is in no mood to quibble over the threat that the Champions seek to avert.

In the midst of the battle, Tharnn subjects the Champions to illusions in which each member believes their comrades are killed, while Tharnn waits to pick off the debilitated Champions at his leisure. But the Angel resists, and Tharnn receives a sock in the jaw for his trouble.

In the interim, Darkstar retrieves the staff from its storage place on Earth, and manages to sabotage the null-life bomb so that it continues its growth forever, with no harm done.

In time, Tharnn manages to retrieve his runestaff, only to later once again encounter immortals investigating it in regard to Jane Foster, whose whereabouts have been sought by her fiancé, Keith Kincaid. Through technology still functional on the planet, they discover Tharnn's origin as one of the Elders of the Universe, whose obsession with the runestaff has decimated the interstellar archival world he inhabited and displaced its populace within his mind--including Jane, another who once fell "victim" to the staff.

The mystery solved, Sif then uses the staff to put all to rights--even Tharnn, who regains his faculties once all of the minds affecting his sanity are returned to their rightful forms.

What everyone seems to be forgetting, however, is that Tharnn, while still in his right mind, is the one who killed an innocent man to possess the staff in the first place. He has a good deal of penance to do, no doubt, before he's crossed off the villain list prematurely.

BONUS!

Look what youngster wrote into The Champions to offer advice on their lineup!

Mr. Busiek would have been all of sixteen years of age when he penned this. (Sadly, he received no response from Marvel on his letter to the editor.)