Drax the Destroyer

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Background

Powers and Abilities

Drax may now be mentally diminished, but his physical power and durability are colossal. He is also subconsciously accessing the might of the Power Gem in his stomach, drawing additional strength from it.

The Destroyer can now fight Thor or Hulk toe-to-toe and win. Trying to bring down the Destroyer using brute force is futile — he *is* brute force — though Thor both enhanced with the Power Gem and maddened by a particularly toxic berserker rage could knock Drax out, as did Odin himself.

Drax, unenhanced by the Power Gem, could lift Mjolnir, but couldn’t use it.

Drax now breathes, eats, sleeps, etc. like a living being, since he usually forgets that he doesn’t have to do that. He never uses his telepathy, and seldom remembers to use his special senses or his energy blasts.

Though he performs very well in combat even against master fighters, Drax is otherwise as clumsy as any 5-year old.

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It’s not easy being green

Drax’s stats, personality, etc. are stable from 1990 to 1995. These are what is described in the main sections of this writeup, and this is when the large majority of his appearances during this era takes place.

Between 1995 and 2005 Drax has fewer appearances and is in a state of flux. See our game stats for a discussion of his abilities during this decade.

History

In 1990, Thanos returned. His plan was to eradicate half of all living beings as a present to Death. The astral demigod Kronos took action – he pried the soul of Arthur Douglas from its resting place and formed a new body for it. The Destroyer was back.

Kronos made Drax even more powerful this time, to partially catch up with Thanos. However, Douglas’s mentality was severely damaged from the telepathic attack that had caused his death. Drax the Destroyer was now a particularly dumb brute with very little initiative, the smarts of a 5-year old, attention deficit issues, no social skills, etc.

He remained committed to stalking Thanos, but lacked the intellectual means or concentration to do so.

(There are hints that Kronos had planted something within Drax that gradually repaired his psyche. These clues are mostly visible in retrospect, after the Destroyer’s resurrection in 2005. Since fixes attempted before the 2005 revival did not take (as recounted below) it is likely that a real, sustainable cure required 15 years of gradual rebuilding even with Kronos’s power.)

(One hypothesis is that during this era the Destroyer is animated by a limited simulacrum of his consciousness. His real self is “underneath”, being resurrected by Kronos’s astral energies. Howbeit, though coherent, this is almost entirely unsupported.)

Unable to process the input from his special senses, the resurrected Drax went to Titan  to ask Mentor where Thanos was. Having a surly brute ask about Thanos 11 times a minute was not pleasing to the Eternals of Titan (who did not have the answer), but thankfully the Silver Surfer was also there.

Soul with a capital S

The Destroyer sensed that the silvery alien had been in recent contact with Thanos and would meet him again soon. He thus doggedly stuck with him. The Surfer eventually got rid of Drax by sitting in front of an Earth telly until the Destroyer was mesmerised by the shows. The Surfer then discreetly left.

Drax eventually tore himself from the TV and returned to Titan. Though the Surfer brought the apparent corpse of Thanos, Drax was not fooled and, stating that Thanos was still alive, left to search at random. Somehow, he found proof that Thanos was not dead and convinced the Eternals of Titan and the Surfer that he was correct.

The Destroyer had no clue as to what to do next, though.

It was Thanos who summoned the Surfer and the Destroyer, showing them the immense power of his Infinity Gems before sucking their souls into the Soul Gem.

Unbeknownst to Thanos, this meant that Drax and the Surfer were taken to the Soul World, a dimension within the Gem. There existed the essence of many people — including cosmic hero Adam Warlock and his friends Gamora and Pip. The Surfer eventually convinced Warlock to return to the mortal world.

Meanwhile, sensing the presence of Thanos everywhere in the Soul World (since Thanos now held the Soul Gem), Drax decided to destroy everything. Adam Warlock took him down, then returned Drax and the Surfer to the real world, promising the Surfer that he would intervene when needed.

Infinity Crises

The Destroyer was sent by the Surfer to Titan to warn the Eternals… and completely forgot what he was supposed to announce. Drax would subsequently be involved in a long succession of events – Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity War, Infinity Crusade.

The dumb-as-a-plank green giant sailed through these oft-apocalyptic events with but the dimmest comprehension of what was going on, siding with whoever was fighting Thanos.

At the conclusion of the Infinity Gauntlet crisis, Thanos was reported dead. Drax stayed on Titan as a full-time couch potato, his only activity being to watch ALF  on TV.

The Destroyer was then recruited by Adam Warlock to guard the Power Gem. Among Warlock’s oddball choices for protecting the Infinity Gems was Moondragon, though the Destroyer did not remember that she was his daughter.

Thinking that the Power Gem was a jelly bean, Drax ingested it. It remained safely in his inert stomach. However, Warlock’s weird recruitment decisions soon came to haunt him, as one of his nemesis, the Man-Beast, defeated most guardians and gained access to their Gems.

After defeating the Man-Beast, Warlock changed his approach and had the guardians operate as a group – the Infinity Watch. A silent member of the Watch was Thanos, but the confused and malleable Drax was easily convinced his job was no longer to kill him.

He would remember from time to time that he was meant to, but could not hold a coherent train of thought for long enough for it to become a problem.

The Infinity Watch assembled

Moondragon was uncomfortable about her father. She suspected that her fatal mental attack back on Ba-Bani was the reason for his current retardation, accidentally reminded Drax about his first death. Confused, the Destroyer flew to Nevada and visited Arthur Douglas’ favourite places.

He eventually remembered that he liked music and to play the sax, but locals confused him with the Hulk and this led to a showdown with the jade giant.

Since a fight between the two green titans would raze Reno, the Hulk convinced Drax to stop ’playing‘ at fighting him and to be more careful about not wrecking things. Faintly remembering his life, Drax kept the saxophone that the Hulk gave him to pacify him, and unexpectedly regained his skills as a sax player – sounding more soulful than when he was alive.

During the Infinity Crusade, Drax got into a fight with an insane Thor. The brutal fight wasn’t conclusive, but Thor’s psychic state worsened and resulted in a second fight. After a hammer blow to the abdomen had Drax spit the Power Gem out, Thor donned the Gem.

The Infinity Watch and its allies embarked on a quest in Asgard to cure the mad thunder god — and got the Gem back.

Warlock then decided that Drax would keep the Gem in a more secure way. What he meant is unrevealed, but some panels imply that the Gem was now somehow held within Drax’s head.

Within and without the Infinity Watch

Drax continued to accompany the Infinity Watch through a number of adventures he understood little about. These included a new clash with the Man-Beast and a war against Count Abyss. The Destroyer was also defied by the Champion of the Universe, who wanted the Power Gem back, but Drax easily won.

By this point, most infinity Watch members were tired of having a bumbling, childish giant in their hair. Feeling rejected, the Destroyer made brief attempts at striking out on his own.

Drax thus briefly lived at the Stockade, a very high-security space prison — though he mostly stayed in his room to watch cartoons. He had been recruited as last recourse of the security force, and was activated when Cuchulain the Irish Wolfhound started a brawl in the warden’s office.

Drax was told that Cuchulain had cut the TV off and had gloated that Drax would never watch cartoons again. The Destroyer angrily attacked the Irish Wolfhound until he was distracted and his foe left.

Drax returned to the Watch, but his teammates still had little time for him. That made the lonely Destroyer cry. Moved by these tears, 4 humanoids of Monster Island became his friends. When the Watch found themselves in a bind as they clashed with Tyrannus, the Destroyer and his “monster squad” saved the day. The monsters left as Drax rejoined the Watch.

Drax was also briefly summoned by Anthony Druid to join his Secret Defenders. They opposed the coming of Slorioth, a Lovecraftian horror. The Destroyer fought alongside Deathlok (Michael Collins) and Dagger (Tandy Bowen). He clashed with a past version of himself, then with the savage Hulk who had been pulled from the 1970s.

After Slorioth was stopped Drax returned to Monster Island and the Watch. He assisted in such adventures as the clash against the space empire of Domitian.

There were other attempts to steal the Gems — one by the magical construct Strange, and one by the vampire Rune — but those were ultimately foiled by Adam Warlock. However, while Warlock was tracking Rune down the Watch broke up.

Drax stayed at the bedside of the critically wounded Moondragon. Though he wasn’t sure why he liked her, the Destroyer started dimly remembering that her name was Heather and that she had long black hair when she was a little girl.

Sensing that Drax was slowly recovering his memories and feeling increasingly guilty over seeing her father so mentally diminished, Moondragon took him on the astral plane. She confronted Kronos there, and demanded that he fix her father. Kronos denied her and vanquished her, enraging Drax who attacked his creator.

Kronos relented, and said he would heal them both if they gave him some of their power to help him do so. Drax thus recovered much of his intelligence at the cost of some of his strength.

Transitions

These changes didn’t quite stick. Perhaps it happened too early. Over the following years, Draw would slowly decay back toward his “musclebound oaf” state. While he was still mentally capable, Drax apparently travelled the cosmos alone.

Syphonn, a menace from the Negative Zone, then framed the Destroyer for several murders – including that of Elysius on Titan. Warlock, Pip and Gamora confronted Drax, but soon realised he wasn’t aware of these deaths.

Syphonn then mind-controlled the Destroyer into opening a warp to the Negative Zone, but Warlock broke his control. Joined by Legacy (Genis Vell), the foursome stopped Syphonn’s alliance of Negative Zone conquerors. Drax himself faced the immense power of Blastaar. The Destroyer then resumed his solitary wandering.

Kronos’s cure was now clearly fraying. Drax realised that he was getting dumber, larger and stronger. He came back to Titan, hoping that Mentor and Moondragon could help. By the time he arrived he regressed to being surly, with an IQ around 80 and the manners of a self-centred brute.

He came to resent his daughter and Mentor for being unable to help him. He violently demanded that Moondragon’s attention be focused on him at all times so she would fix him.

Infinitesimally small

The Destroyer clashed with Genis-Vell (now Captain Marvel) during one of his tantrums. They accidentally ended up in the Microverse. Landing on the world of K’ai, the surly Drax was mistaken for the Hulk, who had once been a king there.

The confused Destroyer met one Visalia — allegedly the sister of the late Jarella, who had once been Hulk’s queen. This was a lie (as any fool who read the OHOTMU  knows, Jarella has no sister !), but Visalia had mental manipulation powers.

She used these to both convince Drax to be her pet warrior and to raise his intelligence, albeit the latter was hard to maintain.

At Moondragon’s request, Captain Marvel fought to get Drax free. He was joined in his struggle by Visalia’s enemies the Microns (formerly the Micronauts). The Microns convinced the addled Drax that Visalia was using him, and he clobbered her.

Some of the enhancements Visalia had planted to make Drax smarter apparently stuck for a while. The Destroyer chose to join the Microns to help them while he still could.

However, some odd property of the Microverse ended up increasing Drax’s intelligence. Though his body returned to the “musclebound oaf” stage, this effect more than compensated for the attendant loss of intellect. During this era, the Destroyer was both smart and immensely strong.

His adventures with the heroic Microns (at that point Arcturus Rann, Marionette and Bug) are undocumented.

Drax then uncharacteristically experienced a panic attack, fleeing from his fellow Microns. This was a manipulation on the part of a Microverse criminal mastermind, the Psycho-Man, who was looking for a force strong enough to open a sort of invulnerable cocoon that had come in his possession.

After emotionally torturing Drax, the Psycho-Man had the Destroyer tear the cocoon open. This revealed Genis-Vell’s evil future twin clone brother (or something close to that), Fredd. Drax was sent after the Microns by the 2 villains, but his allies snapped him out of his altered emotional state.

Uncertain wanderings

In 2004 the Destroyer was spotted as one of the fighters who met the Champion of the Universe (now wielding the Power Gem) in combat. He lost. Warlock and Gamora were also seen during those bouts — one may imagine that Warlock summoned Drax from the Microverse to deal with the Champion.

The intellect that Drax had gained in the Microverse quickly dispersed. By the time he fought the Champion of the Universe, the Destroyer had reverted to a level of intelligence and strength similar to the one he had when he joined the Infinity Watch.

The increasingly dumb and violent Destroyer was accused by the Nova Corps of the destruction of a Skull colony, killing 200,000. It is possible that it was the result of an accident involving the Destroyer’s barely controlled strength. The Nova Corps somehow imprisoned Drax, and he was put aboard a correctional vessel to be shipped off to the Kyln space prison.

However the vessel was old and poorly-maintained, and crashed in Alaska during its flight. Presumably its flight plan involved the major stargate in Earth’s solar system.

There was but a handful of survivors — the 5 most dangerous prisoners, kept in the most heavily-armoured section of the prison ship. Those were Lunatik, Paibok (aka the Power Skrull), the two Blood Brothers and Drax the Destroyer.

Cammi

Drax stupidly drunk from the plasma spill in the singularity drive. He survived this — which would have killed practically any other living being — but the plasma had strange effects on his intellect, strength and durability.

As he got into a brawl with the Blood Brothers, his opponents had the impression that he was getting smarter, but that soon faded.

During the fight, Drax stumbled upon a local called Cammi. Seeing a human little girl brought back painful memories of his daughter Heather, and from there of Moondragon and Thanos. Cammi goaded Drax into resuming the fight with the Blood Brothers, but Paibok had Lunatik murder Drax while he was distracted.

Cammi unilaterally claimed ownership of the corpse. She bullshitted the Blood Brothers into carrying the corpse to her house. The Brothers eventually realised that they had been duped, and dropped the corpse on the side of a nearby river as they left.

As Cammi investigated “her” alien corpse, it started giving off a thick smoke. Its skin looked like it was cooking, becoming akin to ceramic. Hours passed as the bored Cammi watched.

She was still there when something within the corpse started hitting the hardened envelope to burst free.

Description

See illustrations.

Personality

During much of this era, Drax is mentally diminished. His reasoning, memory and concentration are extremely clouded. He lost 15 games of chess in a row… to a Moloid. Sometimes the Destroyer will inexplicably remember about Thanos and become furious, then lose track of his train of thought and calm down.

Drax has practically no capacity for planning or analysis. His attention span is that of a guppy. While he’s not deliberately violent, he’s easily provoked. He remembers that he used to be very angry all the time, but now he’s just very confused, with a very low frustration threshold.

Brawling is mostly a game to him. Though he will utter threats he almost immediately forgets about them and will seldom fight to kill. It is entirely possible to convince Drax that a brutal fight was just playing, and he was once distracted away from a big brawl because he wanted to go swim with dolphins.

The brain damage also had regressive effects. Drax has many of the interests and emotions of a 5-year old. In particular he’s a huge ALF fan, endlessly watching reruns – though he likes pretty much any cartoon series or other children television show.

He likes eating sweets, skipping stones (well, boulders) over water, building huge sand castles, and the like. He will find almost any kind of pyrotechnics “pretty”, regardless of circumstances.

Drax is awful with names more than two syllables long. Moondragon is “Moonlady” (or “bald lady”), Wolverine is “the Badger”, Iron Man is “Iron Pan”, the Silver Surfer is “Surf”, etc. Even the Hulk is occasionally “the Bulk”, and Gamora often ends up being “green lady”.

Drax tends to assume other green humanoids are his friends, since he’s green too.

In the last weeks of the Infinity Watch, Drax occasionally said something sensible. Moondragon suspected that his brain was slowly, irregularly fixing itself. He once intervened to break a verbal fight between Gamora and Maxam by telling them it was bad for team morale, and later decided that he wanted to adopt a puppy since he wanted to have responsibilities.

He also started getting protective of Moondragon, which greatly worried her as she feared he would remember she had killed him.

Quotes

“Where is Thanos ? Where ? WHERE ?”

“Drax not like nuisances ! ’specially when they keep me from thinking. Thinking’s hard. Now what was Destroyer thinking about ? Something to do with this world. That’s right ! Drax was going to destroy it ! Smash it ! But can”t remember why. Why not important. If Destroyer decide world must be smashed, world gets totalled. That’s that.”

(Weeping) “Destroyer… sorry… got… bad head now… don’t work right…”

“Not understand…”

“Where ALF go ? Want ALF back.”

“Has Drax met bald lady before ? Something familiar…”

“The Destroyer runs from no one !” (huge blast)

“Why green lady always hitting Drax ?”

“No one ever beat Drax, ’cept maybe Thanos.”

(Attacking Thor) “Drax show you he’s as tough as any sissy in a funny hat !”

“Drax not ugly ! Drax not monster ! You take that back !” (WHROOM !!)

“Ooooh — pretty costume !” (sees unconscious comrades, thinks…) “Heeeey — why’s everyone sleeping on the floor ?” (thinks…) “You — you’re the bad man !” (KRUNKCH !)

By Sébastien Andrivet.

Source of Character: Marvel Universe.

Helper(s): Darci.