Hercules (Marvel)

Hercules is the son of Zeus, king of the Olympian gods, and Alcmena. Zeus seduced Alcmena in the guise of her husband, King Amphitryon of Troezen.

Thanks to Zeus's enchantment, Hercules was born with the potential for extraordinary superhuman strength, which he first displayed before he was even one year old by strangling two serpents which attacked him (sent by Hera).

Hercules had many notable adventures in ancient times.

He sailed with the Argonauts (with them he may have battled the Akaana), faced the Hydra, saw the death of Medusa, and defeated Antaeus.

As an adult, Hercules was best known for his celebrated Twelve Labors, which were performed in part to prove his worthiness for immortality to Zeus. (One of these Labors, the cleansing of the Augean Stables, was actually performed by the Eternal called the Forgotten One, a fellow future Avenger who was sometimes mistaken for Hercules.)

In the course of these Labors, Hercules provoked the wrath of three immortals who remain his enemies to this day.

By slaughtering the man-eating Stymphalian Birds, he enraged the war god Ares, to whom they were sacred.

In temporarily capturing Cerberus, the three-headed hound that serves as guardian to the Olympian underworld, Hercules offended Pluto, the lord of that realm.

By killing the Nemean Lion, the Hydra and other creatures spawned by the inconceivably grotesque and powerful monster Typhoeus, Hercules gained the bitter enmity of Typhon, the immortal humanoid offspring of Typhoeus and a Titaness.

However, it was the centaur Nessus who caused Hercules' mortal demise. Nessus kidnapped Hercules' wife Deianeira, whereupon Hercules shot him with an arrow.

Feigning a wish to make amends, the dying centaur told Deianeira how to make a love charm from his allegedly enchanted blood, aware that it was now tainted with the lethal blood of the Hydra, in which Hercules had dipped his arrows.

Some time after Nessus' death, Deianeira, distraught over her husband's latest infidelity, rubbed the supposed love charm into Hercules' shirt.

When he wore the shirt, he was plunged into unspeakable agony and had to burn himself in a funeral pyre to end his suffering.

Zeus then intervened, consuming the pyre with his thunderbolts and bringing Hercules to Olympus to be made a true immortal. A

lthough Hercules himself has told different versions on how he obtained immortality but all of them contained Nessus' deceit and the arrows with the Hydra's blood.

Now a full god, Hercules took his place as god of strength.

In an attempt to reconcile with Hera, he married Hebe.

However, like his father, Hercules is a notorious ladies' man.

This is compounded with a curse of Hera's that threatens any mortal woman he becomes too involved with.

Later, Hercules led time-traveling soldiers against Vikings, bringing him into conflict with Thor.

In recent years, the Asgardian witch called the Enchantress hoped to gain revenge on her enemies, the hero team called The Avengers.

She mesmerized Hercules and set him to attack the team, but the Avenger Hawkeye managed to free him from his thrall and the Enchantress was routed.

However, Hercules was exiled from Olympus by Zeus as punishment for his unauthorized excursion to Earth.

The Avengers housed Hercules as their guest for months, and he often assisted them in their adventures.

He was eventually made an official member of the team, but he returned to Olympus with the Avengers to rescue the other Olympians from the vengeful Typhon.

Afterward, Hercules elected to remain on Olympus with Zeus's blessing.

Later, the Olympian god Ares hoped to incite war among Olympus and Asgard, and eventually Earth.

Ares turned all the Olympian gods to crystal, and, as Hercules was unaffected by being only half-god, Ares' agents beat him severely and abandoned him on Earth.

Hercules remained amnesiac for many weeks, until he was discovered by Hawkeye and returned to the Avengers.

With the Avengers' aid, the plot was uncovered and Ares was stopped.

Hercules and his teammate, the Asgardian thunder-god Thor, sealed the access to both worlds.

Hercules continued to occasionally interact with Earth, as was the case with his helping found the short-lived West Coast super-team called the Champions of Los Angeles after they had helped him and Venus thwart a plot by Pluto to force him into marriage with Hippolyta and invade Olympus.

While on this team, Hercules began a relationship with his team leader, the Black Widow.

It did not last long, but the two remained on good terms afterward.

He also kept in touch with the Avengers, assisting them in reserve capacity against menaces such as Korvac the Enemy.

Eventually, Hercules rejoined the Avengers on a full-time basis.

When the Avengers' mansion headquarters was invaded by Baron Helmut Zemo's Masters of Evil, Hercules, intoxicated, ignored orders from The Wasp and Captain America, attacking the conquered mansion by himself.

He was beaten so severely by a contingent of Masters that he was left near death, in a coma.

The Wasp and Ant-Man (Scott Lang) were only barely able to repulse a Masters assault by Absorbing Man and Titania on his hospital room.

Afterwards, Zeus arranged for Hercules to be returned to Olympus, and in revenge, ordered the imprisonment of the Avengers in Hades.

The Avengers escaped to confront Zeus directly, but they were saved only by the intervention of Hercules, who had made a recovery and convinced his father the Avengers were not to blame.

Nevertheless, Zeus ordered that Hercules remain in Olympus forever.

It was not long, however, until Hercules disobeyed his father, returning to Earth when the Avengers required help against the villainous High Evolutionary, who misguidedly hoped to forcibly jumpstart humankind's evolution.

In the final battle, Hercules was attached to a machine that would "evolve" him to a superior state than that of the Evolutionary.

Instead, the device jumpstarted the Evolutionary's physiology as well, evolving both to a state beyond godhood, and the two dissipated from Earth's plane.

In reality, the two were captured by the enigmatic beings known as the Celestials and held prisoner in the so-called Black Galaxy.

Thor and his friend, Eric Masterson, discovered their fate during an adventure at the High Evolutionary's citadel, Wundagore.

Both Masterson and Thor helped rescue the two, and Hercules, Thor, and Masterson returned to Earth, while the High Evolutionary turned Wundagore into a spaceship and returned to the Black Galaxy.

Hercules, Thor, and Masterson were then viciously attacked by Mongoose using weapons he had stolen from Wundagore.

Mongoose almost killed Thor using a powerful energy beam. Masterson took a killing blow for Thor, giving Thor and Hercules a chance to defeat Mongoose.

Unfortunately, Masterson was dying from his wounds, which led Thor and Masterson to be merged together.

Hercules remained on hand to help his friends, and he would also return to the Avengers shortly afterwards, becoming an active reserve member during the UN reorganization of the team.

He soon became a full member during an absence of Thor.

During Operation Galactic Storm, Hercules was part of Captain America's team bound for the Kree Empire.

At the conclusion of the mission, he was part of the group that followed Iron Man to execute the Supreme Intelligence of the Kree, a move against both Avengers policy and Captain America's orders.

Hercules was soon confronted by Zeus, and they had a falling out over Hercules' apparent preference for the mortal world.

Punishing his son, Zeus stripped him of his immortality and much of his godly power, exiling him once more.

The traumatized Hercules drew emotional support from the Avengers, especially Deathcry, whom he later aided in returning to her alien Shi'ar homeworld.

On returning to Earth, though, Hercules discovered to his horror that most of the Avengers were missing and presumed dead after their battle with the psychic menace of Onslaught.

A despairing Hercules succumbed to alcoholism and was no help in trying to hold together the group, which soon disbanded.

Hercules began to wander in search of new adventures, serving briefly with the corporate super-team Heroes for Hire.

When the supposedly dead Avengers returned from their Onslaught disappearance, Hercules joined many of the other Avengers in reorganizing the team, though he has opted to remain an inactive member rather than rejoining the active roster.

Also during this time, Hercules sought out one of those responsible for his coma, the villain Goliath who had become the hero Atlas.

The resulting battle was cut short by Hawkeye (then posing as Dreadknight of the Thunderbolts), who convinced Hercules to stand down, at the cost of the two's friendship.

Hercules continued to aid the Avengers on an as-needed basis, such as helping them against the villainous Exemplars and when the time-traveling Kang nearly conquered the world.

He was one of the Avengers present in response to the Code White call when the Scarlet Witch had her breakdown that disassembled the Avengers.

Hercules considered Thor both a great ally and a rival.

They fought alongside one another many times against many foes and was angry that Thor's and Asgard's disappearance were largely forgotten in light of the Scarlet Witch's insanity.

To reaffirm himself, he accepted a challenge of completing a more modern Twelve Labors, which included capturing a Doombot and grounding the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier.

When the Superhuman Registration Act was enacted, Hercules joined Captain America's Secret Avengers, opposing the Act and Iron Man's Pro-Registration Superhero Unit.

He helped play a leadership role in the anti-registration movement during the resultant Civil War.

His most significant act during the final battle is using the Thor clone's own hammer against itself, declaring, "Thou art no Thor."

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