Brandy Selby

Origin

Because Brandy’s parents were unemployed Earthlings, they took jobs as illegal migrant workers in Shi’ar territory. Her parents were separated by their employers, and her pregnant mother, Suzanne, was eventually arrested for being an illegal alien.

While being transported to prison, the White Event occurred, granting the Star Brand to Suzanne, at the same time she went into labor. She used the power to escape prison and accidentally destroy a number of planets. When she finally gave birth, Suzanne died and passed the brand on to her new baby girl. The Avengers, responding to the destroyed planets, would volunteer to take custody of the baby, impulsively naming her Brandy.

Creation

Brandy was created by Jason Aaron and Ed McGuinness in Avengers (2018) #3. Aaron’s Avengers missions related to years of manipulations from Mephisto related to the oldest legacy mantles on Earth, and the Star Brand was the second to last one to become active.

Major Story Arcs

The Age of Khonshu

With the last heroic mantle, the Phoenix Force, on it way to Earth, Khonshu instructed his guardian, Moon Knight, to magically take control of the six other mantles. Khonshu did not trust the powers that be to take on Mephisto with their current chosen hosts. With new upgraded enchanted weaponry, Moon Knight was able to steal the power of four of them. Thus, Iron Man and Captain Marvel grabbed Brandy and went on the run.

Iron Man almost gave Brandy to Moon Knight after having a vision of what Mephisto had planned. However, he fought the temptation and trusted Brandy’s well-being exclusively to Danvers. They travel to space where they thought Moon Knight couldn’t follow. At the same time, back on Earth, Moon Knight loses trust in Khonshu and drops his crusade. This forces Khonshu to use the powers of the stolen mantles to chase Brandy into space himself.

After disconnecting from Khonshu, Moon Knight is temporarily chosen by the Phoenix Force to protect the legacy powers. Using the Force, he catches up to Khonshu and strips him of the mantles, allowing them to return to their previous guardians. After which, The Phoenix releases Moon Knight in search of a more permanent guardian, and The Avengers are able to return to Avengers Mountain with Brandy, now out of danger.

Heroes Reborn

One day, Brandy awoke in an alternate reality floating in space. This new reality was caused by Agent Coulson using powers granted to him by Mephisto. He remade the world so that the Squadron Supreme were Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and the Avengers never experienced the secret origins that made them superheroes. Without the Avengers, Brandy was never recovered from space.

Instead, she was found by Rocket and Groot, who raised her. Between mercenary missions, they would help Brandy train her new powers, and, as a result, she developed an aggressive attitude not unlike Rocket’s.

When Rocket was hired to kill Doctor Spectrum, Brandy was able to share her power with him when it looked like he was losing. This wasn’t enough sadly, and Spectrum killed Rocket. Brandy wanted to follow Spectrum to Earth and get her revenge. On her way, she was found by a Wakandan spaceship, which brought her to Black Panther. Soon after, Blade, who remembered the old world, showed up to Wakanda with the teammates he was able to inspire to take up the fight.

Unfortunately, Coulson and the Squadron followed them to Wakanda, as well. They were pretty evenly matched, but the combined power of Brandy’s Starbrand and Echo‘s Phoenix Force were enough to disrupt Coulson’s pandemonium cube (the source of power Mephisto gave him). This caused it and Coulson to get pulled back to hell, returning reality to how it was.

One side effect was Brandy kept her development from the previous reality. She remained at her toddler age with a bad Rocket-like attitude and some control over her abilities.

Judgment Day

The Eternal Druig goes public with plans to exterminate mutants, believing them to be related to the Deviants. After sending assassins after The Five and the mutant stronghold on Mars, The Avengers team up with a splinter group of Eternals and their captive Mr. Sinister to resurrect the Celestial being used as Avengers Mountain to put an end to the conflict. While Captain America leads a ground team to help the mutants and contain collateral damage. Stark, Sinister, and the Eternals successfully get The Progenitor revived. However, this backfires when The Progenitor decides to judge the entire planet, human, Eternal, and mutant alike, forcing them to justify their continued existence.

Because Brandy is so new to life and her powers, she is given a rather simple test. For what is only seconds in the real world, Brandy is moved to a dimension made of shredded tears to fight an aspect of a dungeon god. She performs adequately, so Progenitor passes her.

The Great Multiversal Polaris

Since she had been cooped up in Avengers Mountain for so long, Captain America and Carol Danvers decided to get Brandy a little air. After supporting Captain America at the funeral of a WWII veteran, they visited Brandy’s mothers house. Cap told her the story of her family immigrating for a better life and her mother fighting to keep her safe, inspiring Brandy. However, they were interrupted by time travelling Deathloks that tried to warn them of the coming Death Hunters, overpowered variants of the Masters of Evil.

When they were attacked by a Venom-wearing Red Skull and a Norman Osborn possessed by the Spirit of Vengeance, Brandy released a lot of power causing her to age up yet again. Upon returning to Avenger Mountain and comparing notes with their teammates, they realized that Mephisto must be traveling the timestream to stop the heroic legacies from making it to the modern era. The Avengers would go into the timestream to secretly protect them, however, they initially left Brandy behind due to her age. The Celestial at the heart of Avengers Mountain teleported her with the Avengers anyway, knowing she would be needed.

During this trip through the timestream, Brandy was very weary about her place on the team and her own mortality, recognizing the toll the Star Brand was having on her body. It wasn’t until she came across the very first Starbrand, a dinosaur, who asked Brandy what the future was like, did she realize that she never bothered to learn. Motivated to grow closer to her teammates, Brandy found something worth fighting for and unleashed on Mephisto. The release of energy aged her even more but also connected the Avengers to the genesis point of superhumans, uniting them with the Avengers 1,000,000 B.C. at the exact moment they were confronting Mephisto’s Masters of Evil.

The God Quarry

Together, the two Avengers groups teamed up against the multiversal Masters. However, Doom used this fight as a distraction to sneak away and unite with an army of his own variants, which he planned to lead on The God Quarry. In defense, Avenger Prime, a sorcerer supreme variant of Loki, cast a spell bringing Brandy and the other Avengers to The God Quarry as part of a multiversal army of Avengers to stand guard.

An army of Dooms wanted to take control of Loki’s Avengers Tower, but Mephisto wanted to break through the barrier of the quarry to the raw energy leftover by the previous cosmos. After helping Robbie Reyes reignite his powers, he was able to weld the hole shut that Mephisto made to let the energy through. With the day saved, many of the multiversal Avengers were left homeless. Brandy and Firehair agreed that the combined power of the Phoenix Force and the Star Brand could resurrect these lost worlds as they had done when Coulson tried re-writing Earth-616.

Doing so caused both of them to make the ultimate sacrifice. Brandy was memorialized with an ice sculpture at the North Pole, where Avengers Mountain once stood.

Character Profile

• Height: Variable
• Weight: Variable
• Eye Color: Blue
• Hair Color: Blonde
• Citizenship: American
• Place of Birth: Space
• Marital Status: Single
• Occupation: Adventurer
• Known Relatives: Suzanne Selby (mother, deceased), unnamed father.
• Distinguishing Features: Star Brand insignia on her hand. Ages rapidly.

Powers

Star Brand: The energy of the Star Brand increases Brandy’s strength, speed, and stamina.

• Energy Manipulation: Brandy can absorb and channel energy. She uses this to fire energy blasts, fly, and survive in the void of space.
• Power Enhancement: Brandy is capable to sharing the power of the Star Brand.
• Creation: When she combines her powers with The Phoenix Force, they are capable of divine creation.
• Weakness: Every major release of her energy causes her to exponentially age.