Origin
Nothing has been revealed of the early years of King Hyperion. He is an insane superhuman heralding from the alternate Earth-4023. King Hyperion attempted to take control of the planet by force, and though Earth’s greatest heroes and the military stood against him, one-by-one or in groups, they all fell before him, even powerhouses such as Thor and Hercules died by his hand. When all was said and done, Hyperion stood triumphant over Humanity and proclaimed himself God-Emperor of Earth. However, his victory would be short lived, the remaining world leaders decided that they would rather die than serve as Hyperion’s slaves, so they detonated several nuclear war heads, which left Hyperion as the only survivor.
Creation
King Hyperion is an alternate version of the Hyperion, created by Roy Thomas and John Buscema. King Hyperion was created by Chuck Austen and Jim Calafiore and made his first appeared in Exiles #38.
Major Story Arcs
The Age Of Hyperion
King Hyperion attempted to take control of the Earth through force, Earth’s heroes and the worlds military forces all fall before him. King Hyperion proclaimed himself the supreme ruler of the Earth, however, his victory did not last long, deciding they would rather die than serve as Hyperion’s slaves the Leaders of Men ignited a Nuclear Holocaust that wiped out every living thing on the planet…except for Hyperion himself, leaving him the God-Emperor of nothing more than a radioactive dustball.
Second Chance
For years Hyperion remained all alone on the remains of his homeworld until one day fortune smiled upon him. A sixteen year-old version of Storm from Earth-23895 perished during an incident involving the Bruce Banner of another reality, needing a replacement The Timebreakers pulled Hyperion out of Earth-4023 and gave him Storm’s spot on the dimension-hopping team of superhumans called Weapon X. His first mission as a member of the team was to seek out the ten remaining Mutants on an Earth where Humanity had used Project: Wideawake to destroy it’s Heroes, Mutants and Superhuman alike, though Hyperion had other concerns.
Hyperion had no intention of following The Timebreakers orders and began to plot his next move. During this time, Hyperion begins a romantic relationship with his fellow team-mate Ms. Marvel, who had became immediately attracted to him from the moment he had joined the team. Ms. Marvel practically threw herself at Hyperion, and he started making love with her only seconds after fully realizing she was coming onto him. Following Hyperion and Ms. Marvel’s romantic interlude, Hyperion discovered Kitty Pryde hiding in a closet. He tried to hide her away from Colossus but Kitty, who had mistaken the Weapon X Colossus for her Earth’s version of him, phased through Hyperion and embraced him. Hyperion was able to keep Colossus from killing Kitty, who was initially perplexed by Hyperion’s actions until Hyperion told her what he had planned for this world. Instead of following the directives given to them by The Timebreakers, Hyperion and the others decided to take this Earth as their own, the Vision tried to oppose Hyperion’s plans but was destroyed in the process. Weapon X’s Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel almost immediately attached themselves to Hyperion and became his most faithful allies while Gambit and Colossus decided that it would be best just to follow his lead for now.
Hyperion then set his plans into motion by taking out The Master Mold Computer Core which kept all of the Sentinels running and then proceeded to kill President Robert Kelly, Vice President Henry Peter Gyrich and General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross. At the same time, the Magneto of this Earth was preparing to destroy it by dropping a massive asteroid directly onto it. When Forge discovered that there were still Mutants and Superhumans left on the planet Magneto and his Brotherhood (Wolverine, Mystique, Iceman and Rogue) went to inspect the situation with Magneto saying that they would be rude not to offer their genetic equals a chance at survival and that they needed more people to wait on them hand and foot.
When Magneto and his subordinates reached the surface they came into direct conflict with Hyperion who they attempted to kill but failed miserably in the process. Their attack against him cost Wolverine and Mystique their lives and when Magneto outright refused to stop the asteroid from crashing to Earth Hyperion made his head implode leaving him with the problem of stopping the asteroid himself. Hyperion along with Ms. Marvel and his two newest followers Rogue and Iceman regrouped with the rest of The Weapon X team at the sanctuary this world’s Storm had constructed for herself and Vanisher as well as any other Mutants and Superhumans who rejected either Magneto or Charles Xavier‘s lies and were seeking refuge from The Sentinels. There he came up with a plan to stop the asteroid by having Rogue duplicate his abilities so that together they could force The Asteroid from colliding with the planet. Though Storm was reluctant to trust Hyperion, Gambit eventually convinced her to go to Asteroid M with him and the others while Hyperion and Rogue dealt with the asteroid that was spiraling down towards Earth.
It soon became clear however, that stopping the Asteroid would be an impossible task, even for him, the size of the extraterrestrial rock was just too much and the chunks that had been blasted off during his and Rogue’s attempts to burn it away using their heat vision powers, had already caused considerable damage to Earth’s surface. When Rogue began to feel Hyperion’s powers fading she tried reaching out to get another boost but Hyperion refused to let her touch him and simply abandoned her, where she was burned alive by the flames that were blaring off the asteroid.
As expected the asteroid slammed into Earth and wiped out the entire planet, Kitty, knowing that Hyperion was going to kill all of the remaining mutants now that conquering Earth was superfluous, tried to get Colossus to teleport back down to Earth with her in the hopes that The Morlock Tunnels or The Mole Man‘s Underground Sanctuaries had been unaffected by the impact and they could hide from Hyperion in them. But before they could reach a teleporter they were immediately confronted by Hyperion who entered Asteroid M through a hatch. Colossus tried to play stupid but Hyperion was easily able to see through his ruse.
Colossus, who had fallen in love with this world’s Kitty Pryde, refused to let Hyperion kill her and tried taking him out but Hyperion recovered from Colossus’ attack quickly and with a single blast of his heat-vision powers Hyperion sent both Colossus and Kitty flying out into the vacuum of space.
He then breached another wall, killed both Forge and Quicksilver and then both confronted his teammates along with the remaining mutants Iceman, Vanisher and Storm. Hyperion declared that this world was a lost cause and that they were moving onto the next one. While both Ms. Marvel and Spider-Man were relieved, Gambit was horrified and when Spider-Man fatally wounded Vanisher, he lashed out and turned against Hyperion and the others. Taking Vanisher with them, Gambit and Storm teleported to another part of Asteroid M before Hyperion or the others could cause them any harm. However, Hyperion had other matters to deal with, shortly after bringing Iceman down two new Weapon X recruits, The Hulk and Firestar, appeared and told Hyperion that The Timebroker was displeased with his actions. Hyperion merely shrugged both them off and led Weapon X on a manhunt to find Gambit, Storm and Vanisher. When they did find Vanisher he had already died from the wounds Spider-Man had inflicted upon him. Storm had asked Gambit to end her life so that Hyperion would not have a chance to get his hands on her. Despite Gambit’s reluctance to do so he granted her wish and by the time Hyperion and the rest of Weapon X found them Storm was dead. Hyperion congratulated Gambit for “coming to his senses,” he then remarked how interesting this whole adventure had been and said that on the bright side there were still other worlds out there for them to conquer.
A Blink in Time
Following their first mission Hyperion and Weapon X continued making their way from one universe to the next and in each one rather than trying to help fix those worlds problems, Hyperion and his subordinates Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel, attempted to conquer each one, thus resulting in the deaths of the heroes of that respective world. Gambit, Hulk and Firestar simply tried to complete the missions so that they could get closer and closer to going home. Later Gambit began tricking Hyperion into completing the missions for them in order to speed up the process but Hyperion saw what Gambit was trying to do and when Weapon X arrived on Earth-4440, he immediately turned on Gambit and blasted his arm off in an attempt to take the Tallus for himself. For The Hulk, harming Gambit was the last straw, he and Firestar both lashed out at Hyperion. Spider-Man and Ms. Marvel attempted to bring them down and end this madness but it was a futile effort. Hyperion proved to be too much for even Hulk to handle and they were both swiftly defeated while Gambit crawled away from the fight and made his way into the sewers.
This incident attracted the attention of Earth-4440’s heroes who tried to stop Hyperion’s rampage. Unfortunately not even the mightiest of heroes were capable of bringing him down and in only a matter of hours all of the heroes in New York City were dead. Some time later Hyperion destroyed all of the bridges leading into Manhattan Island and held everyone there hostage, on live television Hyperion made his demands known to U.S. President Norman Osborn and said that if they were not met soon he would kill 100 hostages. Hyperion’s assault on New York began prompting responses from superhumans and many World Leaders who were planning on invading America if they had to in order to stop Hyperion and if all else failed then it was agreed amongst many of these other nations like Russia, the U.K., North Korea, etc. that a Nuclear Strike would be in order. It was then that The Timebreakers realized that one of the two dimension-hopping teams would have to go because they had let the Hyperion incident spiral out of control for too long, and so The Timebreakers dispatched the Exiles to Earth-4440 and put them in a survival of the fittest-type situation that would not only result in the complete dismantling of one team but the deaths of six individuals as well. It was also learned that neither team would be given any replacements until only the final six remained standing and the mission to dismantle one of the teams was over.
Not wanting to be one of those who perished, Magik betrayed the Exiles and attempted to join forces with Hyperion. However he believed that, like Gambit, Illyana was only trying to use him and make a fool out of him. Enraged Hyperion began choking her, thinking that giving him helpful information would make him rethink her offer and spare her, Illyana told Hyperion about the new mission but instead of being allowed to live Hyperion tested Illyana’s “theory” on Illyana herself by snapping her neck and killing her. Hyperion then slaughtered The Hulk while Firestar died incinerating Spider-Man when he tried to kill her on his own. Enraged by Illyana’s death, the Exile known as Morph emerged from his hiding spot and attacked Hyperion with fellow Exiles member Mimic at his side. Hyperion easily made short work of Morph and then proceeded to fight Mimic who he nearly killed. Mimic however was saved thanks to Nocturne who took over the body of Heather Hudson (who had been injured by Illyana) in her Sasquatch form and distracted Hyperion long enough for Blink and Gambit to make their grand entrances. The assault was nearly a complete failure however as neither Blink nor Gambit were strong enough to physically take down Hyperion on their own, but when Hyperion approached a fallen Blink and attempted to incinerate her using his heat-vision powers she used a teleportation crystal to redirect the beam into Hyperion’s back. Hyperion collapsed to the ground and found that he was unable to move the lower half of his body. Gambit then came up to Hyperion from behind with Illyana’s magic sword in hand, told Blink to go, charged it up with as much power as he could muster and drove into into Hyperion’s back. The explosion that resulted from Hyperion’s death not only wiped out Hyperion and Gambit but it took Ms. Marvel with them as well leaving the Exiles the victors and Hyperion and Weapon X nothing more than a bad memory or so it was originally thought.
Timebreakers
For months The Timebroker’s mood, attitude and personality had shifted greatly and the nature of the Exiles’ mission were getting more and more dangerous. When Holocaust, the son of Apocalypse, was forcibly recruited onto the team he was so furious that he put aside his old qualms with his enemies Blink and Sabretooth and told them how they might be able to find The Timebroker. Holocaust led the Exiles to a facility where a shard of the M’Kraan Crystal was being held and by tapping into its power, Holocaust and the Exiles found themselves on a teleportation pad inside a massive crystal palace. After searching around they discovered that the entire place was being run by a race of an insectoids who would eventually come to be known as the Timebreakers. A race of insects who were being oppressed by the last person Blink ever thought she’d see again: Hyperion.
A madman she saw literally explode when Gambit drove Illyana’s sword into his back and die was alive once more and was in complete control over a facility that would allow him to influence events in any reality. In layman’s terms, Hyperion had hit the jackpot by taking control of this place following his resurrection. When Sabretooth and Holocaust inquired as to who Hyperion was, Blink explained to them what she could before Hyperion boldly proclaimed that soon every planet Earth in every universe that ever existed would have to get used to calling him God. This sent Holocaust into a rage and he attacked Hyperion without mercy, but his attack barely affected Hyperion at all and when Hyperion retaliated he easily killed Holocaust and absorbed his life-force by snorting it up through his nose.
With Holocaust dead, Blink knew that they were going to be next and teleported them as far as away from Hyperion’s current location so that they could regroup and come up with some sort of plan. Unfortunately, Hyperion was able to easily locate the Exiles wherever they went due to his intimate knowledge of The Crystal Palace’s layout. But when Hyperion came to confront the Exiles in the Desert Room where the original Exiles team had first been brought together he offered the Exiles a chance to conquer the Multiverse with him. Hyperion tried appealing to the true desires of everyone other than Blink and Morph but the offer was rescinded when Morph tried tricking Hyperion into believing he was Namora and that she was turning on the Exiles.
After striking Morph down with his heat vision, the true Namora attacked him which prompted a fight between the Exiles and Hyperion. A fight which left both Namora and Mimic in bad shape, meanwhile one of the Timebreaker Caste Drone Workers had freed the mutant known as Beak and told him that he was destined to defeat Hyperion.
Beak, who was nowhere near Hyperion’s level of power, panicked . He knew there was not an ice cube’s chance in Hell that he could possibly defeat Hyperion and then he stumbled upon view-screens that looked into other realities. While Hyperion continued pursuing the Exiles, Beak was traveling across the Multiverse seeking out allies strong enough to bring Hyperion down. Elsewhere, Hyperion had further injured Mimic and soon found himself under attack from Namora who snapped his neck and dragged him to the bottom of the Sea Room where the original Weapon X team had been brought together. Believing Hyperion to be dead Namora began ranting about how the easy part of conquest was killing those who stood in your way but that the hard part was maintaining control.
Hyperion, having awakened from his brief shock-induced coma, asked Namora if she had ever once in her life shut up. He then twisted his neck back around, popped it and incinerated Namora using his heat vision powers. The steam which erupted from the Sea Room burned Blink while she was trying to look for any sign of Namora. A figure soon emerged from the steam and when Blink asked if it was Namora, the figure revealed itself to be Hyperion. With Mimic in no condition to fight and Blink herself still trying to recover from the steam burns, all hope seemed lost and that is when Beak appeared with the only two men in The Multiverse who could stop Hyperion…which happened to be two other Hyperion’s.
After exchanging a few words King Hyperion and The Hyperion’s of Two Worlds went to war and shook the Crystal Palace to it’s very core as their epic battle progressed further and further. However for all their power, it seemed that even the combined might of two other Hyperions was almost not nearly enough to bring King Hyperion down. He threw them around with ease and while they did get a few good punches in he seemed to punch right back ten times harder and twenty times faster. Blink then came up with a plan that would hopefully not fail if executed correctly. After gathering the three Hyperions’ attention, Blink teleported them to the Desert Room where she used a teleportation crystal to teleport half a ton of sand inside of King Hyperion’s body, thus leaving him completely open to attack. Mimic, who had been left with The Timebreakers and Beak in the Main Control Room, watched in horror as The Hyperions of Two Worlds beat King Hyperion to death, having sworn long ago that he’d never allow another life to be taken. Mimic used The Timebroker interface that King Hyperion and The Timebreakers had been using to conduct The Exiles’ and Weapon X’s missions, to halt The Hyperions of Two Worlds vicious attack on King Hyperion, which left him unconscious, and proposed an alternative solution. When King Hyperion regained consciousness he found that The Exiles, The Timebreakers and The Hyperions of Two Worlds had imprisoned him on the one place he never wished to return to… Earth-4023. Even though King Hyperion begged and pleaded for them not to leave him on Earth-4023, his pleas went unheard and ever since that day King Hyperion has remained trapped on Earth-4023, left to ponder his horrific actions for all time.
The Escape
King Hyperion escaped from Earth-4023 through unknown means and found himself on Earth-616 after a string of universal conquests in various other realities. When the Winter Guard attempted to stop King Hyperion from taking control of Russia, he quickly defeated them all and told them that they would soon acknowledge him as their God…or else. When Uatu the Watcher learned of King Hyperion’s arrival, he alerted his old friend Adam Brashear, The Blue Marvel, to the threat Earth-616 was now faced with. Adam immediately ventured to Russia and engaged King Hyperion in battle, only to be promptly beaten down by the ex-God Emperor of Earth-4023. As the civilians of a small village ruined by the battle watched Hyperion thrash Adam, they began to view the long-forgotten superhero as yet another ungodly powerful villain seeking to destroy their lives and take over their country. The direction on their anger shifted when King Hyperion made the mistake of threatening the life of a little girl, Adam found the strength to get back onto his feet and bring the tyrant down by unleashing his anti-matter powers.
The Thunderbolts
It was later learned that King Hyperion had been imprisoned on The Raft following his fight with Blue Marvel and was about to be unleashed upon the world once more as a member of the Thunderbolts.
The notion of his freedom came about when Luke Cage developed a desire to have an extremely “talented” being on the team that could handle missions where not even the combined might of Moonstone and Juggernaut would be enough to end the conflicts that they would all face. In an “audition” tape being viewed by the Thunderbolts, King Hyperion claimed that he was actually a “good” Hyperion whom had been forced to switch places with his darker counterpart. Moonstone nor Ghost believed he was telling the truth, but Hyperion insisted that he wasn’t who they believed him to be and was allowed on the team. Their first mission together took them to the coast of Japan where several monsters were freed from their island prison by The Leader and MODOK’s “Scorched Earth” program, and were about to reach shore. King Hyperion immediately took command of the situation and issued out orders to the team before Cage could say anything and engaged one of the massive beasts in combat, which he swiftly defeated. However, the second proved to be too much for even King Hyperion to handle thanks to the unique paralysis effect its flame breath possessed. After having seemingly been put out of commission, the rest of the team deferred to Cage for orders and went off to fight the creatures. Later, while Mach-V and Cage were trying to escape from one of the creatures they found themselves being hit by a massive gust of wind, which sent them flying into the mouth of the very same creature they had sought to run from. The source of the gust was none other than King Hyperion who then proceeded to take out Songbird moments after she had saved an unconscious Moonstone from drowning. Following this little display of anti-heroics, King Hyperion became furious with the ever-silent Man-Thing when it stared at him disapprovingly and claimed that it had no right to “judge” him because he was actually King Hyperion. After dealing with Man-Thing, King Hyperion mused on how the Thunderbolts foolishly thought he as a candidate for redemption and prepared to leave, but not before taking Songbird’s Com-Link from her. When Juggernaut emerged from the pile of rubble one of the monsters attacking Japan had thrown him under, he found King Hyperion hovering in the air and messing around with the stolen Com-Link.
King Hyperion explained the fate of the other Thunderbolts save for Ghost, whom Hyperion never really cared about in the first place, to Juggernaut and pointed to the direction in which Moonstone and Songbird were drowning. While The Juggernaut went off to save the two damsels in distress, Hyperion continued to fidget with the Com-Link that even he could still not figure out how to work. After saving Moonstone and Songbird and leaving them in Ghost’s care, The Juggernaut confronted Hyperion, but by the time he got close enough to him Hyperion had figured out how to control each person’s individual nanites and gave Juggernaut the shock of his life. With the “unstoppable” behemoth down, Hyperion decided that it would be best to head elsewhere and figure out how to permanently shut down the nanites in his system later. Before he could leave, a revived Juggernaut grabbed King Hyperion by the leg and began slugging it out with the former god, but things soon turned in King Hyperion’s favor after he broke The Juggernaut’s leg by snapping his knee backwards with his foot and tore open his helmet using his heat vision. With the helmet off, King Hyperion began viciously beating Juggernaut but could not seem to make any real progress in damaging his head, whom the Juggernaut described himself as being hard-headed even without the helmet. Juggernaut took King Hyperion by surprise by using Muhammad Ali’s most famous tactic: The Rope-A-Dope but only angered King Hyperion to the point that he was about to incinerate The Juggernaut using his heat vision. Moonstone managed to step in before King Hyperion could accomplish this and engaged him in battle. Ghost arrived shortly after, telling King Hyperion to stop, which only garnered a laugh from him after realizing that The Thunderbolts truly believed themselves to be a team. Before he could finish his rant on how they were nothing more than a glorified chain gang, Ghost held up the Com-Link that King Hyperion had dropped during his fight with The Juggernaut. Upon pressing the “H” button, Ghost flooded the madman’s entire body with Argonite, a form of Radiation that most incarnations of Hyperion are weak against. Unable to withstand the pain and agony, a severely weakened King Hyperion fell from the sky and hit the rocks below, breaking several bones including those in his wrist, fingers and ribs. Juggernaut, Moonstone and The Man-Thing gathered around his broken form and told King Hyperion that he should not know fear, for whoever knows fear shall burn at the touch of The Man-Thing. As his vision began to fade, King Hyperion watched as the ever-silent swamp monster reached down to touch him with super-heated hands right before the former “god” let out one final blood-curdling scream.
Powers and Abilities
Solar Energy Absorption
Every single cell in Hyperion’s body absorbs energy from the sun. Even if his body has been completely dismembered his cells will continue to absorb and store solar energy allowing him to recover after almost any injury or major expenditures of energy. It’s not clear why, but King Hyperion seems to be significantly stronger than other Hyperion counterparts (possibly due to his insanity) with no apparent weaknesses other than Argonite radiation, a weakness that is shared by almost every version of Hyperion in existence.
Superhuman Strength
King Hyperion possesses perhaps limitless superhuman-strength. He can lift weights far surpassing 100 tons with no effort whatsoever, and has physically overpowered the absolute strongest of heroes, including the Hulk, Hercules, and Thor
Flight
He can achieve flight and move at light speeds.
Invulnerable
He is amazingly durable and is able to withstand nearly any form of physical and/or energy attacks. King Hyperion’s durability also allows him to heal from virtually any wound, no matter how severe, through regeneration of the injured body tissue. Only Argonite radiation has been shown to halt his ability to heal.
Heat Beams
He can emit energy rays of immense heat from his eyes, capable of incinerating Wolverine.