Created to bring forth the perfect race, the artificial being who becomes known as Kismet escapes the control of her creators, seeks her ideal mate, and uses her cosmic powers to save others.
Metamorphosis
Known as the Enclave, scientists Wladyslav Shinski, Carlo Zota, and Maris Morlak, and Jerome Hamilton dedicate themselves to improving the world by any means, including taking control of it. In an abandoned Deviant outpost in the North Atlantic they construct the Beehive, their citadel of science. Their greatest accomplishment is the creation of Him, a genetically perfect artificial being designed to father a new human race. When Him matured more quickly than anticipated, they lose control of it and Him demolishes much of the Beehive, killing Hamilton and flying away. The remaining three try again, producing Paragon, a being genetically identical to Him. To retain control of their creation they trick Dr. Stephen Strange, AKA Doctor Strange, into modifying the creature’s neural structure, but Paragon deduces their plans while still growing and gives itself a post-hypnotic command to metamorphosize into a glowing black form, negating the neurological controls. Angered at its creators’ attempts to control it, Paragon destroys the Beehive and places itself into a restorative cocoon to develop further.
While in the cocoon, Paragon adapts itself into a female form and slowly moves towards New York City. When dockworkers fish the cocoon from the harbor, Paragon hatches as Her. Adopting her creators’ goals of parenting the perfect race, Her seeks Him as her ideal mate. Her’s search begins with Alicia Masters, who had briefly known Him, but this brings Her into conflict with Alicia’s boyfriend, Ben Grimm, AKA the Thing.
The psionic Heather Douglas, AKA Moondragon, senses Her’s presence and seeks her out, informing her of Him’s evolution into Adam Warlock and subsequent death at the hands of the mad Titan Thanos. Believing she could revive Warlock, Her seeks Warlock’s burial site on Counter-Earth, accompanied by Alicia, Moondragon, the Thing, and Stakar Ogord, AKA Starhawk/Aleta Ogord. When Counter-Earth proves to be missing, Her resurrects its creator, Herbert Wyndham, AKA High Evolutionary, and locates the thieves. On Counter-Earth, Her resurrects Warlock, only to discover his soul missing (actually confined within a Soul Gem, since stolen). She reburies Warlock’s body, and is moved when offered solace by Grimm, to whom she had shown only contempt. Unable to deal with these new emotions, she flees.
Cosmic Powers
Kismet’s cells serve as cosmic energy batteries, allowing her to absorb, store, and use cosmic energies. Her form is cosmically enhanced; she can press 70 tons and survive in the vacuum of space; she is virtually tireless. She can project force blasts, levitate objects with anti-gravitons, and rearrange small volumes of matter. She can fly at Mach 10, and generate rifts into warp-space.
She possesses limited telepathic abilities: she can understand any language and, as Ayesha, she can control minds. If seriously damaged, Kismet’s body will automatically generate a regenerative cocoon around her.
World-Ending Threats
Kismet faces many enemies, and often times these enemies are a threat to a whole world of people, such as the intergalactic business conglomerate, the Consortium, the conqueror U’sr’pr, Galan, AKA Galactus, and K’rll, AKA Soul Eater.
While on Earth, she protects New York from Binary and Kl’rt, AKA Super-Skrull, and even goes up against Thanos.
Kismet has a rocky relationship with her creators, the Enclave. Initially they planned to control her, which angers her enough to escape them. However, she’s later saved by the Enclave and in return, she offers them assistance. This interaction helps her come to terms with being their “daughter.” Though, the Enclave later enslave her to do their bidding.
Ideal Alliances
In an attempt to fulfill her purpose as the prototype for the perfect race, Kismet searches for her ideal mate, and ultimately selects her genetic twin, Adam Warlock. When that doesn’t pan out, she moves on for a time. However, when Kismet meets Wendell Vaughan, AKA Quasar, she sees him as her ideal mate and though he’s uninterested, he challenges her to determine her own purpose, not one that was handed down to her. She remains by his side and helps him protect Earth.
With a penchant for defending the helpless against dictators and world-ending threats, having teamed-up with Earth’s Alpha Flight and the Avengers against the Consortium and Galactus, she joins Quasar on his adventures. With him, she travels to the Kree homeworld, Hala, where she defends its people and frees their souls from the Soul Eater.
Her History
Her’s search for enlightenment led her near the planet of U’sr’pria, which was being ravaged as its technological advancement destroyed its environment. Investigating, Her found the planet had been conquered by a mutant member of its own race, the U’sr’pr, who forced the planet into a technological boom, striking a deal with the Consortium for his own comfort. Her angrily depowered U’sr’pr, and then aided the natives in their clean-up. The populace named her J’Ridia Starduster, or She Whose Trail Dusts Hope.
When the Consortium found their profits from U’sr’pria dwindling, they sent agents to correct this. The Consortium proved too powerful, so J’Ridia fled to Earth seeking aid, carefully drawing the Consortium after her and away from U’sr’pria. The Consortium caught J’Ridia near Earth and attacked; she fell out of control into Toronto, mistaking it for New York. The Consortium followed, and Alpha Flight aided J’Ridia in battling them. The Avengers also came to the city’s aid, but neither side proved victorious. As the battle was demolishing the city, J’Ridia decided to surrender herself to the Consortium, but before she could, the alien Quwrlln coincidentally teleported away J’Ridia and half of Alpha Flight and the Avengers, seeking their aid in defending their world from Galactus. The Quwrlln had moved their planet into another dimension; the different physical laws allowed the defeat of Galactus there. Unwilling to kill Galactus but not wanting to leave him stranded on the Quwllrn’s planet with no recourse but to eventually devour it, a solution was found when the Quwrlln teleported Galactus to the planet that powered the Consortium’s mother ship. Galactus devoured the planet, sparing the Quwrlln, and the Consortium was crippled, freeing U’sr’pria.
Struck by the selflessness of the humans who had aided her, J’Ridia remained on Earth, forgoing her U’sr’prian name. Again known as Her, she discovered that Adam Warlock had been resurrected with his soul restored, but Warlock, occupied with the universe-threatening menace of the Infinity Gauntlet, dismissively rebuffed Her’s advances.
At loose ends, Her remained in New York City, protecting it against the threats of Eon’s expanding corpse and Rex Randolph, AKA Edifice Rex. Her soon realized that she and Warlock would make a poor parental couple as they possessed virtually identical genetic material, and decided to seek the best mate from within humanity. She created pods of genetic material designed to draw the best from herself and a mate, and attached these to the back of six males: Simon Williams, AKA Wonder Man, Hyperion, Heracles, AKA Hercules, Leonard Samson, AKA Doc Samson, Ikaris, and Gilgamesh.
When Quasar (Vaughn) opposed her, she placed a pod on him as well, drawing the ire of Moondragon, who had decided Quasar was her own perfect (if unwilling) mate. While the three battled, the Avengers succeeded in removing the pods from the others, and Her decided Quasar was indeed her ideal mate, as he was the only being to evidence concern for the contents of the pod over himself. However, Quasar pointed out that her desire to parent children was arising solely from her creators’ wishes and not from herself, challenging Her to find her own purpose in life. Uncertain, Her removed the pod from Quasar, but decided to remain near him as a companion, observing his humanity.
Her worked beside Quasar for a short period of time, battling both Binary and Super-Skrull as she defended Earth during Operation: Galactic Storm. She then accompanied Quasar to the Kree homeworld, Hala, where she was moved by its recent devastation and fought to free the souls of its population from the Soul Eater. Her accompanied the alien Mourners to the planet Scadam, but found herself unable to watch this planet’s destruction.
Though she had not sought out combat, she saw it as her kismet to be unable to avoid it, and so adopted Kismet as her new name. She fought the invading Black Fleet on Scadam, but was wounded and witnessed from afar the destruction of the invading fleet by extradimensional energies. Seeking these energies, she returned to Earth, where she found them originating from Quasar’s girlfriend, Kayla Ballantine, who bore the extra-multiversal Star Brand. When Kismet’s questioning of Kayla inadvertently turned into battle, Kayla lashed out, rupturing Kismet’s cells and forcing her to withdraw into a regenerative cocoon. Quasar later moved the cocoon to Project: PEGASUS for safe storage.
When Wladyslav Shinski suffered a serious stroke, the remaining members of the Enclave stole the cocoon from PEGASUS and removed Kismet from it. They placed Shinski within it to regenerate but also took pains to protect Kismet, who was nearing full recovery. Striking on the idea of using Kismet’s genetic material to hasten the recovery, they withdrew a sample from her. This was stolen by Frank, an Advanced Ideas Mechanics (A.I.M.) Adaptoid spy who had been observing the Enclave. The Adaptoid injected itself with the sample and adapted Kismet’s powers as a new Paragon, but the recuperating Shinski injected Paragon with a genetic weapon they had developed for use against Kismet, destroying him. Grateful that Shinski had saved her, though uneasy they had developed a weapon to destroy her, Kismet wove regenerative cocoons for all three Enclave members (they had been injured during the battle) and placed them within, watching over them as “mother” while she tried to determine what it meant to be their “daughter.”
After some months, an energy blast from space disrupted the cocoons, and the Enclave members hatched, transformed into lesser versions of Kismet with similar powers. With these abilities, the Enclave began what they had always wanted to do: Cure the world’s ills. However, their short-term solutions frequently created worse long-term problems, and Kismet convinced them to leave the planet while they learned how to use their powers and where they had come from.
Kismet led them in search of the energy blast that had triggered their change and discovered Khatylis, an alien life-form that harvested the flotsam of destroyed systems and created new matrices for life. When the Enclave disrupted this matrix, they were absorbed by it, but Kismet and Norrin Radd, AKA Silver Surfer, merged their life essences with that of Khatylis to restore its life matrix, freeing the Enclave. The Enclave apparently lost their powers, returning to Earth. Shinski and Morlak shared the identity of Crucible, and enslaved Kismet, giving her the name “Ayesha” and had her go up against the Fantastic Four. Showing new powers of mind control, Ayesha defeated the Four, but was eventually banished when a black hole grenade transported her and Shinski into another dimension.
Shinski has since returned to Earth, while Kismet—restored to her classic form—fought against the Heart of the Infinite-powered Thanos.
