ANGELICA

Official Name: Angelica

Nature: An extraterrestrial planet located in an unspecified star system that was presumably within the "Golden Galaxy"

Environment: Earth-like

Gravity: Presumably similar to that of Earth (since it was comfortable for Galadorians)

Atmosphere: An unspecified combination of gases (nitrogen and oxygen) which members of the Galadorian race could breathe easily

Natural Satellites: At least two (names not revealed)

Artificial Satellites: Unrevealed

Dominant Lifeform: Galadorians

Population: Zero.
    The population before the genocide carried out by the Dire Wraiths has not been revealed.

Native Sentient Lifeforms: Unrevealed.
    It has not been revealed if there were any native sentients before (or after) the Galadorians colonized the planet

Other Native Lifeforms: Unrevealed

Capital City: Unrevealed

Government: None (but was presumably a democracy)

Major Languages: Galadorian

Monetary Units: Unrevealed (but probably inapplicable).

    Given that Galador had an advanced and utopian civilization, the Galadorians may have abandoned any currency-based economic system that may have existed in their past.

National Defense: Unrevealed, possibly inapplicable (as there may not have been any nation-states on the planet)

Major Resources: Unrevealed

Planetary Defense: Apparently none

Places of Interest: Unrevealed

Prominent Residents: None identified (all deceased)

Visitors: Dire Wraiths; Spaceknights (Rom and at least five others)

First Appearance: Rom#8 (July, 1980)

History:
(Rom#8 (fb) - BTS) <Over two hundred Earth-years ago> - The planet later known as Angelica was settled by people from the planet Galador.

(Rom#8 (fb)) - Angelica was a beautiful world whose inhabitants were friendly to all visitors and at peace with all the neighboring worlds.

(Rom#1 (fb) - BTS / Rom#16 (fb) - BTS / Rom#51 (fb) - BTS / Rom#67 (fb) - BTS) - When the Dire Wraiths invaded the Golden Galaxy, they attacked, devastated and depopulated dozens of Galador's frontier worlds that lay in their path to Galador itself (see comments).

   

 

 

(Rom#8 (fb)) - One infamous day, a shadow fell over Angelica, like a somber shroud, when the Dire Wraiths arrived and began attacking. As the people of Angelica watched in horror, Dire Wraith warships began making air-to-ground attacks with directed-energy weapons. These green energy beams strafing from above killed or shattered everyone and everything they struck.

 

(Rom#8 (fb) - BTS) - During the attack, the people of Angelica sent out a call for help.

 

 

(Rom#1 (fb) / Rom#8 (fb)) - Although the Spaceknights were able to repel the Dire Wraith fleet that attacked Galador, by the time they were able to answer Angelica's call for help, it was too late. When Rom and a few other Spaceknights arrived, they found everyone on the planet, both young and old, were dead, slain by the Wraiths.

 

 

 

 

Comments: Created by Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema.

   Angelica has the distinction of being one of only SIX named planets created as part of Rom's backstory. It was the second of those planets to appear in the series, after Galador in Rom#1, and the only one to be identified in-story as an "outpost planet" that had been settled by the people of Rom's homeworld Galador.
    Thayri was confirmed as a Galadorian outpost in Marvel Legacy: The 1980s Handbook--Snood
    The other probable Galadorian colonies that were also wiped out by the Dire Wraiths was Agricon (in Rom#14), but it was not specifically stated to be Galadorian colony.
   For the record, those six planets that were named were: Galador, Angelica, Agricon, Thayri, Thuvria, and Wraithworld. A seventh planet, the one where Gloriole betrayed Rom to the Dire Wraiths and then lost his life while saving Rom, was visited but never named.

   When I first read this story, over 40 years ago, I assumed that the fact that Rom and some Spaceknights responded to Angelica's call for help meant that that distress signal must have been sent after the Spaceknights first went into action when they battled the Dire Wraith fleet in defense of Galador. This would mean that the Dire Wraiths attacked Angelica after they had been routed at the battle of Galador and forced to retreat, just like their attacks on Agricon and the Galadorian hospital ship, among others. However, although I think the story works best if the time between when the call for help was sent and the arrival of the Spaceknights is minimal, the fact that the people of Angelica seemed to have been taken completely by surprise does suggest that the Wraiths might have attacked Angelica early in their invasion of the Golden Galaxy, before news of the destruction of the Galadorian trading armada had had time to spread very far. Unfortunately, the five-panel flashback doesn't provide any information that could be used to conclusively establish when Angelica was attacked in relation to the attack on Galador.

   According to Rom#67, the Dire Wraiths had already "lain dozens of [Galadorian] frontier worlds to waste" before they encountered the Spaceknights "on the fringes of the Golden Galaxy." If we assume that "dozens" refers to at least two dozen, then that would mean that the Dire Wraiths depopulated at least TWENTY other Galadorian colonies before they were routed by the Spaceknights when they finally attacked Galador. It would have been nice if some of those other colonies had been mentioned by name, but, since they weren't, they remain as non-entities, unimportant planets that merely contributed to a statistic used to remind the readers of how evil the Dire Wraiths were.

   It's worth noting that one of the problems with the Rom series was that writer Bill Mantlo did not use the term "Golden Galaxy" consistently. In some of his stories, the Golden Galaxy was an actual galaxy within which Galador and its colonies all existed, each in their own star system. However, in other stories, he used that term to refer to the single star system in which Galador was located, as in the reference above which described where the Spaceknights first encountered the Dire Wraith warfleet and in the storyline in which he had Mentus set the Golden Galaxy on course for the Dark Nebula. This inconsistency (and inaccurate use of the word galaxy) is irritating and makes it difficult to determine where planets like Angelica were actually located. Outside of the series, the first two volumes of The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe did state that Galador's origin galaxy was the Milky Way, and captions on page 17 in Infinity#1 ("SIXTY THOUSAND LIGHT-YEARS AWAY. THE GOLDEN GALAXY. THE PLANET GALADOR.") seemingly confirm that both the Golden Galaxy and Galador were within the Milky Way when the planet was destroyed by the Builders.

   Here's a fun fact that I learned only a few years ago: Despite how the term "star system" is used in Marvel comics and in the various Star Trek series, in the real world that term is used exclusively to refer to a small number of stars that orbit each other because they are bound by their mutual gravitational attraction. Technically, a star system only refers to the actual two or more stars that orbit each other, and should not be confused with a "planetary system" which the relevant article on Wikipedia defines as "a set of gravitationally bound non-stellar objects in or out of orbit around a star or star system." That article's statement that "The Sun together with the planetary system revolving around it, including Earth, forms the Solar System" seems to imply that the Sun, despite being part of the Solar System, is considered to be separate from the planetary system that orbits it. At this time, I have no idea what the correct term for any non-terrestrial star-with-planets system is, but I doubt that science fiction writers will stop using the term "star system" anytime soon.

   I strongly suspect that the Galadorians who had settled on the planet Angelica would have been known as "Angelicans" but I have restricted this idea to here in the comments section because there was no mention of it in the five-panel flashback in Rom#8 which has been that planet's only appearance.

   A planet named Angelica (or Angelica Prime) appears in Spaceknights I#4-5. I have not included any information from that miniseries because I really dislike its significant continuity errors and firmly believe that they should be enough to render it non-canonical to the Earth-616 reality. I prefer the idea that that miniseries is actually like a "What If...?" storyline, something that should be relegated to taking place in an alternate timeline.
    --However, that is not the case, and it is indeed part of Reality-616, like it or not.
    Per the Spaceknights profile: Between survivors, Galadorians returning from colony worlds, and accelerated growth technology rapidly bringing Galador’s new generation of children to adulthood, the planet was swiftly repopulated.
    Additionally, multiple Spaceknights from that series appeared in Annihilation-related issues.
    Regardless, it is not clear to me whether Angelica Prime is the exact same world as the Angelica in this profile. I'll likely profile Angelica Prime when I get around to the Spaceknights series.
    --Snood

"200 years ago"

    The flashback in Rom#1 took place "200 years ago," which would have been around 1780 A.D. when the story was published in 1979.

    The sliding timescale moves that date way forward, and Rom#1 would be around 9 years before the stories currently being published in the Marvel Universe (so like 2016 at the time this profile was written in 2025 A.D.).

    However, I would think that the date of initial Galador-Dire Wraith conflict should stay fixed in time in the late 18th century A.D. rather than being moved forward into the 1800s.

    Or should it? Significant amounts of time have passed that having it stay fixed in time would make the initial conflict between the Wraiths and Galadorians 250 years ago, rather than 200 years ago...

Profile by Donald Campbell.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The planet Angelica has no known connections to:

images: (without ads)
Rom#8, page 3, panel 2 (main image)
      page 3, panel 3 (Angelica at peace)
      page 3, panel 4 (people becoming aware of the danger)
      page 3, panel 5 (Dire Wraiths attacking)
      page 3, panel 6 (Spaceknights among the dead)

Appearances:
Rom#8 (July, 1980) - Bill Mantlo (writer), Sal Buscema (artist), Jo Duffy (editor)

First Posted: 11/24/2024
Last updated: 11/24/2024

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

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