DELILAH
DELILAH
Real Name: Delilah D-50
Identity/Class: Alternate
Reality (Reality-8116) extraterrestrial (undefined race) humanoid
Occupation: Research scientist, anthropologist
Group Membership: Formerly the Instrumentality;
Affiliations: The People (notably Oedi the elder and Lectra), Vanth (later Dreadstar)
Enemies: Monarchy (notably King Nellor), First Nova Squadron (notably Lt. Sandorz)
Known Relatives: Pyrax 8-13 (husband, deceased), Vanth (husband)
Aliases: "Babe" (from Vanth)
Base of Operations: Unrevealed;
formerly Research Center Delta 219 (aka the Village), on the planet Caldor, unrevealed star system, Empirical Galaxy;
First Appearance: (Pictured) "The Price," Eclipse
Graphic Album Series#5 (1981) - see comments;
(fully seen and identified) Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar
(1982)
Powers/Abilities: Delilah had knowledge and experience in anthropology, with specific knowledge of the People.
History:
(Dreadstar
and Company#5: The Dreadstar and Company Files: Oedi) <Perhaps
150-170 years before the main story in Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The
Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar> - War broke out between
two imperial powers within the Empirical galaxy, the Monarchy and the
theocratic Instrumentality. Early in the course of the war, the Church
of the Instrumentality established scientific research centers on
planet throughout its empire whose purpose was to discover or devise a
means of assuring the Instrumentality's victory.
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb) - BTS) <Decades before the main story> - In hopes of creating a race of super-warriors to use against the Monarchy, Instrumentality scientists established Research Center Delta 219 for a top secret research project on the planet Caldor, which was "pretty far from any regular space corridors."
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb) / Dreadstar and Company#5: The Dreadstar and Company Files: Oedi) - There they cross-bred (almost certainly via genetic engineering) cats and humans in hopes of producing super-warriors with feline reflexes, instincts, and ferocity coupled with man's intelligence and manual dexterity. However, while the resulting cat people did have human intelligence and body conformation, their natural temperaments were so peaceful and gentle that all attempts to use them as soldiers failed miserably. With the first generation being herbivores, they proved to have a real talent for farming. They were dubbed the People.
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb) - BTS) - Nonetheless, as wars needed soldiers, soldiers needed food, and Caldor was a very fertile planet, the People, were allowed to survive as long as they kept producing high-quality forest wheat and other crops for the government.
(Marvel Graphic
Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb) - BTS) -
Once a year, a huge Instrumentality ship came from space to collect the
forest wheat harvest and to deliver used agricultural equipment,
rations (always in insufficient quantities), approved literature
(mostly almanacs), and an occasional visitor (usually some type of
scientist). The People called Research Center Delta 219 home or "the Village."
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb) - BTS) <Twelve cycles before the main story> - Pyrax 8-13 and his wife, Delilah D-50, arrived one of the annual Instrumentality ships, intending to study the People on a university grant.
(Marvel Graphic
Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb) - BTS)
<Six cycles before the main story> - Pyrax was killed
by a Monarchy scout ship, and he was buried. Delilah stayed on to
finish Pyrax's anthropological work. She became an accepted member of
the community despite being "human." However, despite their company, Delilah was lonely.
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar - BTS) - Delilah was nearly finished with her work and had been considering leaving Caldor when Vanth arrived. Having traveled 1 million years into the future after participating in a "mercy killing" of the Milky Way Galaxy, having taken a radium laser to the leg, and divested himself of his Sword of Power, Vanth collapsed on the ground.
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar- BTS) - The People (including both Oedis) found Vanth and decided to bring him to Delilah, as he was one of her kind.
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb)) - Oedi and his friends carried Vanth into Delilah's place, and she figured he would be dead by morning from the radium laser.
For six days, Vanth's system fought off the
atomic disease that coursed through his body, and on the seventh day
his fever broke. Although unable to believe someone could survive such
a wound, Delilah figured everything would be alright, but she found
that during the day he sat around vacant-eyed (like a walking dead
man), and once the stars came out, he would be staring out into the
night as if looking for something. Then he would start ranting about
crazy magicians, various other beings, and people, planets, and stars
dying before retreating to a corner, cursing himself, and ending up in
tears. This went on for days, seriously scaring Delilah.
Finally, one day she found the courage to reach, touch him, and start talking to him. She assured Vanth that everything was alright, that he was safe, and that she and everyone had forgiven him for what he had done. She rattled on, saying anything that came into her head, hoping to get through to him, and eventually she did. Slowly the light and sanity came back to his eyes.
Vanth later told her how he had been a sort of
soldier of fortune who found himself in the midst of a terrible war;
most of what he told her did not make sense to her, and she figured the
reality and fever dreams had gotten mixed together for him. Regardless,
she felt that she could see in his eyes that that kind of life was
behind him now.
Vanth helped Lady Lectra with her crops, and he proved able to repair just about anything and seemed to
have the strength and endurance of ten men.
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar) - A couple (few?) weeks later, Delilah showed up in the village, and Oedi the elder encountered Delilah and asked her about her patient, and she told Oedi of Vanth's physical and mental recovery and skills and abilities. When Oedi asked about his plans, Delilah replied that she thought he was planning on doing just what he was doing now: Hanging around and helping where he could. Oedi was concerned about how little they knew about him, but Delilah shared that while they knew nothing about what kind of man he was before he came there, she was really beginning to like the man he was becoming. Oedi told her that he hoped her judgment prove to be sound, for her sake.
Delilah subsequently checked on Vanth, who took
a break from a repair to ask her questions about the Instrumentality
she had mentioned. As the Instrumentality was one of the two major
intergalactic powers, Delilah wondered where he was from but told him
anyway about the Monarchy and the Instrumentality. She also told him of
the People, of Pyrax, and of how she had been planning to leave Caldor
with her work finished but that she had come to like it there lately.
Vanth agreed with her, and their conversation continued into a
passionate embrace.
Vanth and Delilah subsequently entered a romance and fell in love.
At some point, Delilah awakened just as Vanth had
re-absorbed the Sword of Icy Fire after it reappeared to him. She had
not seen what had happened, and he assured her that he was just
remembering something that he thought he had forgotten.
Over the years, the People came to accept and even like the tall,
brooding "human." Delilah helped Vanth forget his past and provided him with a warm and loving here and now.
(Dreadstar and Company#3: The Dreadstar and Company Files: Vanth Dreadstar) - At some point, Vanth and Delilah were married.
For 30 straight star cycles, Delilah and Vanth
knew peace and love. Delilah was aware of time's passing on her person
but of how Vanth seemed to neither notice nor to be noticed by the
years.
(Marvel
Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar)
<Thirty years later> - An alien spacecraft, the Lightcutter II,
arrived on Caldor and landed in Mist Valley.
(Marvel
Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar)
<Four months later> - One evening, Delilah asked Vanth if he was
off for another wild night with his overgrown hermit friends and if she
should expect him around dawn, smelling of wine. He admitted this to be
the case and told her he did not know why she put up with it, but she
told him that it could be because he was the only male within a couple
of light years who did not sharpen his claws on furniture or need a
regular lube job and tune up. Delilah then told him that she could not
figure out what he and old Syzygy found to talk about all night, and
Vanth told her about some of Syzygy's advance sciences, such as the
mineral supplements that had doubled his wheat crop's harvest.
When he shared that they had dabbled in some
low-level magic together, Delilah noted that she did not like the sound
of that. Vanth assured her that he was not going to run off with a
she-demon or anything like that as she was his one and only, and
Delilah mockingly called him a beast and sent him on his way. He told
her he'd seen her in the morning, and she told him to enjoy himself.
(Marvel
Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar - BTS)
- That evening, Syzygy tried to convince Vanth of his fate to be a
warrior again and to leave Caldor, advising him that while he would
stay young, he likely only had another 10-15 years with Delilah. He
further told him that he had a sense of impending change and death.
(Marvel
Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb) -
BTS) - While Vanth and Syzygy were within Syzygy's multi-dimensional
overlap-constructed home, the Monarchy's First
Nova Squadron assaulted the Village. They easily slaughtered the
People, considering that they had not had much to worry about them.
(Epic Illustrated#15) - Only the younger Oedi survived.
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three:
Dreadstar (fb) - BTS) - First Nova Squadron found Delilah. They
apparently stripped her naked, strapped her to a cross-like structure,
presumably questioned her about the People, and eventually killed her.
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar - BTS) - Refusing to repeat the path of his past, Vanth angrily departed Syzygy's place, only to see a bright light over the village and Monarchy ships flying away from there. Syzygy told Vanth that he had only had a feeling but that Vanth better get home, and Vanth took Syzygy's flyer to return the distant Village in minutes.
(Marvel
Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar) -
Finding the Village in flames and the People all slaughtered, Vanth
rushed into their home and found Delilah's body. 
(Marvel
Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar - BTS)
- Screaming in rage and denial, Vanth summoned his sword, learned what
had happened from Lt. Sandorz, whose flyer had been downed, before
killing him.
After bringing about the death of First Nova
Squadron and murdering King Nellor, Vanth agreed to join with Syzygy to
bring about the end of the Monarchy-Instrumentality war.
Comments: Created by Jim Starlin.
Dreadstar / Reality-8116 primer
I am not certain whether that is Delilah in the vision Taurus Killgaren showed Syzygy Darklock, but I think that's her immediately above Vanth's head.
I don't think there's anything to
support this, but I really feel like Syzygy Darklock had to have more
knowledge of the impending Monarchy attack and Delilah's assault and death before
it happened. I kind of wonder if he allowed this happen to cause Vanth to revert back to the warrior he needed him to be.
I had thought I had seen something that noted the People had been created
like 50 years before Vanth's arrival, but I can't find that
reference. Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book
Three: Dreadstar has the narrative note that "now" (after Vanth's
arrival) was "decades" after Research Center Delta 219 was a top-secret
Instrumentality outstation.
Dreadstar and
Company#5: The Dreadstar and Company Files: Oedi's profile indicates
that they had been created 200 years before Vanth's arrival. Delilah
does note that the People were created "back in the days when they (the
Instrumentality) were trying to win." At some point, the two forces had
settled into a stalemate, with economies built to thrive during
wartime.
There are definitely
some contradictions between the that file and the story in the
Dreadstar Graphic Novel (such as having Vanth recover from the radium
laser overnight when it took a week; or having Vanth share his origins
to the People rather than Delilah; noting that Delilah was an
Instrumentality-assigned anthropologist, rather than having obtained a
university research grant to study them), but I included new
information that did not contradict things. There being two Oedis
(father and son) was new to the file, as was Lectra being the younger
Oedi's mother.
As the title -- The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar --
states, this is the third and final chapter of the Metamorphosis
Odyssey, and the first step of progressing to the series Dreadstar
(centered around Vanth and his allies, who were blandly named Dreadstar
and Company).
Profile by Snood.
CLARIFICATIONS:
Delilah should be distinguished from:
|
(Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb) - BTS) <Twelve cycles before the main story> - Pyrax 8-13 and his wife, Delilah D-50, arrived one of the annual Instrumentality ships, intending to study the People on a university grant. (Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar (fb) - BTS) <Six cycles before the main story> - Pyrax was killed by a Monarchy scout ship, and he was buried beneath Caldor's fertile soil. Delilah stayed on to finish Pyrax's anthropological work. --Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: DreadstarNote: It makes more sense to me, given Deliliah's D-50 designation, that Pyrax would but B-13, not 8-13...but it looks more like an "8" than a "B" to me. |
Appearances:
"The Price," Eclipse Graphic
Album Series#5 (1981) - Jim Starlin (writer/artist); I don't know who
edited it; reprinted in Epic's Dreadstar Annual#1 (1983) it credited Jo
Duffy (associate editor) and Archie Goodwin (editor)
Marvel Graphic Novel#3: The Metamorphosis Odyssey Book Three: Dreadstar
(1982) - Jim Starlin (writer/artist), Archie Goodwin & Jo Duffy
(editor)
Dreadstar and Company#3: The Dreadstar and Company Files: Vanth
Dreadstar (September, 1985) - Jim Starlin (writer/artist), Archie
Goodwin
(editor), Jo Duffy (associate editor), Jim Shooter (consulting editor)
Dreadstar and Company#5: The Dreadstar and Company Files: Oedi (November, 1985) - Jim Starlin (writer/artist), Archie Goodwin
(editor), Jim Shooter (consulting editor)
First posted: 09/07/2023
Last updated: 12/04/2023
Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.
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