PLOO race

Powers/Abilities: The Ploo give off pheromones that have a musky scent but serve as a powerful aphrodisiac.     The Ploo also have scent glands, perhaps similar to the scent glands of a skunk, which generates a repulsant, nauseating and potentially incapacitating odor.     They are sexually compatable with humans despite some differences in the appearance of externa genitalia (see comments). Reportely, the offspring were typically monstrous; however, Sunny Firestone pretty clearly just looked like a mix of Ploo and human. The Inquisitors and Gene Police may have propagated this misinformation.     The Ploo have a small tail that extends over the superior aspect of their "gluteal cleavage."

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A small number of Ploo (such as Tooba) could perform the Heartburst process.      It involves the unified field theorem that explains all the diverse forces in the universe and how they interrelate, and the essential ingredient was the human heart...by allowing one's feelings to resonate in the field, one could communicate with another via dreams or travel the distances between worlds "in the wink of an eye."      To do so, one needed to be in touch with the core of one's emotions and be in the right place (notably certain energy wells on Epsilon Bootis).

Traits: The Ploo are generally peaceful and somewhat spiritual, although they were willing to fight and kill to defend themselves.

    They did not appear to use much in the way of technology, using knives, etc.

Type: Bilaterally symmetric humanoid bipeds
Eyes: Two (on head;  blue color seen)
Fingers: Four (plus opposing thumb)
Toes: Five (apparently; toes were rarely shown, and the pictures of the feet were lower in detail)
Skin color: Green
Average height: Approximately 5'10"
Other Distinguishing Features:

History: (Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Some members of the Ploo understood the Heartburst process, but they never chose to use the wells to venture to other worlds.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Humanity took five generations to reach Epsilon Bootis from Earth. Their ships lost contact with Earth once they entered lightspeed.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Receiving American television broadcasts from over three centuries before, the humans on Epsilon Bootis believed these to be words from the Holy Sponsor.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - The Ploo who were native to Epsilon Bootis proved to be sexually compatible with humanity. The Ploo's aphrodisiac-scent apparently drew human women to them like animals, and the Ploo bred rapidly.

    Offspring between Ploo and humans were reportedly monstrous (see comments).

    Sex with Ploo was outlawed, with the penalty being life sentence with emphasis on spiritual realignment.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Humans apparently performed orchidectomies or ovariectomies/ovariohysterectomies on Ploo to prevent them from breeding with humans (or each other).

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - By this time, the Ploo had largely forgotten how to access the wells.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - The Ends prison was built by Ploo slaves over one of the sacred places (a well).

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Having mastered the Heartburst method of travel (see comments), Rimbaud was sent from Earth to re-establish contact with the humans on Epsilon Bootis.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Rimbaud arrived in a landing site on the north plateau, and she befriended a group of Ploo renegades in that location.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Rimbaud was picked by the Gene Police amidst a group of Ploo renegades (including four intact males) on the north plateau. Rimbaud fought alongside the Ploo in a heavily-armed but ultimately failed effort to protect some old ruins. Her story of her origins and her denouncing of the Holy Sponsor were disbelieved and considered blasphemous.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst - BTS) - Rimbaud was sentenced to service, including disposing of dead bodies in the battles against the Ploo.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Maia -- the daughter of a "circus whore" -- escaped the humans' de-sexing camps.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst) - Sunoco Firestone, the son of Xerox, accompanied his friend, Ipana Schlitz, to Plootown to see a traveling circus, where he was completely enthralled with the dancer Maia ("The Mysterious Maia -- High Priestess of the Ploo Tribes"), having apparently caught her scent. He followed her after the show and expressed his feelings, and although she initially tried to brush him off, fearing ending up in the hands of the inquisitor, she was also drawn to him as well.

    After they parted ways, Sunoco was left in anguish and tears until Maia confronted him and they shared their passion. Nonetheless, furious of the crimes against her people by humans, she refused to marry him and instead they parted ways.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - With supernova activity jamming the transmissions, humans found themselves cut off from the Sponsor, although they did not know the source of the blockage.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst) - When Sunoco told his uncle Xerox of his affair, Xerox offered to have her taken care of and his crime covered up, but Sunoco punched him repeatedly and fled. Sunoco then leapt atop the circus train and joined the troupe. The next morning, Sunoco sought out Maia, who tried to turn him away but could not resist and instead let him in as she could not resist her soul-mate.

    Maia subsequently told Sunoco that she was pregnant, and his fears that their child would be a monster drove a wedge between them again. However, when Sunoco had dreams of well calling to him, she became interested, and she took him to a well in Eos. Staring into the well, Sunoco panicked and fled, and he was captured and imprisoned for his relationship with a Ploo. Soldiers tried to capture the pregnant Maia, but her noxious body scent was more than the Gene Police could handle without protective masks, and so she escaped.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - After a Ploo uprising progressed to their raising a standing army, the clergy/Inquisitors and the Gene Police seized power. 

    After the Ploo army had destroyed towns, burned factors, and slaughtered human colonists, the human forces under the Inquisitors resorted to their nuclear option...although not even that turned the tide of the rebellion. Whole divisions of Gene Police were lost, and the clergy began raising an army from convicts, offering amnesty to those who fought for them

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Seeking to protect her child, Maia pretended to be married to another Ploo, Tooba, who possessed the Heartburst power.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst - BTS) - After years in captivity, Sunoco agreed to serve in the army and was assigned to keep tabs on Rimbaud, during which he fought off an attacking Ploo woman, who fell off of him and was impaled on spikes; Sunoco was briefly horrified, thinking it had been Maia.

     Rimbaud explained to him the nature of the Heartburst, shared some romance (despite some initial reluctance to break his relationship with Maia), and led him to the Eos well. They traveled through it, intending to return to Earth, but Sunoco ultimately turned around and went back for Maia.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst) - Sunoco returned to Maia, who was had thought him dead and was happy to see him but introduced him to Tooba as her husband. When Sunoco asked to see his son and Tooba suggested he might find him in the freaks car, Sunoco attacked Tooba but was swiftly incapacitated by Tooba's musk.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - The circus departed while Sunoco was incapacitated. After he recovered, he boarded a train filled with human soldiers caught -- without warning -- in a nuclear strike. Sunoco spent close to 72 hours caring for the suffering before collapsing and subsequently going out to fetch water after the train stopped, during which time the human forces bombed the train to destroy the evidence. 

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst) <Two years later> - Tooba contacted Sunoco via dream and revealed that all but one (transport) well had been vaporized by human nuclear weapons. As Tooba was the last of the Ploo who could perform the Heartburst and as Sunoco's open heart made him trainable, Tooba hoped that Sunoco could keep the light of the Heartburst alive.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst - BTS) - Sunoco destroyed the Ends and discovered the last well beneath it.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst) - After Sunoco spent a week clearing debris from the well, the first Ploo straggled in.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - Within a month, the former prison had become a refugee camp, filled with the last remnants of a proud race, each now numb from the wound suffered, families murdered, cities leveled. The "ghostly victims" were long past bearing Sunoco any grudge for what had been done to them.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - The last of the Ploo cities was nuked.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - The Gene Police presumably either de-sexed most of the remaining Ploo or otherwise exterminated them so that Inquisitor Firestone considered the "Ploo problem" almost solved and it would be impossible to commit such crimes as interspecies copulation.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst (fb) - BTS) - The circus picked up some surviving radiation victims, after which they were bushwacked by Gene Police rovers up on the mesa. Despite heavy injuries (including Maia, who had lost some blood), the circus people apparently escaped the Gene Police's attention.

(Marvel Graphic Novel#10 Heartburst) - When the circus showed up with wounded, Sunoco encountered Tooba who brought him to Maia. Via his medical-supply pack, Sunoco treated Maia, and they renewed their relationship.

    Hoping to allow the light associated with the Heartburst, Tooba taught Sunoco about the Heartburst, and he also revealed that he was not actually Maia's husband and that Sunoco and Maia's son did not have the Heartburst power, as it was not passed genetically but instead chose its vessels at random: Tooba and Sunoco were the last of the chosen. However, while demonstrating the power, Tooba found that his physical body was dying and he explained that the light was the connection with the life force of the galaxy: Without it, Epsilon Bootis and all life on it would dry up and die.

    The Gene Police subsequently attacked the refugee camp, bombing Tooba's wagon. One of the police, Sunoco's old friend Ipana Schlitz (now a colonel), agreed to let him and Maia go if they surrendered their half-breed child to him. Fetching a hideous child suffering from radiation poisoning, Maia portrayed it to be their child to both Sunoco and Ipama; however, seeing the child convinced Ipama that his creation had been too much of a crime to go unpunished. He instead took both Maia and Sunoco to Inquisitor Firestone.

    With the sick infant having already died, Xerox prepared to torture Maia in front of Sunoco. Reaching an emotional breakthrough, Sunoco schieved the Heartburst and activated the well, through which Rimbaud arrived. She carried a television that facilitated an actual direct communication from Earth, which confirmed the previous "communications" to have been old TV shows and noted that they could now transmit via the unified field (which they could use now that Sunoco had recharged the field). The speaker further instructed them to stop their repression and genocidal practices against the natives.

    As Rimbaud untied Sunoco and Maia, Xerox leapt into the well but was rejected and demonstrated that anyone who jumped in without talent would suffer a massive heart attack. Although Maia sensed Sunoco and Rimbaud's past relationship and angrily left him to her, Sunoco refused to join Rimbaud on adventuring throughout the galaxy, and he returned to the camp. There he was confronted by his son, who introduced himself as Sunny Firestone. Maia asked Sunoco's forgiveness for having deceived him about their son, and they were soon married by fellow circus clown Farfle.

Comments: Created by Rick Veitch.
    Rick Veitch created and owns the characters in the Heartburst story as far as I know.

    Most of humanity had names referencing 20th century human companies and merchandise, like Schlitz, Sunoco, Xerox, Pepsi, etc.

    There's a full fronrtal nudity image of Maia in the story, which is a great reference for anatomy of the Ploo...but maybe not for the Appendix website. If you want to see it, buy the book.

    I'll come back and do full profiles on the characters from this series sometime in the future. For now, I erred on the side of inclusion on details to provide some context.
    Maia and Tooba are pictured in the main images at the top and various images throughout. If it's not the refugree camp, the cloaked woman with the knife, the dying baby, or Sunny, it's Maia (blonde female) or Tooba (white-haired male).
    The bottom wedding image also shows Sunoco (in his clown makeup), Farfle (ditto), and a repetant Ipana Schlitz (after learning the truth about the Sponsor and the Inqusitiors, he was seen treating injured Ploo.

    I don't know if this story was originally intended for a graphic novel, but it was just a little disjointed, as it was meant to be in like eight page segments in Epic Illustrated or something.

Earth-84202 Circa 300 years in the future, humans traveled to Epsilon Bootis; having lost contact with Earth and receiving only transmiisions of 1950s-era television shows, human society regarded these as transmissions from their guiding Sponsor; they progressively slaughtered the native Ploo. Marvel Graphic Novel #10 Heartburst (1984)

   This profile was completed 10/14/2023, but its publication was delayed as it was intended for the Appendix 25^th anniversary 's celebratory event.

Profile by Snood.

CLARIFICATIONS:
The Ploo should be ;
    formerly the Serayn;distinguished from:

• The green-skinned race of CYGNET VII - who went from being oppressed by the red-skinned Proselytes to oppressing the reds as the new Proselytes--Incredible Hulk Annual#12
• The green-skilled people of the microworld of K'ai (Fialin, Jarella, Krylar, Visis, Sorceror's Triad, Gorsham, Whully, Booly, Grand Inquisitor(d), Bohb(d)+Jen, Sister Marclark, Visalia)--Incredible Hulk II#140
• FROMA race (Cazon, Colby, Edam, Gouda, Havarti, Tangers cartel) - extraterrestrial, Milky Way, planet Chize--Tales of Suspense I#68
       ...most of those seen have been monstrous, but Cazon was very human-looking.
• GREENIES of Reality-????? - green skin, fought humanity circa 7000 A.D.--Strange Tales I#4
  
• HAARG of Reality-30356 - children or otherwise gamma-mutated Sakaarians in a future reality in which the Hulk, Amadeus Cho, and She-Hulk stayed on Sakaar--Planet Hulk: Worldbreaker#1
  
• K'RITHIAN race (Sharilla) - extraterrestrial, planet K'rith, assaulted by G'hrunji Gobbler, summoned Thing, Franklin Richards, and Dr. Giles Niven to stop it. 8' tall, green skin, pacifists, advanced technology--Marvel Two-in-One I#98
• STYGIANs of Reality-5106 - planet Stygia, unidentified galaxy; green-skinned humanoids; sought to destroy Earth as humanity began to explore space.--Space Squadron#1
• ZEN-WHOBERIS - green-skinned humanoids from planet Zen-Whoberi; Silican star system; peace-loving society; Gamora is notably from an alternate future in Reality-7528 where her people were exterminated by the Universal Church of Truth; Thanos traveled to that future and brought Gamora back to modern day Reality-616--Strange Tales I#180
  
• other green-skinned but otherwise human-looking aliens...or "Ploo" characters, groups, events, items, races, or places...
  

images: (without ads)

Marvel Graphic Novel#10: Heartburst, story pg. 5, panel 5 (Maia dancing)
       pg. 8, panel 4 (Maia face);
       pg. 12, panel 6 (Maia tail);
       pg. 14, panel 5-6 (Eos temple priest, upper profile and full distant);
       pg. 22, panel 4-6 (attacking woman, dying);
       pg. 28, panel 4 (Tooba squatting);
       pg. 29, panel 2 (Tooba scent);
       pg. 33, panel 3 (Tooba communicating via well);
       pg. 36, panel 2 (Refugee camp);
           panel 3 (Circus caravan);
       pg. 38, panel 5 (Tooba Heartburst);
       pg. 41, panel 5 (dying baby);
       pg. 47, panel 1 (Sunny face)
           panel 4 (wedding) ----------------------->

Appearances:
Marvel Graphic Novel#10: Heartburst (1984) - Rick Veitch (writer and artist), Archie Goodwin & Joe Duffy (editors)

First posted: 09/18/2026
Last updated: 10/20/2023

Any Additions/Corrections? please let me know.

Non-Marvel Copyright info
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