GAMORA WAS RAISED FOR ONE JOB — KILLING THE MAGUS
Gamora did not drift into assassination as an adult career choice. Thanos plucked the orphaned child out of a ruined future, raised her inside his own household, and aimed her entire upbringing at a single target she had never met.
That target was the Magus, messiah of the Universal Church of Truth — a corrupted future incarnation of Adam Warlock ruling an interstellar theocracy built on forced conversion. An open assault on a god who was also Warlock stood little chance, so the Titan prepared an assassin who could walk straight into the Church's inner sanctum instead.
Her rehearsal was lethal fieldwork against the Church itself, cutting down its Grand Inquisitors one by one. When the moment finally came she slipped close enough to strike at the Magus with her blade, and failed at the final instant. Gamora debuted mid-mission in Strange Tales #181 (1975), the opening move of Jim Starlin's Magus Saga.
WHY IT'S OBSCURE
The Magus was no impostor wearing a familiar face; he was Warlock's own future, twisted by years of wielding his gem, which meant killing him required erasing a man who had not yet become a monster.
Thanos postured as an ally of the Church while privately forging the one weapon meant to decapitate it, because a rival god preaching across the stars cut directly into his own designs on the universe.
In Gamora's first telling, the Church had exterminated her people, the Zen-Whoberi, so the assignment her master handed her doubled as the revenge she already burned to take.
GALLERY
BULLPEN BULLETINS — SOURCES
- Strange Tales Vol. 1 #180–181 (1975) and Warlock Vol. 1 #9–11 (1975–1976), Marvel Comics — Gamora's debut and the Magus Saga, by Jim Starlin.
- Marvel Database — Magus Saga
- Crushing Krisis — Guide to Gamora
- Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.