I’ve been seeing this guy in random comics for a while now. What does he do? I understand he likes to watch important things. Could someone give me his history and purpose for being near Earth?
Basically, he’s a member of an ancient race of very powerful beings who long ago decided to try and use their superiority to help other races advance themselves. Then they made the mistake of giving the secret of nuclear power to a race which was not ready for it…they used it for warfare, resulting in much death. Thereafter, they took a race-wide oath to never interfere with other races, and instead to serve as Watchers, to record the momentous events of the universe for posterity.
Uatu is the name of the Watcher who was assigned to Earth’s solar system, and, in an Earth-centric medium that Amercan comic books are, was the only Watcher any reader ever saw for a while, and is also the one genuinely referred to as generically “The Watcher”.
He developed a fondness for the Fantastic Four and bent or broke his non-interference vow for their benefit a few times. He had the Watcher-book thrown at him for this, and thereafter became even more passive than he normally was.
There was a rogue Watcher named Aron who once caused the Fantastic Four a load of trouble a while back.
Second paragraph error: “generally referred to”, not “genuinely referred to”.
The Watcher’s first appearance was, I believe, as something of a deus ex machina in the Fantastic Four comic where Galactus showed up and tried to eat the Earth. His job is to watch over Earth, and chronicle the events that take place on it throughout the multiverse. For the most part, he’s rather benign, although his motives, and those of the other Watchers, occasionally seem questionable if not downright sinister (see: Earth X for details).
For the most part, he doesn’t do much else. He lives on the moon, tho’, and is a Cosmic Being, which is to say he’s rather stuck-up, and normally doesn’t do things that concern the rest of the Marvel Universe.
Does that help?
bamf
Shirt Ninja 13:
His first appearance was three years earlier, during a fight between the FF and the Red Ghost.
But yes, he did play an important role in that Galactus story. He told the FF where to find (and I think helped the Human Torch travel through dimensions to reach) the Ultimate Nullifier, the only thing that Galactus is afraid of.
His first appearance was a few years before the Galactus Saga, in Fantastic Four #13.
The FF went to the moon and were followed by a Russian scientist, the Red Ghost, and his three apes, who all gained superpowers from cosmic rays just like the FF.
They all landed in the Blue Area (its first appearance too). The Watcher introduced himself to the FF and helped them fight the Red Ghost and his super-apes.
Great, thanks. Any chance, though, that you could fill me in on the rest of his watcher buddies? Where are they on the power scale? I know that Thor is just stronger than Galactus (according to a comic I just read), that Odin is more powerful than Thor, the Watcher is less powerful than Galactus (I think?), there’s the Eternal Tribune who I know nothing about, there are those other things that tried to get Franklin to kill off his made-up world which are the strongest, and there’s all kinds of other gods out there. Is there a chart out there that shows who’s the strongest?
From your list, the characters would be, from most powerful to least powerful, with each being an order of magnitude more powerful than the next one down:
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Franklin Richards
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Galactus
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The Watcher
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Thor/Odin
I rank Franklin first here base on his peak power. He’s been used as a deus ex machina a few times, and at his peak he created an entire universe to save mommy and daddy.
Thor is nowhere near Galactus’ power level.
Other powermeisters in the Marvel multiverse would include The Beyonder and the Molecule Man (each somewher above Galactus).
The single most powerful being would be Eternity, the being that encompases the entire Marvel Universe, all of the alternate universes, and everything that exists in all of the planes in and between the universes. His caretaker is Roma, who could probably be said to be the most powerful being in the Marvel multiverse, as Eternity literally is the Marvel multiverse.
Unless you consider God himself. The Fantastic Four recently visited heaven (Ben had died, so Reed built a machine to go to heaven and bring him back) and got to talk to the big guy for awhile. You’d think that it wouldn’t be possible to depict a meeting with God that did Him justice, but damn if Waid didn’t manage to do just that.
Here’s some real esoteric trivia for you - who was the little guy that used to appear alongside the Watcher on the moon’s blue area, who the Watcher used to talk to? He may have been a robot, and he may have been recording what the watcher said. I believe the watcher talked to him a lot.
In the Marvel Universe, there are many of those “cosmic level” creatures- Ego (the living planet), the Beyonder, the In-betweener, the Celestials, Roma, Eternity, etc.
I think they used to show up a ton back in the Starlin days.
So basically, it’s just like the Highlander TV series, huh?
So the High Tribunal is one of the Watchers?
Rigellian Recorder #211… there were others. Sometimes called an Analyzer. These were robots created by the Rigellians to aid in colonization and conquest. Usually seen in Thor.
I’ve always liked the Watcher. In one of my early ‘What If’ comics, (what if the Avengers were defeated by Novak), the villain manages to take out the Avengers and most of the other super-types on earth and recreate them in his own image. The Watcher sees all of this, struggles for a while, realizes that there is no one left to save earth, and summons all of the other Cosmic-level beings together to take out the bad guy.
“I can not Watch…I must Act!” (insert ‘Actor’ joke here)
Of course, this results in the destruction of everything, including Eternity (damned nullifier), so it probably wasn’t the best idea. But still, the little guy has cojones.
No, he’s more of a cosmic judge. He steps in when there is a threat to the natural order, or something like that. If you read the Infinity Gauntlet series, the big cosmic beings all appeal to him for help against Thanos. He felt no threat to the order of the multiverse, so he said no.
I would say he’s the most powerful being in Marvel. Eternity is only the one universe, not the multiverse, correct? At least, that’s how I always understood it. And Eternity and Galactus went to him for help. That should put him pretty high up on the power scale.
Also, Stonebow, the Avengers were fighting Korvac. I still have that issue of What If? Great comic.
Living Tribunal has also stated that he is not as powerful as The One Above All, assumed to be God, the end all be all of power.
Let’s not forget the Brothers that encompass the Marvel and DC universes from the Marvel Vs DC miniseries. If you consider them canon, I’d put them even above Eternity, but not maybe Tribunal.
Actually, in that miniseries, they showed the Living Tribunal’s power to be nothing compared to that of the Marvel Brother (he and the Spectre are floating around like bugs trying to stop the Brothers from fighting).
Actually, assuming the Brothers are canon at all, I figured that the Marvel Brother is The One Above All. At the end of Marvel vs. DC, after all, the Brothers congradulate each other on the creation of their universes.
Frank Miller also used the Watcher to interesting effect in “What if Elektra had lived?”, where the Watcher takes human form (or nearly human form—he still has a freakin’ big head) and relates the alternate story to Matt Murdock at Elektra’s grave. (The upshot of the “What If?” is that Matt stops being Daredevil, abandons his law career and runs off with Elektra to some remote tropical paradise.)
So anyone know what happend to the Sphinx? I remember reading as a kid, in FF where they had met with Nova, and the Sphinx some how got Ultimate Power, and Reed was saying the only one who could stop him now would be Galactus.