Black Winter

Black Winter's History

The Black Winter devoured the sixth iteration of the cosmos, leaving only a single survivor - Galan of Taa, who it chose as its Herald. Known vaguely to the Asgardians as the Fimbulwinter, its coming was prophesized to herald the beginning of Ragnarok.

Seeking to take Galactus back into its service, the Black Winter encroached into the Prime Marvel Universe and attacked him - taking on the form of Thor Odinson. Galactus managed to escape, albeit severely wounded, and subsequently crash-landed in Asgard; where some of its dark frost infected Yggdrasill, causing the World Tree to slowly rot and die. While Galactus marked Thor Odinson as his newest Herald and began consuming five special planets that would theoretically give him the power to oppose it, the Black Winter attacked an alternate universe and was confronted by its league of heroes. Upon looking in its eyes, the league saw the face of the one who was destined to kill them, and called out to their gods for help before being killed. The Black Winter then extinguished that universe, assuming the form of the cosmic hand that had originally created it.

Returning to the Prime Marvel Universe, the Black Winter easily subdued Galactus and Thor. Intrigued by Thor's many brushes with death, the Black Winter pitted him against manifestations of his greatest enemies and mockingly informed him of what was supposed to be his true end; noting that someone or something was worming their way through time to derail destiny. Thor used a God-Blast to escape, prompting the Black Winter to again assume the form of a dark version of the Herald of Thunder before assuring him it had no intention of destroying his universe, ominously adding that much darker threats than it were coming. When asked what it actually wanted, the Black Winter mockingly revealed that Galactus had been lying to Thor and was actually its Herald, and that it had come to reclaim him.

Furious at this revelation, Thor drained Galactus of all of his power, leaving him a desiccated husk. When the Black Winter tried to take him, Thor refused and used Galactus' dead body as a bomb to obliterate the Black Winter. A single snowflake survived, offering to show Thor a vision of his end - a world in which Thanos had stolen Mjolnir and imbued it with the Infinity Stones, commanding an army of zombified heroes - before Thor crushed it to dust. However, according to the Watcher, Thor's belief that he had destroyed the Black Winter was false.