No Johnny, I still cherish what Ben and I once had, but he belongs in my past. My present, my future... they belong to us. 
- —Alicia Masters (Lyja)
History
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Lyja is discovered by Johnny
In an effort to destroy the Fantastic Four, the Skrull Emperor tried feverishly to come up with a plan to defeat them. The Skrull General, Kalamari, suggested sending someone in as a spy, but the Emperor knew that they could not realistically duplicate any of the four’s powers.
Then Paibok appeared and pointed out that they could make a duplicate of someone close to the four, picking Alicia Masters, and out of a group of Skrull women, Paibok chose Lyja for the mission. The two had once had an affair that had ended badly, and Lyja was unsure if his choice was a privilege or a punishment. Either way, she was chosen and studied Alicia’s face, mannerisms, and spent countless hours being trained in everything the Skrulls knew about the Fantastic Four, the Thing, and Alicia herself. Lyja was even equipped with contact lenses that would render her blind in her human form, and she learned to operate without sight.
The Skrulls waited patiently for the right moment; then they found it as the Fantastic Four were beamed away by the mysterious, alien construct that appeared in Central Park.[6] They acted quickly to replace Alicia, and Paibok took the original away.
But when the three members of the Fantastic Four returned, Lyja was shocked to find She-Hulk in place of the Thing,[7] whom she had expected to return. The Human Torch reluctantly told her that Ben had stayed behind and was replaced by She Hulk, thinking that Alicia was heart-broken over the loss of her love. Lyja’s plans were in shambles, but she reacted quickly and turned to Johnny, who she intended to get close to as a confidant. However, Lyja made a bigger mistake and fell in love with Johnny, and the two were later married in a private ceremony that the Puppet Master nearly broke up until he realized how happy his "niece" seemed to be.[8]
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Lyja during her love story with Johnny
The happy couple spent many years happily wed; but one day, when the Thing prepared himself a midnight snack, he heard noises coming from Mister Fantastic's laboratory. Lyja was there, attempting to destroy Reed’s Brain Analyzer before he could discover that she wasn’t really Alicia. Ben confronted her as an intruder, who appeared as a shadow, and continued to change into various forms to elude him, until he rounded a corner and found Alicia there-who claimed she encountered nothing. Ben explained what he saw, though the rest of his team were skeptical. Later, Lyja discussed it with Johnny, who refused to believe that it was simply a hallucination. Lyja suggested that it could have been someone like the Puppet Master. Then, right on schedule, Ben slammed his way through the door alongside the Puppet Master and came after the woman disguised as Alicia. Johnny tried to stop him, but the Thing eventually snuffed his flame and threatened Lyja to reveal herself to the whole team, proving that she had duplicated Alicia.
Reed had to stop Johnny from killing Lyja before she could tell them the truth. Only when the Invisible Woman used her force field on him did he burn himself out and calm down. Lyja then told them all the details of her mission, explaining that she had been Alicia since before Johnny married her. The Torch refused to believe this, thinking that he had married the real Alicia, and Lyja had simply replaced her later. But Lyja insisted, explaining that she had shared his bed and his life, and was soon to have his baby. Then, together with the Fantastic Four, Lyja donned Sue’s original uniform (to differentiate her from other Skrulls) and agreed to help them rescue the real Alicia in exchange for her freedom. Again, Johnny was furious but he restrained himself. When they invaded the Skrulls’ hidden base, Lyja armed herself with a stun gun and fought alongside the four. Though once Paibok appeared and turned on Johnny for the imagined indignities he felt the human had made Lyja suffer, she was torn between the man she had lived with and her former lover. Then, before Paibok could fire a lethal beam at Johnny’s back, Lyja transformed into a giant, alien beast and threw herself in the way of the beam. The Thing dropped a massive pillar on Paibok, putting him out of commission.
Lyja was injured and lay dying. The Torch ran to her and asked her why she would do what she did. She told him that she wasn’t pregnant-she only wanted him to stay with her-and that she loved him, and would always love him. She seemingly died in his arms as he professed his own love for her. Mister Fantastic saved the real Alicia from her suspended animation and they were forced to leave Lyja’s body and escape as Paibok recovered and came after them. Later, when the Fantastic Four fought the Magnus, Paibok joined up with Devos the Destroyer, and together they revived Lyja and imbued her with her own superpowers. Calling her Lyja the Lazerfist, they plotted their revenge and soon attacked the Torch while he was attending Empire State University. Paibok and Devos chased him around, firing at him, until Lyja appeared. Feeling abandoned, Lyja hungered for revenge and used her new bio blasts to try and destroy the Torch. She again claimed to be pregnant, and together with her two allies, she poured fire upon the Torch until he lost control and used his ultimate weapon against them: His nova flame. Johnny turned white-hot and partially burned down Empire State University while Lyja and her cohorts fled.
They continued to taunt Johnny. Lyja and Paibok appeared in a crowd during his arrest, revealing themselves enough to send him into a frenzy, but acting as innocents once he turned on them; further damaging his image. But Lyja could not hate him as Paibok expected, and she snuck out of their orbiting ship and defended Johnny when he and his teammates stood off against Ghost Rider, Wolverine, Hulk, and Spider-Man: the Secret Defenders. She stopped the Ghost Rider from killing him, claiming that as her right, but fought alongside of him when they were taken to the Moon shortly afterwards by Uatu The Watcher. Johnny saved her, as well, from an extra-powered Doctor Doom, before the Inhuman Black Bolt stopped Doom and they returned to Earth. She agreed to join Johnny when he was charged and imprisoned, and later accompanied the Thing to Alicia’s apartment where she met the woman she impersonated.
Lyja attended Johnny’s trial, which was shortly broken up by Paibok, Devos, Klaw, and Huntara, a future relative of the Richards’. Lyja fought the villains, and her former allies, until Paibok reminded her that her baby would not be born properly without a "genefit of a Lacaroo". The fight went out of Lyja, and she slumped to the ground, but Johnny appeared to save her, though he took a blast in the back from Klaw. Afterwards, while Reed worked to fix a mutated Ms. Marvel, Lyja left Four Freedoms Plaza and disguised herself as a woman named Laura Green and became angry when Johnny hit on her. She later collapsed in pain due to her pregnancy, but made the then-teenage Franklin Richards promise not to reveal it. She continued to vacillate between trusting Johnny and hating him, but finally revealed to him that if she didn’t have the Lacaroo birthing medicine, their baby would die. Luckily, they were captured by Paibok and Devos and taken to the Skrull Homeworld, where Lyja and the remaining members of the Fantastic Four followed the lead of the Invisible Woman after the apparent death of Reed Richards, along with Doom. On the way off the planet, Susan grabbed a vial of birthing medicine.
During a mission undersea alongside Namor and the Inhuman Triton, Lyja went into labor. Triton swam both Lyja and Johnny away and back to a hospital while the rest continued on. With very little time left, Lyja entrusted herself to a human doctor, and Johnny handed him the birthing medicine she needed. The doctor discovered that the medicine put Lyja in a spongy state, and he searched the mass for the baby. He pulled out the implant that gave her the energy powers, and tossed it away. Then he finally found the baby, which turned out to be an egg. Lyja and Johnny spent the next few days coming back to their incubated egg. Johnny even considered quitting the team, as he feared for the life of his baby with all the dangerous things going on at the time. He had finally decided to stay behind while the rest went out on a portentously fatal mission to stay behind with his child. A man appeared named Raphael Suarez who showed up as the Collector appeared to take their very unique child, and Raphael helped fight off a robot sent by the Collector with the Lazerfist powers he accidentally received from Lyja’s implant. Moments before, Lyja, herself, discovered that her own powers were gone. After analyzing the egg, the Collector pronounced it a sham and disappeared. Lyja revealed that Johnny was not the egg’s father, but it was actually an artificial implant. She explained that she had tried to tell him, but couldn’t. As the egg began to hatch, Johnny was whisked away to fight alongside his teammates.
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Lyja's return
However, still in love with Johnny, Lyja stalked him while as a human, Laura Green. She did eventually reveal herself, however. She became an ally of the Fantastic Four, where she and Johnny seemed to be on track to reconciling their relationship. However, in the wake of the Onslaught crisis, the Fantastic Four were thought dead, and Lyja left to attempt a normal life, masquerading again as a human woman.[9]
Secret Invasion
During the Skrull invasion on Earth Lyja was working in a book store when a Skrull approached her, telling her to join them. They told her to blow up the Baxter Building. Hoping to keep them out of harm's way, she came up with a plan to send them to the Negative Zone. Posing as the Invisible Woman, she gained access to the Baxter Building and created a system crash in Reed's lab that sent the building and its surroundings to the Negative Zone.[2] When Johnny Storm was attempting to find out what was going on, Lyja as Sue tried to convince Johnny that the Thing was a Skrull. Failing at this attempt she revealed herself. She and Johnny embraced each other after Johnny saved her from an incoming police car. In dropping her guard she became a victim of a Negative Zone jellyfish. Johnny saved and brought her back to the destroyed Baxter Building. After fully recovering from her injuries, Lyja amended her actions and joined Ben, Johnny and Reed and Susan's children into finding a way back to their dimension. When Ben, Johnny, Franklin, Val and the Tinkerer were ready to leave the Negative Zone she refused to leave, because she wanted to find out who she was.[10]Attributes
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Powers
- Skrull Shape-Shifting: Like other Skrulls, Lyja is a shape-shifter. She can mentally cause the unstable molecules that comprise her body to become pliant, enabling her to assume other forms through muscular expansion and contraction. Once a new shape has been assumed, it takes a conscious act of will to assume another form or revert to natural. Hence, Skrulls do not spontaneously lose their assumed form when asleep or unconscious. Skrulls in altered form will, however, revert to their original forms at the moment of death. Trained to impersonate Alicia Masters.
Super Skrull Engineering
- Energy Beam: Lyja artificially endowed with the ability to fire blasts of energy from her fists that she could use to cause damage as well as propel herself through the air.
- Heat resistance: During the events of Secret Invasion, she also displayed tremendous resistances to the intense heat and flames of the Human Torch.
Abilities
- Skrull Military Training: Lyja is a trained Skrull soldier.
- Aviation: Lyja is trained in the use of the advanced warp-drive starships of the Skrull-military.
- Unarmed Combat: Lyja is trained in the unarmed combat of the Skrull-military, she is also quite experienced; due to her involvement in the Kree-Skrull War.
- Marksmanship: Lyja is trained in the use of the ranged energy-weaponry of the Skrull-military.
Weaknesses
- Skrull Shape-Shifting: Skrulls only take on the appearance of an object or person and none of that object or person’s characteristics. There is a limit to the size of the object or person a Skrull can imitate. The average Skrull cannot distend his or her mass any more than 1.5 times as large a volume as his or her original volume, nor can he or she contract his or her mass any more than 0.75 a volume as his or her original.
Paraphernalia
Equipment
Weapons
Transportation
See Also
- 140 appearance(s) of Lyja (Earth-616)
- 9 appearance(s) in handbook(s) of Lyja (Earth-616)
- 5 minor appearance(s) of Lyja (Earth-616)
- 11 mention(s) of Lyja (Earth-616)
- 4 mention(s) in handbook(s) of Lyja (Earth-616)
- 43 image(s) of Lyja (Earth-616)
- 5 quotation(s) by or about Lyja (Earth-616)
- 1 victim(s) killed by Lyja (Earth-616)
- 1 item(s) used/owned by Lyja (Earth-616)
Links and References
References
- ↑ Fantastic Four #265; revealed in #357.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #1
- ↑ Fantastic Four #371
- ↑ Fantastic Four #414
- ↑ Fantastic Four #393
- ↑ Thing #10
- ↑ Fantastic Four #265
- ↑ Fantastic Four #300
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 Tales of the Marvel Universe #1
- ↑ Secret Invasion: Fantastic Four #3
- ↑ Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe A to Z Vol 1 6