Shadow Council (Earth-616)

Origin[]

In 1865, by the end of the American Civil War, John Steele was discovered to be a spy working for the Union by a group of Confederate soldiers led by Aloysius Thorndrake. The vengeful soldiers chased Steele through Texas until they all stumbled into a portal that connected Earth to Mars.^[3][4] The portal was a pathway through a sidereality they would later name the Vanishing Point, where an ancient entity known as the Abyss was trapped since the dawn of time.^[3] Steele and the Confederate soldiers were tainted by said entity's touch and became his servants.^[4]

At an unspecified point after that, the former Confederate soldiers created the subversive organization called the Shadow Council^[4] and started working towards building an army to give the Abyss.^[5] They established two bases of operations in each end of the pathway between Earth and Mars they had found, and used it until modern times.^[3]

John Steele and Max Fury[]

John Steele eventually got free from the Abyss' control^[4] and actively fought during both World War I and World War II,^[6] which was when the Shadow Council lured him into a trap and performed a ritual to rip reality open so the Abyss could take control of his mind again. He joined the Shadow Council soon afterwards.^[4] Decades later, Steele helped a Life-Model Decoy of Nick Fury who had all of the spy's memories (courtesy of the Zodiac Key Scorpio used to reprogram him) escape from S.H.I.E.L.D. Naming him Max, Steele convinced the LMD to join the Shadow Council^[7] and he eventually became the organization's head of security.^[3]

Dark Children[]

Years later, the Shadow Council allowed Roxxon to dig up in Mars in the hopes that they could find for them the three mystic crowns the Martians created to channel the power of the Abyss' Dark Children. The Thorned Crown was found and enshrined by the Shadow Council^[8] while the Crown of Tentacles was found by Roxxon, who turned against their backers to take the crown for themselves (presumably under the crown's influence).^[3] Word of Roxxon having a Serpent Crown eventually got out, catching the attention of the Secret Avengers, a strike team assembled by Steve Rogers. Transferred to a Roxxon facility in Dubai, the Crown of Tentacles was stolen by the Secret Avengers before the Shadow Council had the chance to do so themselves.^[8]

When Nova went missing after going to Mars to check on the Roxxon drilling facility for Steve Rogers, the Secret Avengers traveled to the red planet to rescue him, not knowing he had been influenced into donning the Thorned Crown he found.^[8] The Shadow Council took advantage of their absence to steal the Crown of Tentacles from their headquarters, the Quincarrier.^[9] The possessed Nova went on to try and break the seal to awaken the Darkest Child, but the Secret Avengers arrived just in time to stop him.^[10] The Thorned Crown was then taken to a safer place by Archon,^[2] one of the constructs created by the Watchers to guard the Abyss.^[3] Despite this, however, the Shadow Council got their hands on the crown at a later point.^[11]

It wasn't without its losses for the Shadow Council though: while the Secret Avengers were investigating Roxxon's operations on the red planet, Ant-Man found the Shadow Council's citadel nearby, and was accidentally swallowed by the portal.^[12] He went through the Vanishing Point and appeared moments later in the Shadow Council's base in Texas.^[3] Ant-Man then followed a squad of Shadow Council suicide bombers back into the Vanishing Point. When the soldiers noticed his presence, Ant-Man shot them with an energy blast, causing a chain reaction that detonated their suits and destroyed the two citadels at the end of each portal right before he exited it, seemingly causing the Vanishing Point to collapse.^[2]

Zheng Zu[]

With the world changing fast and China being at its forefront, the Shadow Council needed someone pulling the strings there.^[13] To this end, they brought the evil magician Zheng Zu back to life as a half-dead being,^[14] planning to fully resurrect him later so he would be in debt with them.^[13] To accomplish such a feat, the Shadow Council needed to collect the Eyes of the Dragon, two magical stones created by Zheng Zu and his brother that Zheng Zu used to steal his brother's (and later his own children's) life essence to live forever, and capture Zheng Zu's son, Shang-Chi, to perform a ritual. Though they managed to do both,^[15] the Secret Avengers' intervention during the ritual resulted in the death of Zheng Zu and the imprisonment of John Steele,^[13] who was later freed of the Abyss' control.^[4]

Other Operations[]

In Serbia, the Shadow Council abducted several hundred people and rigged their brains in parallel to try and create a bio-computer, but the Secret Avengers stopped them in their tracks.^[16]

Masters of Evil[]

Believing that the Shadow Council was building a weak army for the Abyss,^[5] Max Fury took over the organization and used their wealth to fund Bagalia, an anarchistic red light nation where he gathered together a new incarnation of the Masters of Evil^[11] to serve the Abyss.^[5] With the Crown of Wolves already located, the Shadow Council had at least five undead sorcerers (including Grigory Rasputin and Tutankhamen) fly aircrafts all over the world in anticipation of the Abyss' arrival.^[17]

John Steele, who was working undercover for the Secret Avengers since they freed him from the Abyss' control, attempted to escape from Bagalia with the Thorned Crown but was caught by the new Masters of Evil and subsequently murdered. Consequently, the Secret Avengers went to Bagalia to try and stop Taskmaster from delivering the Crown of Wolves to Max Fury as he was hired to do.^[11] Taskmaster managed to deliver the package, however, and was paid with shots to the chest.^[5] Once in possession of all three crowns, Max Fury merged them together and donned the merged crown to become the Abyss' vessel, but that didn't work as he was an LMD. The merged crown was then donned by a wounded Taskmaster, who proceeded to take control of the minds of both the Masters of Evil and the Secret Avengers.^[5]

The Secret Avengers Agent Venom and Ant-Man, who weren't affected by the Abyss' influence due to one being a symbiote host and the other secretly an LMD replacement, fought against the Abyss as he tried to spread his influence beyond Bagalia and managed to severe his connection to Earth by bonding the Venom symbiote to Taskmaster and unmerging the three crowns.^[18] The crowns were then confiscated by the Secret Avengers^[19] while Max Fury was incarcerated at the Lighthouse.^[20]

Descendants[]

Some time before putting his hands on the Crown of Wolves, Max Fury allied himself with the Descendants, a collection of mechanical lifeforms created by the man only known as Father by using the Orb of Necromancy.^[21][22] He planned to use the Abyss to help the Descendants get rid of humanity,^[20] but got too carried away by the prospect of not feeling life that the entity offered.^[23] That coupled with him working for no fewer than three organizations was enough to earn Father's distrust. Once Fury had been imprisoned by the Secret Avengers, Father ordered the Ant-Man LMD (now calling himself the Black Ant) to enter his cell and make him sign some papers handing Bagalia over to him. After he signed it, Black Ant killed him.^[20] What became of the Shadow Council after their leader's death is unknown.

• Despite being called the Shadow Council in all of its appearances and mentioned as such in most handbook entries, the organization is identified as the Shadow Empire in Heroic Age: Villains #1, where it's also said that their board of directors is the group actually called the Shadow Council.