He could be the universe’s messiah or its doom bringer. Introduced in Fantastic Four #66 (1967) by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (though most of his story is from Jim Starlin), the being that would become known as Adam Warlock originally started out as an experiment to create the perfect human by a group of scientists known as the Enclave. However, with the help of Alicia Masters and the Thing, the being just called Him rebelled and killed his creator when he found out that they wanted to use him for evil purposes. After an encounter with Thor, he would encase himself in his cocoon.

This would later be found by the High Evolutionary and be taken to Counter-Earth, an exact replica of Earth that rotates at the exact opposite of the Sun. HE would teach Him and provided Him with the Soul Gem, giving Him the name Warlock. After a battle with Man-Beast, Warlock would encounter four children who gave him the name Adam. After defeating Man-Beast and his minions, Adam would become the first super-hero of Counter-Earth. After a while, he would encounter the Magus, a future version of himself that had turned evil and created the Church of Universal Truth. With the help of Pip, Gamora and Thanos, they succeeded in eliminating the Magus timeline but the threat of Adam turning into this form still lingered.

After trying to find out the origin of his Soul Gem, Adam would learn that Thanos wanted to gather the Infinity Gems. Adam would gather Earth’s champions to battle Thanos which would lead to the Infinity Gauntlet saga. After that he would reobtain his Soul Gem and gave the other Infinity Gems to other heroes and created the Infinity Watch team. He would remain with the team until they broke up and would battle Thanos and the Magus several times until, like many cosmic heroes would fall into obscurity, popping up in other comics from time to time.

After the events of Annihilation, he would return to life and helped with Ultron’s Phalanx invasion before joining the original (616) GOTG team. He would later see himself turning into the Magus but was later killed by Captain Marvel. He would of course return. He would begin seeking out the Infinity Stone (names were changed to line in with the MCU) and learnt that something was wrong in the universe. Travelling to Earth, he gathered the people who had found each of the stones hoping to form a new Infinity Watch. However, Gamora, learning that part of her soul was in the Soul Gem, used the stones to “fold” the universe into itself to create the Infinity Warp reality. He would work together to restore the universe and at the same time allow this new reality to exist. Afterward, he felt that a piece of his own soul was missing.

In the 70/80s, Adam was considered one of the major characters in Marvel but would eventually fall into obscurity with all cosmic heroes. However, many people wanted a figure of him for years. His first ML was part of the Target exclusive Red Hulk wave. He would later receive another figure as part of the GOTG Vol. 2 Mantis wave, which also came with a Magus head.