ZEUS
Real Name:
Zeus Thunder-Striker
Occupation:
Supreme Monarch of the Olympian Gods, God of sky, thunder and lightning
Legal Status:
Citizen of Olympus
Identity: The general populace of Earth is unaware of Zeus’s existence except
as a figure of mythological origin. He was publicly known through the
Greco-Roman Empire
Other Aliases:
Jupiter, Jove (Roman names), Tin, Tinis (Etruscan names), Maju (Basque name), Taranis (Celtic name), Di'i (Dacian name), J. Peter Reason (mortal identity),
Place of Birth:
Mount Lycaeum, Arcadia (now part of modern Greece)
Marital Status:
Married several times
Known Relatives:
Ouranos
(grandfather, deceased), Gaea (grandmother), Cronus (father), Rhea (mother),
Hades, Poseidon (brothers), Hera (sister/wife), Hestia, Demeter (sister), Chiron
(half-brother), Plute (half-sister), Apollo (son by Leto),
Ares, Hephaestus
(sons by Hera), Artemis
(daughter by Leto), Athena (daughter by Metis),
Dionysus
(son by Semele), Hebe,
Discord, Eileithyia (daughters by Hera),
Persephone
(daughter by Demeter), Helen of Troy (daughter by Leda),
Hercules (son by
Alcmene), Hermes (son by Maia),
Aphrodite (daughter by Dione), The Muses
(daughters by Mnemosyne), The Graces (daughters by Eurynome), Pandia
(daughter by Selene), The Horae, The
Moirae (daughters by Themis), Perseus (son by Danae, deceased), Asclepius, Eros,
Janus, Deimos, Phobos, Pan (grandsons), Triton, Arion (nephews), Despoena
(niece), Circe,
Hecate, Helios, Eos, Selene, Prometheus, Eprimetheus, Atlas (cousins),
Group Affiliations:
Gods of Olympus
Base of Operations:
Olympus, recently Olympia, Washington
First Appearance:
Thor
I Annual 1
History:
Zeus is the youngest son of Cronus, ruler of the superhuman extra dimensional
race of Titans, and his wife, the Titaness Rhea. Cronus and Rhea were the
offspring of the sky god Ouranos and the primeval Earth goddess Gaea. (Ouranos
and Cronus are not to be confused with the Eternals Uranus and Chronos, the
latter of whom is also known as Kronos). Cronus overthrew his father's rule by
fatally wounding him. The dying Ouranus prophesied that Cronus would likewise be
overthrown by one of his own children. As a result, upon the birth of each of
his own children, Cronus had the infant imprisoned in Tartarus, the most dismal
section of the extra dimensional underworld known as Hades. The offspring he
sent there were Hades, Poseidon, Hera, Demeter, and Hestia. (Later, legends
erroneously claimed that Cronus had actually swallowed his children and that
they remained alive inside him until Zeus released them.).
Appalled at the mistreatment of their children, Cronus's wife Rhea concealed her sixth
pregnancy from him and secretly gave birth to Zeus on Mount Lycaeum in Arcadia, an area
of the land now known as Greece. Rhea gave the infant Zeus to the safekeeping of Gaea,
who hid the baby in the cave of Dicte on Aegean Hill on the isle of Crete, where various
minor goddesses tended his needs. The Curetes, a mortal tribe native to Crete, drowned out
the cries of the infant Zeus with their ritualistic clashing of spears and swordplay.
Although raised as mortal, Zeus grew to adulthood among the sheepherders of Mount Ida, Crete,
and upon learning his true identity and destiny from Rhea, he began partaking on his plans
for revenge on Cronus. He went down into Tartarus and freed his siblings, who had all now
grown to adulthood. He also freed the three one-eyed giants called Cyclopes and the three
hundred-handed giants called Hekatonchieroi, all six of whom Cronus had kept imprisoned there
for fear they would help overthrow him. The grateful Cyclopes taught Zeus how to wield his
energy-manipulating powers in battle. Zeus and his allies fought a ten-year war with the Titans,
which ended with Zeus's victory. He imprisoned most of the male Titans in Tartarus and established
himself from Mount Olympus in Thessaly as supreme ruler of the Olympian race. In later years,
though, he relocated the realm of the Olympian gods to a separate plane of existence away
from earth, but a portal to this dimension remained anchored near Mount Olympus on Earth.
Despite his role as a god, Zeus primarily shirked his godly duties
to pursue romantic pursuits. Believing that mankind was outgrowing a need for
gods, he desired an end to mortal dependence on religious icons, but several of
the Olympians catered egotistically on the worship from the temples dedicated to
them. He eventually realized that mortal men depended heavily on the Olympians
for guidance, and staved off severing their dependence on the Olympians as gods.
Despite his philandering, Zeus married and accepted the goddess
Hera as his wife and Queen of the Olympian gods, but before her, he had had
several other wives including Metis, Demeter, Leto, Eurynome and the Titanesses
Dione, Themis and Mnemosyne. He eventually began engaging in many affairs out of
wedlock with other goddesses and with mortal Earth women both before and during
the Heroic Age of ancient Greece. Some of his children were gods; others were mortal
human beings such as Perseus and Dardanus. A few of Zeus’s mortal children, Dionysus,
Helen of Troy and Hercules were transformed into immortals toward the end of their mortal
lives on Earth. Hera hated all of his extra-marital children believing they
would overshadow her own children and often inflicted misfortunes upon them,
primarily on Dionysus and Hercules.
Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter and Hestia, together with Zeus's
children Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Hephaestus, Hermes and Aphrodite,
comprised the membership of the high council of the Olympian gods known as the
Pantheon. Hestia later resigned her seat in the council in favor of Zeus's son,
Dionysus. Zeus's brother, Hades was not a member of the Pantheon, preferring to
spend virtually all of his time within Tartarus, which he ruled.
In ancient times Zeus and his fellow Olympians successfully
defeated challenges to their rule by the giants Otis and Ephialtes, by a small
army of superhuman giants, and, most dangerously, by the monster Typhon, a Titan
who has menaced the Olympians even into recent times.
The Greeks and Romans carried worship of the Olympian Gods throughout the Greek
and Roman Empire and much of the Mediterranean and northward into parts of Gaul and
Dacia. Poseidon also became the patron god of
the water-breathing Atlanteans. Zeus learned that Greece's Mount Olympus, the
location of the main inter dimensional nexus between the Olympian dimension and
Earth, lay near Olympia, the principal city of the Eternals. Zeus and his
daughter Athena, goddess of wisdom, held a meeting with Zuras, the leader of the
Eternals, and his daughter Azura. Noticing the strong physical resemblance
between Zeus and Zuras and between Azura and herself, Athena suggested that the
Olympian gods and the Eternals form an alliance whereby the Eternals would act
as the gods' representatives on Earth. The other three enthusiastically agreed,
and Azura took her current name of Thena to signify the signing of the pact.
However, over the years many ordinary human beings came to think of many
Eternals not as the gods' representatives but as the gods themselves. This led
to a growing resentment by the gods towards the Eternals, which recently
erupted, into a brief war. However, today the Eternals and the Olympian gods are
again at peace with each other.
Worship of the Olympian gods spread from Greece to Rome and throughout the Roman
Empire and into Ancient Britain where they entered into an unstable rivalry with the
Tuatha de Danaan, the gods of the Celts and Gaels. The gods intervened
frequently in human matters at first, as in the Trojan War, but did so less as
time passed. During the Roman Empire, Zeus became incensed that Romans were
killing Christians in their name and finally decided to sever the worship of the
Olympian gods in the Roman Empire . He manipulated prophecies into pass concerning
the death of the Olympian Gods by Livia, the daughter of Xena, when in reality he
had spells in effect to restore the gods to life after being physically killed.
Afterward, as the restored gods sought out their worship rights once more, an
alien race known as the Celestials threatened to sever the portals to earth if
the Olympian gods did not cease their trafficking with mortals. Poseidon, however,
was still allowed to watch over his Atlantean worshippers. While the Olympians were
prohibited from guiding human destiny, they still took an interest in them and even
masqueraded as mortals while incognito on Earth.
Millennia before, Zeus' son Hercules had met and encountered the
Asgardian god Thor under amicable circumstances in Scandinavia, but later led a
band of warriors to battle Norsemen who were under the protection of Thor. This
conflict led to a brief war between the Asgardians and Olympians, which had
repercussions in a few of the other pantheons of Earth. Zeus, however, secretly
met with Odin, ruler of the Asgardians, and the two gods not only put an end to
the war, but also formed an alliance to defend Earth from danger posed by the
alien Celestials. Odin and Zeus met with the heads of the other races of gods
who were or had been worshipped by Earth mortals to discuss the Celestials'
possible threat to Earth, and then Odin, Zeus, and the Hindu god Vishnu went to
confront the Third Host of the Celestials on behalf of all of Earth's pantheons.
However, Odin and Zeus were forced to pledge not to interfere with the
Celestials when the Celestials threatened to seal off the one-dimensional
passageways connecting the gods' dimensions with Earth. As a result of this
pledge, the Olympian gods decreased their contact with Earth, although Zeus's
offspring Hercules, Apollo and Aphrodite have spent periods living among Earth
human beings since before the Dark Ages. The Celestials' Fourth Host recently
decided to spare Earth from destruction and has left the planet.
Since the worship of the Olympian gods had died out, Zeus forbade
his brother Hades, ruler of Tartarus, the Olympian underworld, from collecting
any more of the souls of the dead from Earth. For several years, Hades obeyed
the edict resentfully. Finally, the bitter Hades convinced himself that Zeus had
proven himself to be an incompetent leader by allowing the worship of the
Olympians to come to an end. Zeus, noting Hades' increasingly ominous
rebelliousness, warned him against attempting to overthrow him. Nonetheless,
Hades has attempted unsuccessfully to overthrow Zeus, as has Zeus's own son, the
war god Ares. Despite his selfish drives, Hades adapted a public persona behind
the façade of Hayden Reason, a human parapsychologist who exorcised malevolent
entities by exiling them to Tartarus where he could control them.
Despite the end of the worship of the Olympian gods, Zeus has
retained affections and interest in the people of Earth. With his role as a god
retired, he found he could still interact with mortal man under the human
persona of J. Peter Reason, a philanthropist with ties to the other godheads
posing as other businessmen and philanthropists in statuses of power. The family
name, Reason, was derived from Zeus’s mother, Rhea, in order to purposely distance
himself from his father, Cronus, currently presiding in anonymity somewhere in
Northern Italy after several years imprisoned in Tartarus. Much of the Reason
family wealth derived from the fortunes of their mortal descendants from the
reigns of Agamemnon and Minos while Poseidon became self-sufficient from
treasures off the ocean floor.
Today, Zeus remains the ruler of the Olympian gods and of Olympus itself, mostly
in function only, as well as a staunch ally of the Asgardians.
Height: 6' 7"
Weight: 560 lbs.
Eyes: Blue
Hair:
Red
Strength Level: Zeus possesses
superhuman strength that surpasses most of the other Olympian gods except for
that of his son Hercules. He can lift (press) 90 tons under optimal conditions
without making use of any of his other powers.
Known Superhuman Powers: Zeus possesses
the conventional physical attributes of an Olympian god. Like all Olympians he
is immortal: he has not aged since reaching adulthood and cannot die by any
conventional means. He is immune to all Earthly diseases and is resistant to
conventional injury. If Zeus were wounded, his godly life force would enable him
to recover with superhuman speed. It would take an injury of such magnitude that
it dispersed a major portion of his bodily molecules to cause Zeus physical
death. Even then, it might be possible for a god of equal power, such as Odin,
Ammon-Ra or for a number of Olympian gods working together to revive him. Zeus
possesses superhuman strength and his Olympian metabolism gives him far greater
than human endurance at all physical activities. (Olympian flesh and bone is
about three times as dense as similar human tissue, contributing to the
Olympians' superhuman strength and weight.)
Zeus possesses vast energy powers of an unknown nature, which
surpass the energy wielding powers of any other Olympian god. Magical in their
apparent form and function, these powers can be employed for numerous purposes.
Zeus's ability to generate tremendous amounts of electrical energy and to
project them from his hands in the form of lightning bolts has become his
trademark. He can control the weather such as when he causes rainstorms and
thunder bursts. Zeus can generate and manipulate other forms of energy as well.
Only a small number of the ways in which Zeus can utilize his superhuman
abilities are as yet known. Among these are the augmentation of physical
strength and endurance and the enchantment of living beings or of objects. Zeus
can create inter-dimensional apertures through which he can transport himself
and even the entire Olympian army. He can project his image, voice, and energy
bolts from the Olympian dimension into that of Earth. Zeus can change his shape
into that of other humanoid beings (as when he impersonated Amphitryon, the
husband of Hercules' mother Alcmene), of animals or even of objects. Zeus also
has limited precognitive abilities, and in ancient times was the patron of an
oracle at
Paraphernalia: Zeus wears an
indestructible breastplate called an aegis. Constructed out of adamantine, it
was impervious to harm and could not be shattered. Zeus sometimes shared it with
Apollo and Athena. Athena has in turn shared in with mortal heroes such as
Perseus, Odysseus and the modern hero Aegis.