Triton

Triton’s Tale

Early in the modern era, Black Bolt’s insane brother, Maximus the Mad, usurped the throne. The Royal Family was exiled from Attilan and hid from Maximus’ Seeker (Kadlec) in Manhattan. There, they encountered the Fantastic Four, who assisted Black Bolt in reclaiming the throne. As part of his penance, the imprisoned Maximus designed a compact saline circulator to replace Triton’s air-breathing apparatus.

The Royal Family ventured into the world to learn more about humanity, taking up residence on a Mediterranean island while Triton’s cousin Crystal visited the Fantastic Four. When Mr. Fantastic (Reed Richards) was lost in the extradimensional Negative Zone, Crystal sent Triton to rescue him, trusting her cousin’s navigation skills would allow him to safely traverse the alien dimension. Before returning to the island, Triton studied the FF’s records and thus, upon later encountering Prince Namor the Sub-Mariner, he recalled the Atlantean monarch to be a foe of his friends. Triton attacked the Atlantean, but both were captured by the Plantman. Intending to force them to be his emissaries, Plantman attacked London with his seaweed Leviathan, but the two amphibians escaped and destroyed it, then parted as friends.

After the Royal Family returned to Attilan, Triton ran into Namor again in the Pacific, where they stopped the Alpha Centaurian Dynorr the Stalker from stealing Earth’s water to sustain his own dehydrated world.

To drive a wedge between the Royal Family and Fantastic Four, Maximus framed the human heroes for launching a missile attack on Attilan; suspicious, Black Bolt had Triton investigate, and he swiftly confirmed Maximus as the true culprit.

Triton subsequently worked with marine hero Stingray (Walter Newell) and Namor to thwart the warlord Attuma’s scheme to provoke war between Atlantis and the surface world. Later, when Maximus again seized Attilan’s throne, Triton enlisted the Avengers’ aid in stopping him. At Mr. Fantastic’s behest, Triton reluctantly joined an American salvage mission retrieving nerve gas canisters from a sunken wreck, but quit after Namor was exposed to the material while battling the Atlantean super-giant Orka; Triton rushed the Sub-Mariner to Richards for medical treatment. Namor, with a disguised Triton’s help, later repaid this debt when the Invisible Girl (Sue Richards) and Mr. Fantastic’s marriage faltered, faking an attack on Manhattan as a ploy to remind the couple how much they loved one another (“Project Revival”).

When the Hydro-Men, humans mutated by Doctor Hydro (Herman Frayne), asked Mr. Fantastic for help returning to normal, he noted their resemblance to Triton, and arranged for the Thing (Ben Grimm) to take one of the men, Dr. Henry Croft, to meet the aquatic Inhuman. Near their rendezvous, Triton and Stingray encountered the Serpent Squad retrieving the magical Serpent Crown from an underwater site; though they captured most of the Squad, the snakes’ leader Sidewinder, known also as Seth Voelker, escaped with the crown. After confirming the Hydro-Men had been exposed to Terrigen Mists, Mr. Fantastic and Inhuman scientists restored them to normal.

After a clash between the Royal Family and the Inhumans’ Genetic Council, Black Bolt abdicated his throne, and with his relatives returned to Earth alone, where Triton helped Namor, Tiger Shark, Tamara Rahn and Stingray stop the Fomalhauti Xlyym’s weapon from flooding the surface world, and later attended the commencement of Newell’s new undersea biosphere city Hydropolis. When Namor was framed for attacking New York City, Triton joined Stingray, Andromeda Attumasen, Tiger Shark and Tamara in forming “Deep Six” to prove the Sub-Mariner’s innocence. Locating Namor near a wrecked nuclear submarine, Triton entered the vessel to remove the reactor’s control rods shortly before it blew up.

Surviving, Triton was washed ashore on Sao Paolo, an island on the edge of the original, submerged Atlantis, where Dr. Vivian Morgan, possessed by the sorceress Morgan Le Fay, found him. The radiation exposure from the submarine massively increased his musculature as Triton began drawing strength from Earth’s electromagnetic field. Morgan planned to sacrifice Triton in a ritual to raise Atlantis, but Namor intervened; however, when the Inhuman tried to save the innocent Vivian, he was stabbed while blocking a sword attack against Morgan, unintentionally completing her spell.

When many of the Inhumans were stricken with sickness from exposure to the outside world’s environment, Mr. Fantastic helped relocate Attilan from the Himalayas to the moon, upon the site of the Kree’s abandoned Blue Area. Exploring water-filled sub-lunar channels, Triton discovered an alien dreamweaver crystal; his approach triggered it, plunging all Attilan, including the visiting Fantastic Four, into personal nightmares, which ended only when Triton smashed the device.

The Kree’s Ronan the Accuser stole the entire city of Attilan and transformed it into a giant spaceship, with the kidnapped Inhumans forced to serve him. During this time, Triton and Karnak infiltrated the Shi’ar Elite Corps and then the Imperial Guard as part of Ronan’s plan to assassinate Empress Lilandra. Black Bolt won his people’s freedom, but not before slaying a Lilandra decoy, making the Royal Family interstellar fugitives. They returned to Earth and ultimately to the Moon’s Blue Area, soon followed by the rest of the Inhumans.

Shortly after the Inhumans entered a brief war with the U.S.A. over the American government’s refusal to return stolen Terrigen Crystals, the shapeshifting Skrulls launched an invasion of Earth and Attilan. Black Bolt was revealed to be one of several individuals abducted and replaced by Skrull sleeper agents, prompting Medusa to take the Royal Family into space, where they allied with Ronan to rescue her husband. Triton was sent to Pelagia, the water planet, to retrieve a beacon needed to locate Black Bolt; while there, he finally learned of his resemblance to that species. Karnak improved Triton’s breathing apparatus using Kree technology, allowing him to function in space without a suit.

After Black Bolt’s rescue, Attilan was launched into space once more, as the Inhumans and Kree pursued the Skrulls, but chasing them into Shi’ar space started a war with the avian empire, now led by Vulcan, AKA Gabriel Summers. During this conflict, Triton led the New Inhuman Elite, trained in zero-g fighting, into battle. Vulcan and Black Bolt seemingly died dueling one another as a Terrigen bomb detonated, creating a massive interdimensional rift, the Fault. Commanding a water-filled ship, Triton investigated the Fault, discovering it linked to the “Cancerverse” (Reality-10011), where the monstrous Many-Angled Ones had destroyed Death. The Inhumans joined an alliance of galactic powers in stopping a Cancerverse incursion of their reality.

When Black Bolt was found alive, his people returned to Earth, where they allied with alien relatives to form the Universal Inhumans, subsequently helping repel a Kree attack on Earth. With Attilan hovering above Manhattan, the death-worshipping Thanos’ Black Order threatened it; Black Bolt evacuated the city, then destroyed it once the invaders entered. The kingdom’s remains landed in the Hudson Estuary, and the Inhumans relocated there. This destruction spread Terrigen Mists across Earth, empowering humans who unwittingly had Inhuman heritage and were subsequently dubbed the “Nuhumans.” The Inhumans sought out those affected, with Triton sent on a mission involving Ms. Marvel, AKA Kamala Khan.