Rick Jones

Origin

The Rebel.

 

The sacrifice that Banner had made caused Rick to grow up fast. He knew it was his fault and took the responsibility to assist Banner and the Hulk, knowing how dangerous it would be.  
 
Rick would eventually become the second Bucky, and be trained by Captain America himself, even donning the Bucky suit for a while. 

Pirate Radio?

Rick Jones and the "Teen Brigade",  an underground network of what may be described as "pirate radio" or a group of angst ridden teens, heard of the Hulk's rampage and summond the Fantastic Four.  
 
However, instead a few of solo heroes simulataneously answered the call, thus directly or indirectly giving birth to the legendary super team known as The Avengers.  

Another Sidekick gig?

 
Rick Jones was trained in hand to hand combat  by Captain America, himself. Rick would go on to become Captain America's sidekick as the second Bucky. Rick's resemblane to Bucky made him a near clone in the original suit. 
 
His development went well until the Red Skull switched minds with Captain America and rejected Rick. Rick left Cap feeling let down and still not knowing the the real situation that took place, resurfacing his own feelings of abandonment by his family, and his anger of the world. 

The Rebel and The Hero: Bonded.

After the rebellion to defend Earth, Captain Mar-Vell eventually found himself trapped in the Negative Zone. The Supreme Intellegence secretly enables Mar-Vell to telepathically contact Rick. Feeling drawn Rick enters a cave and he puts on a pair of "nega-bands" around his wrists. After slamming the bands together, Mar-Vell and Rick bonded and would trade places in the Negative Zone.

 

Rick and Captain Mar-Vell had many adventures together, they even fought his old partner Hulk and the Zodiac Cartel along with the Avengers. Mar-Vell and the Fantastic Four was in a battle with Annihilus, when Mr. Fantastic managed to free Rick from the Negative Zone which allowed both men the freadom from each other. During a misunderstanding with the Avengers, Mar-Vell was hospitalized, and he and Rick were abducted by the Skrulls. This would lead into the Kree/Skrull War.  
 
This is were Rick discovered his own latent  "Destiny Force" for the first time.

 

 Rick Jones realized his own worth beyond being the "perrenial sidekick", after a life of rejection. Through his experiences of living vicariously through the hero Mar-Vell, Rick realized he had the power within himself.  
 
A concept that has almost become cliche', but when done well as it is here, is a story of self confidence and discovery. It is noteworthy that this story was told before many of the popular or more well known versions of the concept, and they were done in the pages of Captain Marvel.  

 

At the end of the Kree/Skrull War, Rick and Mar-Vell would once again become bonded to each other, to save Rick's life, he became Mar-Vell's "host body", so they could exchange atoms for three hours for Mar-Vell to fight evil, yet maintaining a mental link of conversation.
 
Soon after the war, Rick and Mar-Vell would fight the evil Thanos and his plans to literally kill the universe in a twisted sacrifise to "death itself".  
 
It is during this time the original Captain Marvel becomes the original "Protector of the Universe" and defeats Thanos. 
 
Afterwards, "Captain Marvel and Rick Jones would fight many different villains and have many adventures, at one point even sharing one of the nega bands and merging to form Captain Marvel, with Rick having his own powers and costume, jokingly (although not "officially") referred to as "Marvel Boy".

Soon Mar-Vell and Rick would trade places with the being known as the Super Adaptoid, and be able to co-exsist on the same plane together, and finally be able to pursue their own seperate paths. (Captain Marvel #50) 
 
Rick would also roam from town to town pursuing his at times successful music career and dealing with his own sense of being lost, and his own angst. 
 

 

 Rick's close friend Mar-Vell would engage in combat with the terrostic villain known as Nitro, part of the Lunatic Legion who was stealing a cannister of deadly nerve gas, a bio-chemical warfare cannister known as "Compound 13".  
 
Rick switched places with Mar-Vell, and Mar-Vell streaked into action, during the fight the cannister would leak. 
 
Mar-Vell would have no choice but to seal the cannister with his bare hands,  as enough of the poison would depopulate the Earth. Though he won the fight itself, eventually the exposure with the deadly gas would prove fatally cancerous.     
 
Rick would be emotionally shattered by this, as many were, but would pick up the pieces later on. 
 
Although many would say that the Rick Jones character interfered with the uniqueness of exploring the Captain Mar-Vell character as a solo act, it is during this period, and his experiences described in Captain Marvel, where the Rick Jones character is most defined.
 
THE SPACEKNIGHT

When Rick wasn't playing sidekick to a hero he was playing guitar and singing with his band trying to make it big. 

Back With Hulk

After the Hulk's return, Rick begins dating Joe Fixit's ex-girlfriend Marlo Chandler. After the Hulk personalities merged into one, a secret team of heroes called the Pantheon approached Hulk with an offer to join them, and Rick accompanies Hulk on most of his missions for the group. As a favor to their friend Jim Wilson, Rick and Hulk agree to help out at an AIDS benefit concert with Rick headlining and Hulk providing security. The concert was disrupted by the drug-addicted assassin Speedfreek who was sent to kill one of the concert's attendees, Jim was stabbed defending the man and the Hulk got rid of Speedfreek before he could kill anybody. Rick wanted to help Jim but he had also been slashed by Speedfreek and couldn't risk getting infected with Jim's blood, luckily Hulk was able to help Jim because of his enhanced immune system. When Hulk and Rick returned to the Pantheon they were sent to the Florida Everglades to investigate the disappearance of two teens that may have been tied to a missing Pantheon scientist. While there they battled both the Man-Thing and the missing scientist who had transformed himself into the Glob, he was killed by the touch of the Man-Thing when he burst into flame. During one of their missions with them they fought alongside a rebel force in Trans-Sabal against both S.H.I.E.L.D. issue Mandroids and the new government super team X-Factor. The country was being ruled by Farnoq Dahn ,a dictator who had promised the US government energy assistance if they helped him keep his place as unchallenged ruler. He was exposed as a psycho when he tried to win the war by tying a mother and child to two separate missiles and threatened to launch them if the Pantheon didn't stop, he was stopped by Hulk and X-Factor. The tyrant was forced to face his people for the crimes he committed but most of them still saw him as a god and bowed at his feet, he was then shot and killed by a traumatized Rick Jones who had taken a Mandroid suit.  Afterwords Rick returned to his apartment and cut off all contact with the outside world until Marlo and Betty came over and forced him to go back out into the world.               

Out of nowhere a woman showed up claiming to be Rick's mother, she had pictures of him together as a child and claimed to have put him up for adoption while she was on the run from some criminals. After Rick finally accepted the woman claiming to be his mother, she drugs him and chains him up in her basement. Marlo and Betty follow Jackie when they see her speed away from Rick's apartment, and Betty thought she saw Rick in the passenger side. Marlo was killed by Jackie leaving Rick heartbroken. The police told him that she used to work at an orphanage but she was fired when they found out she was unstable. Rick goes to everyone for help bringing back Marlo,  from Doctor Strange to Mister Fantastic. The emotional pain in Rick caused the Leader extreme annoyance and he decided to resurrect Marlo to make it go away. The process was disrupted and her mind didn't return immediately with her body, she was alive but she couldn't do anything without somebody guiding her. They have Doc Samson examine her and he believes that she could just be in some kind of coma. Her brothers show up after they find out about her and try to get her away from Rick, but drowning in grief he fights back. When he refuses to hand her over they have Captain America help talk some sense into him but the Hulk shows up and a battle ensues. Just before Rick is arrested by the cops her mind returns and their life returns to "normal". When he is at home his granddaughter from the distant future, Janis, showed up and took the Hulk to the future to defeat the tyrant Maestro. Rick proposes to her a few weeks later and she says yes. At the bachelor party they watch a porno and are shocked to see Marlo in it, the next day Rick confronts her about it and she accidentally sells her soul to Mephisto in order to make Rick forgive her. There wedding is sabotaged by the Impossible Man who sends out invitations to all of Rick's enemies and allies from the Skrulls to Rom, but rather then ruin the day Rick allows everyone to stay as long as their is no fighting. The ceremony is interrupted by Mephisto who comes to claim Marlo's soul but Hulk beats him down and sends him back to hell. After their marriage Rick and Marlo even get their own talk show called "Keeping up With the Joneses". Months later when the Hulk is under the control of Apocalypse, the Absorbing Man shows up and takes Rick and Janis to Cairo to help stop the Hulk. Rick jumps in during the battle and is crippled by Hulk, seeing his best friend's crippled body causes Hulk to break the mind control and flee in shame. The loss of his legs causes trouble to start in his relationship with Marlo.

 

When all of earth's missing heroes return, Bruce is returned too and is bonded with the Hulk once more. Bruce is able to gain a secret presidential pardon with the help of the returned Thunderbolt Ross and so Bruce, Betty, Rick, and Marlo all move into the secret government facility Area 102. Bruce is able to get Reed Richards and Tony Stark to build an exoskeleton so that Rick can walk. When Bruce sees his friend walk again, Hulk is overcome with guilt and takes over. He jumps from the base but he is followed by a superhuman Rick, unfortunately he has a heart attack because his body can't keep up with the exoskeleton and Hulk returns them both to Area 102. The next morning they recieve news that Betty died to to gamma poisoning and that Bruce has attempted suicide. Rick goes to talk to his friend to find that he has gone completely insane and is talking to hallucinations, Bruce then transforms into the Hulk and flees the base. Betty's death and Bruce's insanity destroy Rick and Marlo's already shaky relationship and they split. Rick stays at Area 102, the new hulkbuster base and becomes deathly ill and the Avengers are called in to help him. 

Bonding to Genis

In order to find a way to return Rick to his actual age Marv travels to the Kree home world to ask the Supreme Intelligence for help. He is defeated by Ronan the Accuser when he arrives and he is placed in a cell. He frees himself from the cell and confronts the Supreme Intelligence. He agrees to help Rick if Marv travels in to the Negative Zone and brings back a rare type of radiation, but the radiation only comes from a sun under the watch of Blastaar's son Burstaar. After Marv retrieves the radiation the Supreme Intelligence tries to restore Rick but it appears to fail. While walking around LA Rick sees a woman giving birth in an alley and helps deliver the baby. The baby is born dead but Rick performs CPR and revives the baby, shortly after he is returned to his real age. Rick believes that it was divine power working with karma but Genis insists that it was a delayed reaction to the radiation. Rick and Marlo split during this time due to her relationship with Moondragon. 

 

Stranded in the Microverse

After Moondragon removes the mental blocks on Marv's cosmic awareness he begins training to handle the power, and after months of meditation he feels that he is ready. Rick goes into the Microverse to let Marv try out his new ability. Marv is immediately overwhelmed when he now sees every crisis in the universe happening every second and has to make a choice of which to attend to, and after he made his decision he sees every possible outcome of what could have happened had he chosen differently. But this ability eventually drove him mad after he chose to save an entire race of peaceful aliens from being slaughtered over saving one woman from being murdered by her boyfriend. Immediately after she was killed he was shown her future as the universe's greatest peacemaker and that under her there would have been galactic peace for generations. Rick tries his best to help his troubled friend but it does no good. Marv becomes desensitized to the problems of the universe and strands Rick in the Microverse for months and refuses to speak to him while he goes out and tries to find a way to take over the universe. While stranded in the Microverse Rick is imprisoned in a cave by Entropy, and he meets Epiphany. Epiphany helps him escape and awakens his creativity making him a rock star in the Microverse. Marv feels that joining the Kree military will help him, but his insanity causes him to kill his commanding officer and commit suicide. In death Marv meets Entropy and they destroy the universe together, he keeps Rick alive and tries to talk to him for the first time in months and Rick tries to talk them into recreating the universe. Entropy begins having second thoughts and agrees with Rick, the universe is reset to before Marv goes insane and he is given a second chance. Marv decides to save the peacemaker this time around, after he sees that in the future after she dies a great war breaks out killing billions and Marv goes insane again leaving Rick stuck in the Microverse.

Marv the Mad god...Genis, not Mar-Vell.

In order to keep Marv in line Epiphany teaches Rick how to use the Nega-Band connection to "Psy-Fry" him and cause Marv extreme pain. The drawback to the technique is that the same damage is felt on Ricks end too. Marv and Rick agree to switch places every 24 hours. Bored and insane once again Marv decides to play the role of mad god. On earth a convicted murderer, Coven, is executed but amazingly comes back to life immediately after and he is set free since technically he has served his sentence. He decides that the first thing he is going to do is kill a key witness who testified against him against him in court, Rick Jones. He shoots Rick from afar but when he comes closer to finish him off he finds that Rick has swapped places with Marv. Marv is intrigued by the situation and how the policy of the earth court system to ignore all evidence that isn't directly presented, he bestows Coven with a fraction of his cosmic power and they set out to find a crime in progress to adjudicate. Rick wakes up in the Microverse to find himself surrounded by concerned groupies. Rick goes to his balcony and sees thousands of his alien fans camped on his lawn. Flying around New York Marv and Coven find Spider-Man fighting an alien, they use their cosmic power to knock them both unconscious and force them to go to "trial". The smaller alien that Spider-Man was protecting reveals that it was just a weird sexual game between he and the larger alien, an embarrassed Spider-Man agrees to leave but the larger alien threatens Marv and Coven snaps his neck. The smaller alien flees and swears revenge against Captain Marvel.

Back in the Microverse Marv continues playing Judge, Jury, and Executioner when he puts himself in between two lovers in a dispute over Rick, the woman has fallen in love with Rick's music and wants to call off her engagement. Marv decides to abuse his power once more and after performing a quick marriage and divorce he threatens to kill the man if he doesn't leave the planet, but before leaving the man threatens vengeance. Back on earth Rick is attacked by the empowered Coven but he is able to fight him off using a gun he received from one of his Microverse groupies, Marv takes his powers away from Coven in retaliation but he is able to overcome Marv and take all of his powers. At that moment on earth and in the Microverse the two aliens who swore vengeance against Marv return to the respective planets with massive fleets backing them up to kill Marv. In the Microverse the aliens found the depowered corpse of Marv and left, on earth the aliens saw Coven who had taken on the appearance of Marv after stealing his powers. Coven threatened the aliens and they attack him, seconds before they fire Marv takes his powers back and Coven is killed. Marv tells Rick that because of his cosmic awareness he had known the outcome to the entire situation and there had never been any danger.

Some time later Rick tries to talk Marv out of slaughtering all the Kree, Skrulls, and Shi'ar because he deemed them all a threat to humanity. Marv takes over Rick's mind and forces him to kill himself but brings him back to life soon after. The three species decide to annihilate Marv but are convinced by the Eternals to give them a chance to save him from his insanity. Marv and Epiphany travel to Titan and find that everybody is gone, Rick talks to Marv and tells him that Epiphany isn't there and he is just hallucinating.Marv is ambushed by his younger sister Phyla. Rick is confused because Marv never mentioned that he ever had a sister before but he is talking about having memories of them growing up together. The rest of the Eternals show up including Marv's thought deceased mother Elysius, she tries explain to him that when he remade reality with Entropy they altered it. Marv rips reality in half on Titan to get rid of his sister and mother but he is also pulled through into the pocket universe where his powers are gone. Elysius explains everything that is happening around him, when Marv remade the universe he brought multiple time lines together into one contradicting one. His mother and sister were brought from a reality where Marv had become a great hero and never gone insane, this also explained how all of the events that happened before he remade the universe were still true even though they never technically happened. She also forces Marv to face the fact that he was never insane but had used it as an excuse to escape liability for his actions because he knew he couldn't live up to the expectations placed on him. Marv returns them all to Titan and swears to live up to the name Captain Marvel, Rick tries to congradulate Marv but he seems distracted, because the hallucination of Epiphany is still there telling him that he is insane.

Into the Future

Newly reformed, they set up shop on Hyperion and now only go where asked. Due to the entire galaxy fearing Marv nobody will contact him for help so he decides to help out Rick with his marital problems by secretly broadcasting Rick's song for Marlo from his a private studio to every TV, computer, and radio on earth. Marv also set up a website to download the song from to make Rick money, in less than an hour their are over three million downloads and Rick becomes a millionaire. Marlo hears the song and her already shaky relationship with Moondragon crumbles when she decides to go back to Rick. When Rick hears about the broadcast he is at first furious but quickly forgives Marv when he finds out about the money, Marlo then walks through the door and attacks Rick and Phyla. Marv intervenes and she turns to dust, Marv uses his cosmic awareness to determine that she is from the future and he uses Titan technology to set out and prevent her fate.

Marv jumps into the future a few hundred years and finds over ninety percent of earth's population annihalated, the earth was attacked by the Kree, Skrulls, and Shi'ar as soon as earth tried to colonize another planet because they deemed human's to dangerous a species to be allowed to live. Even though Marv is travelling into the future the Titan technology allows him to keep in contact with Rick in the present. Marv meets his immortal but otherwise powerless son Ely and a future version of himself. They are keeping Marlo in a coma in their bunker until they can find a cure for a mysterious disease she contracted centuries earlier. Marv used the Nega-Bands to fuse his two selfs together to combine his limitless power with the incredible knowledge of his future and he kills all the aliens on earth. His future self then tries to annihalate the alien species as revenge but Marv takes conrol and expels him from his body. The people of earth are eternally grateful for his deeds and build a statue in his honor, Marv jumps even further into the future to find the moment when Marlo went insane but instead end up in a strange mideval type earth where Ely is the leader of a ridiculed church dedicated to Captain Marvel. Ely tells him that Marlo was taken from her stasis chamber earlier but Marv sees that he's lying and tries using his cosmic awareness to determine what really happened but Ely reveals that he learned how to turn cosmic powers against their users so Marv switches places with Rick and allows him to interrogate Ely. After a serious beating, Ely fights back by tapping into the power of Rick's Nega-Bands and sending him farther into the future where humans have long since died out and earth is being colonized by aliens. Rick lost his Nega-Bands when Ely sent him to the future and finds that the last record of human existence is a hologram left by Doctor Doom. Rick talks with the aliens and they direct him west to find what he is looking for. In this time Ely is with Marlo and they are the last people on earth, Ely is also trying to resurrect Magus. Marv resolved to kill his son in his Cipro, thus preventing him from ever growing into the evil, powerful dictator.

No More Adventures

Life After Genis

Recently, Rick provided funding for a group of former teen heroes known as the Loners and tried getting them to help the new group of young heroes, the Runaways.

Rick was also present in Captain America's funeral. In the events of the World War Hulk, Rick reunited with the Hulk and supports him about the Illuminati's atrocities against him, but reasons to his friend that vengeance is not the answer. After the Hulk defeated Sentry, Miek tried to stab him but Rick protected Hulk and was the one who got stabbed. He was later rushed into the hospital.

Next, Rick woke and found himself in burning Alaska pipeline. When he traveled into the site where Bruce Banner became the Hulk, he was suddenly attacked by the Red Hulk. In self-defense, Rick turned into a creature that resembled the Abomination, calling himself A-Bomb. After Rulk is defeated A-Bomb reverts back to Rick and is about to tell Hulk who Rulk is but he is shot in the back and dragged off by Doc Samson.

Powers

A-Bomb

Rick would receive further training by the hero Mar-Vell as they would be bonded symbiotically.

During the Kree-Skrull war, Rick demonstrated vast psionic powers which the Supreme Intelligence claimed were latent in all humans.
 
Rick would learn how to further his inherent heroism due to his experiences with Captain Marvel (Mar-Vell).


However, this display of power was retconned as the Destiny Force acting through Rick, and not his own innate power. He was also, for some time, able to shift spacial/temporal positions with Mar-Vell and later Genis-Vell.

For an unexplained reason, Rick Jones has gained the ability to turn into a creature resembling the Abomination, calling himself "A-Bomb". Through his transformation, he gains protective plates of armor, vast superhuman strength and durability (even the Red Hulk only caused superficial damage), and the ability to track both Hulk and Red Hulk (by zeroing in on their gamma signature), but stunting his speech patterns in a similar manner to the classic Hulk persona.  

Also when Joe Fixit was around, Rick Jones fell into the mineral bath that was intended to merge the Hulk and Bruce Banner causing Rick Jones to gain Hulk-like powers.  During the day Rick Jones was an average human, but at night The Incredible Rick manifested. His appearance was like the green Hulk's: gamma-powered behemoth of great strength and limited intellect but with mullet.

Alternate Realities

Rick Jones Hulk getting ready to smash!

Earth-7812

In this reality Rick Jones became the Hulk instead of Bruce Banner.

Earth-9309

Rick Jones of Earth-9309 called himself Thanatos and had various superpowers. At some point he crossed over to Earth-928 and became an enemy of Spider-Man 2099.

Earth-9200

In Maestro's reality, Rick has a great-granddaughter named Janis.