Real Names-- unrevealed

Class-- extradimensional (Limbo)

Affiliations-- Avengers villains ; servants of Immortus

Scale of Operations-- pan-dimensional (Limbo)

Occupation-- servants

Powers-- The full range and extent of Space Phantoms' powers remain unknown. They appear capable of shape-changing powers, mimicking people as well as objects such as the Synchro-Staff. A unique property of the Space Phantoms' mimicry shunts the person being duplicated to Limbo, while the Space Phantom keeps the powers and abilities of those duplicated. Several obstacles shunt the Space Phantom back to Limbo, such as when it tries to duplicate someone with abnormal physiology.

History-- "Space Phantom" is a generic name for the warped and misshapen servants of the time-travelling villain, Immortus. The beings that Immortus transforms into Space Phantoms are any of the beings that happen to wander or otherwise become lost in the dimension of Limbo, a dimension outside of time itself. Immortus traps such individuals who, due to the very nature of Limbo, soon begin to forget their former lives and change into long-forgotton, ghostly time-beings. Immortus further conditions them into servants who can perpetuate his schemes and manipulations of historical events. So complete is Immortus' conditioning that the shape-changing Phantoms can assimilate anyone, even to the point of torture and escaping notice of even mind-readers.

One such Space Phantom was used by Immortus in his attempt to break up the superhero team Avengers in their formative stages, since they would later be believed to become a threat to Immortus' masters, the Time-Keepers, in the far future. By using his powers to imitate different Avengers, the Space Phantom hoped to turn the Avengers against each other and thus break up their newly formed team. The Space Phantom finally met defeat when he attempted to dimensionally displace the Asgardian god Thor from Limbo and mimic his form and powers. Unable to overcome the various enchantments that Asgard's ruler Odin had placed on Thor and his hammer, the Space Phantom instead found himself dispatched to Limbo. The Space Phantom's antics, however, did prompt the Hulk to quit the Avengers, believing that the other Avengers were against him.

(This Space Phantom believed himself to be born on the alien world of Phantus, a world whose people had mastered time travel before attempting space travel. The people of Phantus engaged in endless civil wars, and the invention of time-travel as a military strategy ultimately caused so many temporal divergences that the local fabric of the space time continuum briefly ruptured, causing all of Phantus to shift from normal space into Limbo. The future Space Phantom, just prior to this calamity, foresaw what would happen and escaped in a chronal capsule. The capsule, however, was damaged in transit and the soldier was stranded in Limbo. There he encountered Immortus, the master of Limbo, who offered to free him from the timeless realm if he would bring Immortus subjects to study. To do so, Immortus granted his powers so that the being duplicated by the Phantum would be cast into Limbo where Immortus could then study him or her. Now a Space Phantom, the soldier agreed, believing that if he could single-handedly defeat the Avengers, his people, once freed from Limbo, would presumably have little trouble in conquering Earth itself. In fact, this story of the world of Phantus was only a result of mental conditioning and an illusion to fool the Avenger Thor years later.)

Again Immortus tried to defeat the Avengers, this time by kidnapping their ally Rick Jones. When the Avengers followed, Immortus had the Space Phantom and two others waiting for them, disguised as the sorcerer Merlin and the mythic figures Goliath and Hercules. The Avengers thwarted the disguised Phantoms and escaped.

At one point, Immortus engineered another ruse with the Space Phantom. When Thor entered Limbo while attempting to travel through time, the Space Phantom attempted to trick Thor into using his hammer's power to free Phantus from Limbo. Thor learned of the Phantom's deception but agreed to help him nevertheless, even though to do so would mean sacrificing his hammer's power to transcend time. Thor believed that he saved the planet Phantus from Limbo, when in fact he only poured out his time-magicks into an illusion.

Later, Immortus allowed the Space Phantom to slip back to Earth through a magical interdimensional aperture created when Thor's adoptive brother Loki sent a mortal from Earth to Limbo. Eventually forming an alliance with the criminal Grim Reaper, the Phantom took the form of the wounded Madame Hydra and took over her role as head of a splinter group of the terrorist organization HYDRA. In this form and role, the Space Phantom battled the Avenger Captain America. Later, the Space Phantom and Grim Reaper fought and captured many of the other Avengers. However, the Space Phantom made the mistake of attempting to mimic the form of the Avengers' friend Rick Jones. Jones's body at the time was linked interdimensionally with that of the Kree Captain Mar-Vell. Unable to assume both forms at once, the Space Phantom was shunted back to Limbo himself, and the Grim Reaper was defeated as well.

This attempt against the Avengers was a part of Immortus' plan to foster the romance between the Vision and the Scarlet Witch. Since any children the Scarlet Witch conceived may become a threat to the Time Keepers, the Vision was selected by Immortus to be her mate. Later, the Space Phantom was disguised as the Synchro-Staff, leading several Avengers on a tour of history and sharing the Vision's origin as a second-generation android Human Torch.

When the Scarlet Witch and the Vision did indeed conceive children, Immortus had another Space Phantom transformed into a duplicate of Professor Phineas Horton, creator of the android Human Torch. He was sent to the Avengers to misdirect them, claiming that the Vision was not a re-made Human Torch, as was believed. This was one of many factors that would drive the Scarlet Witch temporarily mad and thus reveal her magically-spawned children as shards of the soul to the demon Mephisto. Thus, the threat the children may have played to the Time-Keepers was ended.

In order to keep the Avengers occupied with internal matters and avoid venturing into space which would threaten the Time Keepers, Immortus enacted a complex and unsettling scenario, with him taking the role of the Avengers villain Kang. The Space Phantom and others of his kind took strange versions of men and women the Avengers had known. The Avengers were indeed thrown into turmoil, and several of their number were killed or transformed entirely before staving off Immortus-Kang's attacks.

In one of the more recent confrontations with Immortus, a group of time-lost Avengers were gathered by Rick Jones' latent power over time. Space Phantoms were sent to battle the Avengers as the team split into many different time periods, and the Avengers finally caught one in the shape of the Synchro-Staff. The Space Phantom turned out to be the one who first encountered the formative team, and revealed the truth behind the Phantoms and Immortus' plans for the Avengers. This proved a diversion for Immortus to attack the team, although the Avengers later escaped and defeated their enemies: both Immortus and the Time Keepers.