Who Is the Citysmith & What Happened to Him? Origin & Powers Explained

The latest iteration of Avengers has moved on to face the Multiversal threats. Some are mere nuisances and obstacles in the path toward the bigger rewards, and some are straight-up terrifying. The Ashen Combine was introduced as a group of villains with diverse and horrifying powers. And today, we’re going to focus on one member, in particular, the Citysmith. Let’s see how powerful the Citysmith is in the first place & what happened to him. 

Citysmith is a member of the Ashen Combine

After Captain Marvel assumed the mantle of the chairman of the Avengers, she started recruiting the new active roster for the team. She gathered Iron Man, Vision, Scarlet Witch, Thor, Sam Wilson’s Captain America, and Black Panther, and the trouble soon followed. 

While trying to stop the Terminus from absorbing PEGASUS’ black hole, the reactor was made unstable. She and Scarlet Witch worked on stabilizing the reactor, but while doing that, Captain Marvel was accidentally transported outside of space and time, where she met the dying Kang the Conqueror, who wanted help with a separate problem that he had at a time but warned her that something is coming to Earth, something that will cost millions of lives. He gave her a few tips on how to stop the catastrophes. 

Captain Marvel had trouble figuring out what Kang was talking about but transferred him to the hospital nonetheless, and while he was recovering, Earth was attacked by a group of 5 Multiversal villains called the Ashen Combine. 

Not much is known about the Ashen Combine except for the fact that at one point in time, they defeated a group of Multiversal Heroes and took the sentient headquarters, the Impossible City, a hostage. The Ashen Combine jumps from Universe to Universe and specifically targets cities, as most of their powers revolve around population density; the more people live in the cities, the more potent their powers are. 

The members of the Ashen Combine are Lord Ennui, with powers of atrophy and psychic drain; the Dead – with necromantic abilities; Idol Alabaster – who uses the powers of blind worship to make herself unstoppable; Meridiam Diadem – with strong manipulative powers, she serves as a vessel that consumes people and spits them out as obedient soldiers. The Citysmith is the last member of Ashen Combine, and his powers are, well, interesting. 

The Citysmith has the power to twist both cities and their people into horrifying creations

Each member of the Ashen Combine attacked a different city based on what individual members needed. Lord Ennui attacked Manila due to its colorful culture and vibrant city life. Idol Alabaster attacked Vatican City due to the city being one of religious worship and the capital of the biggest religion in the world.

The Dead attacked Sydney due to the city having a gruesome history and proximity to the remains of the dead. Meridian Diadem attacked Helsinki, and the connection between her attack and the location is not exactly clear. The Citysmith targeted Toronto, and Iron Man was sent to deal with him, which is a shame since Toronto is Iron Man’s second favorite Canadian city. 

In terms of Citysmith’s powers, he has the power to manipulate metal, glass, concrete, wood, and biological organisms. He uses his powers to transform cities into tombs made out of inorganic and organic matter. Citysmith considers himself to be kind of an artist, and cities and the people that lived within them are his materials. His only materials. Citysmith can be seen destroying the existing structures to create something new, something utterly ridiculous and disturbing. 

But, Citysmith was also easily manipulated, as he was the only member of Ashen Combine who was sensitive to critiques due to the nature of his obsessions. Citysmith was likewise able to manipulate Iron Man as part of his structures; he dealt a devastating blow to him when he fused him with a metal structure, Iron Man’s hand sticking out.

Like the rest of the Ashen Combine, Citysmith was in large part immune to physical damage, and you couldn’t hurt him with your usual approach. Ironically, Iron Man had to get creative.

How was Citysmith defeated? 

Citysmith was defeated by Iron Man’s experimental feature that involved emulating the powers of other Avengers. When Iron Man figured that he could not even get close to Citysmith, he figured that his specific density and the density of his surroundings had something to do with his powers, and the fact that he targets cities most likely meant that his powers work the best on dense materials. 

Iron Man activated an experimental feature of his suit called “Flattery: Sincerest Form” and inserted the keyword Vision, which meant that he had access to Vision’s density-manipulation powers.

Via this, Iron Man made himself less dense as well as the surroundings, and he dragged Citysmith down through the ground, eliminating him from the fight and from Earth. 

The remaining members of the Ashen Combine were also defeated and imprisoned at the Impossible City, which Black Panther and Captain America prepared for their arrival. 

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