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Near to our hotel in Hong Kong, many years ago, this greengrocers used to be open until the early hours. The title is taken from a classic British Sit-Com that ran from 1976 until 1985 starring Ronnie Corbett and David Jason where the local corner shop was open from very early in the morning till very late at night, hence the name!
This shot was taken past eleven at night and he was still going strong at that point, obviously an amnesiac!
XIII (Thirteen) is a Belgian graphic novel series about an amnesiac who seeks to discover his past. It was created by writer Jean Van Hamme and artist William Vance.
Authors:
William Vance
Jean Van Hamme
Comic book publishing house: Dargaud
Area: 43 m²
Made by: www.art-mural.eu/BlogAM2/#
Located: Rue Philippe de Champagne 31, Brussels, Belgium
In another time, when I was a different human altogether, I used to drive all night between upstate New York and Chicago listening to Radiohead’s Kid A, OK Computer, Amnesiac and Modest Mouse’s The Moon and Antarctica. It was a time I couldn’t even possibly conceive of photographing both bands as I drove all night on the thruway and across the winding curves of Cleveland hoping to not fall asleep and become part of a circle. And so, I’ve changed, the bands have changed, the cities have changed. But, did you know, just like a body turns into a new self after 7 years, so does a city? I came to Chicago 20 years ago and it’s about to completely change over for the third time (Math is fun, don’t you think, Karma Police?) Anyway, on a macro level, we’re all seeing the bulldozers and razed buildings, the rent increases, the humans being kicked to the curb like they never mattered. We all internalize this stuff like an infestation about 100x more detrimental and insidious than Coronavirus. And, on the microlevel, we can feel it too. It’s in all the elements of ourselves and the places we visited, the shows we went to, the restaurants we ate in, the people we bonded with who may not be still breathing. We’re still drinking drinking drinking Coca Coca Cola and we’re still heading down that road. We aren’t going to stop changing, a slow evolution or de-evolution until we die.
I chose October to resume this series for a reason. The main reason is this…it’s scary. Disaster Capitalism is the ghost who never stopped living and who you would never invite into your home on purpose, right? You want to avoid the devastation because it’s hard to function without welcoming all the misfits in your city into your home and calling it a day. You know you are a misfit, too. And, there’s a lot of peeling of surfaces, a lot of taking away from the original form. You know there’s a secret tension between those human made constructions and the others-the trees, the grasses, the nature that will also swallow us whole if given a chance. Just like…you know there’s a secret self who went to hundreds of protests to actively resist fascism when Trump was a more than an existential idea threatening all of human kind. It is terrifying to see all the layers. The more you look, the less able you will be to stop looking. And, it’s still happening. Just look at that abortion ban.
And so, if you see me on the street, my long red hair a chaotic tumble around my camera, please know that I am not insane as I crouch low and high on tip toe, capturing all the urban monsters inside ourselves. We may never be reconstructed because we’re not potential high end real estate. Maybe I’m crazy but, then again, what will that make the rest of this world?
Don’t forget to Refuse Fascism today! It’s never too late…
www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EA5b3FNI4w
**All photos, poems, rambles, etc are copyrighted**
"Come on, come on
You think you drive me crazy
Come on, come on
You and whose army?
You and your cronies
Come on, come on
Holy Roman empire
Come on if you think
Come on if you think
You can take us on
You can take us on
You and whose army?
You and your cronies
You forget so easy
We ride tonight
Ghost Horses"
Radiohead
AmnesiaC, 2001
There we were in Kuala Lumpur with very little luggage, only two duffel bags less than seven kilos each. How fitting to go to a concert in which the first piece was Darius Milhaud's (1892-1974) 'Suite for Violin, Clarinet and Piano' (Op. 157b, 1936/7)). He'd written it to accompany Jean Anouilh's (1910-1987) famous play "Le voyageur sans baggages" (1936). In it, one Gaston, a soldier who survives the First World War as an amnesiac, is employed as a gardener; he's as friendly and docile as the plants and flowers he tends. Soon Gaston is 'recognised' by several families as one of their own. Apparently he's a scion of the Renaud family, and is soon identified - how very homeric! by a scar only an intimate would know (in fact: his own sister-in-law) - as their once violent and cruel, immoral and hateful son. Not able to come to terms with that past, he abandons his real family and is adopted into another without carrying his former "baggages". Quite a story.
We were also enthralled by Görgy Ligeti (1923-2006), 'Sonata for Solo Cello', and by William Penn's (1943) fascinating 'Capriccio for Tuba and Marimba'. The concert was closed by a magnificent rendering of Sergei Prokofiev (1891-1953), 'Violin Sonata No. 2 in D' (Op.94bis). Each piece wonderful for a warm Sunday afternoon in the magnificent concert hall - appropriately air-conditioned - of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra at the bottom - as it were - of the Petronas Towers.
This photo was taken looking from the main foyer out to reflecting pools in front of yet another skyscraper catering to the needs of a bank or insurance agency. Then we went home to our pre-dinner drinks...
Es un placer personal comprar cds... una justificación total de trabajar jaja... no hay nada más lindo que recibir el sueldo e ir a un local de música a justificar las horas de estrés...
mi colección por ahora consta de:
DREAM THEATER:
Train of Thought
Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence
Scenes From A Memory
NIN:
With Teeh
The Downward Spiral
Ghosts
RADIOHEAD:
Amnesiac
Kid A
Ok Computer
In Rainbows
PORCUPINE TREE:
In Absentia
Deadwing
Fear of a Blank pLanet
Signify
TOOL:
10.000 days
THOM YORKE
The Eraser
BJORK:
Family Tree (ni me pregunten cuánto salió... no quieren saberlo jajaja)
AYREON:
The Human Equation
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE:
Songs for the Deaf
This idea was so much better in my head.
After yesterday's frankly atrocious efforts at photography where I underexposed every shot (bar the blown out one) it dawned on me again that it's all very well knowing a few tricks in Photoshop but when it comes to taking an actual photograph I'm sadly lacking in the skills department.
The approach I wanted to take today was just to get a good shot straight out of camera and maybe tweak it a little bit.
As you can see that didn't happen and this has been given the full Lightroom treatment.
I was speaking to Disco~Stu today moaning about my crap photography skills and being all jealous of his amazing talents (you want proof? Go check out his photostream and take a look at the amazing shots he got on Portland at the weekend) where we discussed metering and stuff. I made an arse out of myself getting metering confused with white balance, there was much laughing about it but I think I learned something. Sadly I didn't put it into practise today.
I'm not sure why I thought standing in the greenhouse would make a good shot . . . but what the hell! At least I've finally found a use for it.
If you look closely you might be able to see Lydia's tomatoes! They go well in a cheese sandwich.
I cribbed the title from a Radiohead track, the closing song from their album Amnesiac.
(for English see below)
Ten moment, kdy ze starýho disku vzkřísíš deset let smazaný data, který jsi jinde neměl zálohovaný. Koukáš na to jako puk, protože už máš jenom pár mlhavých vzpomínek... A to ti fakt není šedesát, abys na tuhle amnézii měl nárok.
Takže popořadě: co si pamatuju. Visel jsem na stromě někde před Oldřichovem a čekal jsem na něco hrozně vzácného, co mělo ten den jet po Kozině. Asi vzácného, protože zrovna tohle je s odstupem času fakt relativní. Čekal jsem tam fakt dlouho, pak to přijelo a šel jsem se zabavit někam jinam. Fotka skončila ve složce, nezeditovaná, omylem špatně přesunutá, smazaná...a vzkříšená trochu zázrakem při kontrole starého disku ze smazaných souborů.
Když neslouží paměť, musí přijít logika a strejda Google.
Takže: je neděle 20. prosince 2009, něco po jedenácté dopoledne. Do žst. Oldřichov u Duchcova přijíždí zvl. Os 36660, vedený motorovým vozem 810.335. Zní to banálně, co?
Je možné, že tohle je jeden ze tří posledních vlaků, které tudy za 48 let existence téhle přeložky, respektive za 138 let provozu celé trati projely. V poslední den provozu. Jako fakt.
Proč si to myslím? Kraj tady přestal objednávat vlaky v roce 2007 a pro rok 2010 už najdeme trať v jízdním řádu jenom jako prázdný list papíru, jen s názvy stanic. Bez vlaků. Na konci roku 2009 objednaly tři páry vlaků o víkendech místní obce, no a 20. prosinec měl být posledním dnem provozu. Je možné, že tam ještě projel nějaký náklad, těžko říct.
Pak to s tímhle koncem "Koziny" vzalo rychlý spád. Začaly tu mizet kolejnice, od roku 2011 tu je výluka a jestli se nějakou část té tratě povede zachránit, tenhle to asi sotva bude.
Smutný. Dvojnásob, že fotek z téhle tratě mám minimum, přestože jsem ji měl celý mládí skoro za barákem. Tak aspoň tuhle fakt poslední.
**********************
Sometimes you can still find a little gem you were completely unaware of in your stock. Let me explain it: back in the day I just stored this picure with the others from the period, didn't edit it and the raw folder got lost somehow. Now when I was moving out of my old flat couple weeks ago I just tried to search and old HDD for deleted files...and here it was.
Then I slowly realized what is the content. This is probably one of the last few trains on something what turned out to be the last operating day of track Oldřichov u Duchcova - Děčín. It went closed with no traffic and subsequently out of order as the thieves started to pick metal stuff there.
So here is the caption: It is the 20th December 2009 and the special train No. 36660 from Děčín to Oldřichov is nearing its final stop. One way back, once more this direction...and it is all gone. After 48 years of service on this particular part of the track and 138 years of the whole track.
The future of the remaining parts of the track is still very unclear.
QUESTO AMMASSO E’ QUANTO SI E’ ACCUMULATO DURANTE QUESTI ANNI,DAL 1997 AD OGGI,AL RITMO DI DUE O TRE SFORNATE MUSICALI AL GIORNO(evito di NOMINARE lo strumento cardine di tale operazione)!DA QUESTE MIGLIAIA,NE HO ESTRATTI UNA CINQUANTINA PER STILARE LA MIA PERSONALE CLASSIFICA DEI PIU’ SEMINALI ALBUM DI TUTTI I TEMPI .ECCOLA:
1-ROBER WYATT “ROCK BOTTOM”
2-TOM WAITS “SWORDFISHTROMBONES”
3-PINK FLOYD “THE PIPER AT THE GATES OF DAWN”
4-LEONARD COHEN "SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN"
5-THE SMITHS “MEAT IS MURDER”
6-VELVET UNDERGROUND “VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO”
7-DAVID BOWIE "LOW"
8-NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS "THE GOOD SON"
9-LISA GERMANO "GEEK THE GIRL"
10-NEIL YOUNG "HARVEST"
11-JEFFERSON AIRPLANE “VOLUNTEERS”
12-BLACK HEART PROCESSION “2”
13-JOY DIVISION “UNKNOW PLEASURES”
14-MARIANNE FAITHFULL “BROKEN ENGLISH”
15-DAVID BOWEI "tHE RISE AND THE FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST"
16-BRIAN ENO “BEFORE AND AFTER SCIENCE”
17-LOU REED “BERLIN”
18-BOB DYLAN "BLONDE ON BLONDE"
19-THE STONE ROSES "OMONIMO"
20-MORPHINE “GOOD”
21-COCTEAU TWINS "TREASURE"
22-SUIDICE "OMONIMO"
23- ANGELO BADALAMENTI "TWIN PEAKS SOUNDTRACK"
24-SOFT MACHINE "THIRD"
25-LOU REED “TRANSFORMER”
26-THE GRATEFUL DEAD “LIVE/DEAD”
27-SLOWDIVE "JUST FOR A DAY"
28-NEIL YOUNG “TONIGHT’S THE NIGHT”
29-RADIOHEAD “KID A/AMNESIAC”
30-JESUS AND MARY CHAIN “PSYCHOCANDY”
31-TELEVISION “MARQUEE MOON”
32-SONIC YOUTH "DAYDREAM NATION"
33-JEFFERSON AIRPLANE “AFTER BATHING AT BAXTER”
34-JOY DIVISION “CLOSER”
35-FRANK ZAPPA "FREAK OUT"
36-THE STOOGES “FUN HOUSE”
37-KING CRIMSON "IN THE COURT OF CRIMSON KING"
38-TALKING HEADS "REMAIN IN LIGHTS"
39-THE SMITHS "QUEEN IS DEAD"
40-NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS "TENDER PREY"
41-SINEAD O'CONNOR "THE LION AND THE COBRA"
42-DAVID CROSBY “IF I COULD ONLY REMEMBER MY NAME”
43-THE WHO “WHO’S THE NEXT”
44-JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE "ELECTRIC LADYLAND"
45-DAVID BOWIE “HEROES”
46-NIRVANA “NEVERMIND”
47-JEFFERSON AIRPLANE “SURREALISTIC PILLOW”
48-DEAD CAN DANCE "SPLEEN AND IDEAL"
49-SEX PISTOLS “NEVERMIND THE BOLLOCKS”
50-DAVID BOWIE "HUNKY DORY"
51-KRAFTWERK "AUTOBAHN"
52-RED HOUSE PAINTERS "DOWN COLOURFULL HILL"
53-SPACEMEN 3 "THE PERFECT PRESCRIPTION"
54-ROLLING STONES "AFTERMATH"
55-FUGAZI "REPEATER"
56-TOM WAITS "RAIN DOGS"
57-BEACH BOYS "PET SOUNDS"
58-LOVE "FOREVER CHANGES"
59-THE PSYCHEDELIC FURS " TALK,TALK,TALK,"
60-POPOL VUH "HOSIANNA MANTRA"
61-THE BYRDS "YOUNGER THAN YESTERDAY"
63-KYUSS "BLUES FOR THE RED SUN"
64-PUBLIC IMAGE LDT "METAL BOX"
65-FEAR "THE RECORD"
66-PIXIES "SURFER ROSA"
67-BUTTHOLE SURFERS "PSYCHIC POWERLESS...ANTHER'S MAN SAC"
68-NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL "IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA"
69-FOETUS "NAIL"
70-DINOSAUR JR "YOU'RE LIVING ALL OVER ME"
Marielle photographed after her capture and detainment in the Care Bears' secret neuroimaging laboratory.
Marielle is an amnesiac and believed to be from France.
So is that what you call a getaway?
Well tell me what you got away with
Cause I've seen more spine on jellyfish
I've seen more guts in eleven-year-old kids
Have another drink and drive yourself home
I hope there's ice on all the roads
And you can think of me when you forget your seatbelt
then again when your head goes through the windshield
Is that what you call tact?
You're as subtle as a brick in the small of my back
So let's end this call and end this conversation
And is that what you call a getaway?
Tell me what you got away with
Cause you left the frays from the ties you severed
when you say "best friends" means friends forever
Seventy Times 7 - Brand New
Today was a pretty good day. I spent like 4 hours at Hubbard Park with Nadia and Noah, which included having snowball fights, making a snowman, eating pizza, and the like. Then we went to see Sherlock Holmes, which was AMAZING. We also went to Friendly's and stuff, and I got home at like 11ish, yay.
The top book is a book I chose to read for an independent reading project in school. The bottom book, Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac, is what I'm currently reading. It's really good so far.
I chose these lyrics because at the park, we were listening to my ipod and we listened to this song as well as Taking Back Sunday's song in response to that one, and now it's stuck in my head. It's such a good song. They both are.
La música, mejor con auriculares._ Music, best witlh earphon
Titulo............................ Piramid song
Grupo...........................Radiohead
Älbum...........................Amnesiac ( 2009 )
Genero.........................Contemporáneo
Finally thought up and got a new OC coming along! He’s a great character and ally in my opinion, which I blended elements of Leslie Thompkins, Alfred Pennyworth, Stick, Obi-Wan and Yoda together!
Profile
Name: Hunter Earle Faulkner
Hero's name: Sightshifter, possibly more alias/identities are unknown
Age: 60’s
Bio: Years ago, a poor kid came by and Hunter was working at his shop. The child begged for food which Hunter complied, and the two had a conversation. The child grew up more eventually and would come visit him, where the older man would teach the younger one more skills.
The child was Trent Shephard.
Over time, when Trent was in his teens, he got injured and was into a lot of stuff, Hunter mended to his wounds. He would also play a major role into his life because he partly taught the young Trent mechanics, trading, gambling and etc.
During a night, Trent left his own organisation (led by Hendrix). Despite not having a lot of places or a good options to go, Trent approached the old man, but he claimed to be “amnesiac”, which in reality he pretended to have long term Alzheimer’s and memory loss, in order to secretly protect his own student/protege.
Their last encounter was 5 years before Trent started his own team, he went to Hunter, who was still pretending (to amnesiac), managed to help.
However recently, Hunter eventually discovered the news and secrets of Trent being disavowed, and being on the run, he decided to bring him back and shelter him for the time being...
Powers and abilities: Radio manipulation and optical control. He can control the wavelengths, frequencies and partly sounds. As for optic control, he can make people not see things entirely, go blind for a while, and overload their sight (without killing them). Hunter is skilled in the use of five senses along with his powers. Despite being a mechanic and useful aid, he claims to be a former soldier, shaman, government operative and etc. He is also crafty, able to use scraps, wasted materials as useful tools and weapons.
Weaknesses: EMPs and longe range radios, confining him to more local ones, the use of optics powers are only temporary. Hunter has to pretend like a crazed old man having Alzheimer’s, which leads him to really focused like doing method acting, causing him to forget things
Equipment: He carries a whip/lasso, which also functions as a rock climbing tool. It is quite hard to break. He also has a gas gun with smoke, stun, and gas pellets. Hunter also carries a retractable spear for combat, which indirectly inspired Drew (Trent’s sister) and also helped her build a similar one, also indestructible and retractable. Also carries a number of non-lethal weapons.
Personality: Wise, tolerable, calm, advisor-like, calculating, peaceful warrior mentality/state of mind
All pics are ©Rosa Rusa. All rights reserved.Please dont use them before had my written permission. mail me if you need one]
rosarusa.photos@gmail.com
Radiohead - Amnesiac [Full Album]
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE_xlgoDI30&feature=related
#314-explored-16-0-2011
I fell in love for the first time at 16 to a boy named Thom. I heard a song called "Black Star" that I immediately responded to. "Fake Plastic Trees" was of course the huge single off The Bends and I loved that one too, even though it was somewhat unfashionable to like the singles of bands. I remember one summer sitting by a friend's pool where we just listened to "Fake Plastic Trees" over and over again. Then, I thought I had accidentally lost the cd and went a little nuts. I had merely misplaced it when I accidentally switched it with disc one of the Beatles White Album and sanity was restored.
I quickly found out about Pablo Honey and bought that too. It didn't hit me as much at first, though I had a bunch of bsides from around that era-"Banana Co", "Killer Cars" that I played incessantly. One night, I heard a radio broadcast where they played "Creep" and Thom Yorke went off singing "She's running out again" with such desperation it rivaled Jeff Buckley covering Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" at the Bataclan in Paris. (I am not sure which live performance came first as I heard Jeff's much later though it could have very well been the same year.) It was completely different from the album's recording and it was what made me get Pablo Honey and listen to more (at the same time, I remember playing the "How Can You Be Sure?" bside about a hundred times a day) I easily fell in love with "Stop Whispering" and realized very quickly that even if anyone can play guitar, no one could play it quite like Thom Yorke or Jonny Greenwood.
In 1997, two very important things occurred in my life. The first was that OK Computer was released. The second was that I graduated high school and went to college. I started dating Cinchel then, who immediately bought OK Computer too. It didn't matter to me. I needed my own copy. I felt like the album was a reflection on society with how boxed in we'd all gotten and how cold and mechanized we'd become with songs like "Fitter Happier""Paranoid Android" and "No Surprises." (The latter of these they actually played live in the show I saw them.) I listened to this and nothing else for months on end. Everything else seemed like garbage to me.
I had this one life changing experience with "No Surprises" in particular. I hesitate to share it because it's sort of inexpressible or at the very least intangible. It was sort of like the feeling of the video for "Street Spirit" this feeling of weightlessness and also I was connected to everyone all of a sudden and very aware of myself in every form in relation to everything else. I was at a gas station and was about 20 and all of a sudden, "No Surprises" came on the radio. I started singing along (I always sing along) and probably crying a little when Thom got to the spot in the song where he sings, "This is my final fit my final..." and all of a sudden, it was like something had been out of whack in the universe that came together...a brief harmonic rest to our ghastly history of war and oppression. I also felt like time was staying still for a moment and I was aware of so many simultaneous things-the glance of a woman over her shoulder, birds, the buzzing of an engine, the click of a gasoline pump handle and all around me, it felt like the song was there. Molecules were dissolving rapidly but it was a good thing.
I went to see Radiohead play Toronto's Maple Leaf Gardens around this time for the OK Computer tour and all I wanted was for Thom to play "The Trickster" bside. Oddly enough, even though I was far away up in the stadium seats and Radiohead looked like little peas with instruments, someone on the floor requested it. Thom said that song was really hard to play but they pulled it off brilliantly. I wasn't surprised.
Kid A came out while I was trying to wrap up my university degree in 2000. The songs were continually more abstract and cerebral like you became part of an endless horizon in music. "How to Disappear Completely" and, of course, "Everything in it's Right Place" easily helped become part of the soundtrack to my life around that time period but even more so hitting me would be the raw emotion in 2001's Amnesiac. I sang right along with Thom during "You and Whose Army"and I absorbed his visceral utterances in "Like Spinning Plates." I drove from Buffalo, NY to Chicago to make the first major geographical move in my life. And as I was drifting through endless highway of Cleveland in the middle of the night, I played Amnesiac over and over again. "Come on Holy Roman Empire..."It was like a blood transfusion.
Basically, I think as Radiohead has put out more and more albums, they have moved into more of an ethereal abstract territory, especially with this newest one In Rainbows. Though I think it's difficult to touch me like The Bends or OK Computer did, I feel moved in a different sense, as if I'm experiencing really great art in a landscape that doesn't exist but should. It would make reality better if it did. Thom's voice floats ethereally above the music and completes it so fully....to photograph them...well, I never in my wildest dreams would have thought a girl as small as I am could have photographed giants like that. They are, to me, as big as The Beatles and just as important. If I could write Thom a letter that I know he'd read, it would be rather short and to the point. It would simply say:
Dear Thom,
I want to be in your band when I get to heaven.
Love,
Kirstie
Setlist as posted by Pitchfork:
01. 15 Step
02. Airbag
03. There There
04. All I Need
05. Nude
06. Weird Fishes/Arpeggi
07. The Gloaming
08. The National Anthem
09. Faust Arp
10. No Surprises
11. Jigsaw Falling Into Place
12. Reckoner
13. Lucky
14. The Bends
15. Everything in Its Right Place
16. Fake Plastic Trees
17. Bodysnatchers
///
18. Videotape
19. Paranoid Android
20. Dollars and Cents
21. House of Cards
22. Optimistic
///
23. 2+2=5
24. Idioteque
I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase an entire life.
- Luis Bunuel
Summer has been incredibly boring, and college really took away my passion for photography. I've gotten so angry with myself for losing my creativity and whole-hearted enthusiasm for taking photographs. I think I've finally begun moving forward again. I just wish I had more people to model for me, and I wish I would stop being a weenie and ask others.
I'll be leaving for Canada for 4th of July weekend (which makes NO sense because they don't even celebrate) which I'm so stoked for! I hope everyone else is doing well!
Professor X (Charles Francis Xavier) is a character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The X-Men #1 (September 1963). The character is depicted as the founder and occasional leader of the X-Men.
Xavier is a member of a subspecies of humans known as mutants, who are born with superhuman abilities. He is an exceptionally powerful telepath, who can read and control the minds of others. To both shelter and train mutants from around the world, he runs a private school in the X-Mansion in Salem Center, located in Westchester County, New York.Xavier also strives to serve a greater good by promoting peaceful coexistence and equality between humans and mutants in a world where zealous anti-mutant sentiment is widespread.
Throughout much of the character's history in comics, Xavier is a paraplegic using a standard or modified wheelchair. One of the world's most powerful mutant telepaths, Xavier is a scientific genius and a leading authority in genetics. He has devised Cerebro and other equipment to enhance psionic powers and detect and track people with the mutant gene.
Xavier's pacifist and assimilationist ideology and actions have often been contrasted with that of Magneto, a mutant villain with whom Xavier has a complicated relationship.
He also appears in almost all of the X-Men animated series and in many video games, although usually as a non-playable character. Patrick Stewart plays him in the 2000s X-Men film series, as well as providing his voice in some of the X-Men video games (including some not connected to the film series).
According to BusinessWeek, Charles Xavier is listed as one of the top ten most intelligent fictional characters in American comics.
Publication History
Creation and influences
Stan Lee has stated that the physical inspiration of Professor Xavier was from Academy Award-winning actor Yul Brynner.
Writer Scott Lobdell established Xavier's middle name to be "Francis" in Uncanny X-Men #328 (January 1996).
Character
Xavier's goals are to promote the peaceful affirmation of mutant rights, to mediate the co-existence of mutants and humans, to protect mutants from violent humans, and to protect society from antagonistic mutants, including his old friend, Magneto.
To achieve these aims, he founded Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters (later named the Xavier Institute) to teach mutants to explore and control their powers. Its first group of students was the original X-Men (Cyclops, Iceman, Marvel Girl, Angel, and Beast).
Xavier's students consider him a visionary and often refer to their mission as "Xavier's dream". He is highly regarded by others in the Marvel Universe, respected by various governments, and trusted by several other superhero teams, including the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.
However, he also has a manipulative streak which has resulted in several significant fallings-out with allies and students.
He often acts as a public advocate for mutant rights and is the authority most of the Marvel superhero community turns to for advice on mutants. Despite this, his status as a mutant himself and originator of the X-Men only became public during the 2001 story "E Is for Extinction".
In a number of comics, Xavier is shown to have a dark side, a part of himself that he struggles to suppress. Perhaps the most notable appearance of this character element is in the Onslaught storyline, in which the crossover event's antagonist is a physical manifestation of that dark side.
Also, Onslaught is created in the most violent act Xavier claims to have done: erasing the mind of Magneto.
In X-Men #106 (August 1977), the new X-Men fight images of the original team, which have been created by what Xavier says is his "evil self ... who would use his powers for personal gain and conquest", which he says he is normally able to keep in check.
In the 1984 four-part series titled The X-Men and the Micronauts, Xavier's dark desires manifest themselves as the Entity and threaten to destroy the Micronauts' universe.
In other instances, Xavier is shown to be secretive and manipulative.
During the Onslaught storyline, the X-Men find Xavier's files, the "Xavier Protocols", which detail how to kill many of the characters, including Xavier himself, should the need ever arise, such as if they went rogue.
Astonishing X-Men vol. 3, #12 (August 2005) reveals that when Xavier realizes that the Danger Room has become sentient, he keeps it trapped and experiments on it for years, an act that Cyclops calls "the oppression of a new life" and equates to humanity's treatment of mutants (however, X-Men Legacy #220 - 224 reveals that Xavier did not intend for the Danger Room to become sentient: it was an accident, and Xavier sought a way to free Danger, but was unable to find a way to accomplish this without deleting her sentience as well).
Fictional character biography
Charles Francis Xavier was born in New York City to the wealthy Dr. Brian Xavier, a well-respected nuclear scientist, and Sharon Xavier.
The family lives in a very grand mansion estate in Westchester County because of the riches his father's nuclear research has brought them.
He later grows up to attend Pembroke College at the University of Oxford, where he earns a Professorship in Genetics and other science fields, and goes on to live first in Oxford and then London for a number of years.
Crucially, as he enters late adolescence, Xavier inherits the mansion-house he was raised in, enabling him not only to continue to live in it, but also to turn it in to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which he begins together with the first of the X-Men.
Brian, his father, dies in an accident when Xavier is still very young, and Brian's science partner Kurt Marko comforts and then marries the grieving Sharon. When Xavier's telepathic mutant powers emerge, he discovers Marko cares only about his mother's money.
After the wedding, Kurt moves in with the Xaviers, bringing with him his son Cain. Kurt quickly grows neglectful of Sharon, driving her to alcoholism, and abuses both Charles and Cain.
Cain takes out his frustrations and insecurities on his stepbrother. Charles uses his telepathic powers to read Cain's mind and explore the extent of his psychological damage, which only leads to Cain becoming more aggressive toward him and the young Xavier feeling Cain's pain firsthand.
Sharon dies soon after, and a fight erupts between Cain and Charles that causes some of Kurt's lab equipment to explode. Mortally wounded, Kurt drags the two children out before dying, and admits he was partly responsible for Brian's death.
With help from his superhuman powers and natural genius, Xavier becomes an excellent student and athlete, though he gives up the latter, believing his powers give him an unfair advantage.
Due to his powers, by the time he graduates from high school, Charles loses all of his hair. He graduates with honors at the age of 16 from Bard College.
In graduate studies, he receives Ph.D.s in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology with a two-year residence at Pembroke College, University of Oxford.
He also receives an M.D. in Psychiatry while spending several years in London. He is later appointed adjunct professor at Columbia University.
At graduate school, he meets a Scottish girl named Moira Kinross, a fellow genetics student with whom he falls in love. The two agree to get married, but soon, Xavier is drafted into the Korean War.
He carves himself a niche as a soldier in search and rescue missions alongside Shadowcat's father, Carmen Pryde, and witnesses Cain's transformation into Juggernaut when he touches a ruby with an inscription on it in an underground temple.
During the war, he receives a letter from Moira telling him that she is breaking up with him. He later discovers that Moira married her old boyfriend Joseph MacTaggert, who abuses her.
Deeply depressed when Moira broke off their engagement without explanation, Xavier began traveling around the world as an adventurer after leaving the army.
In Cairo, he meets a young girl named Ororo Munroe (later known as Storm), who is a pickpocket, and the Shadow King, a powerful mutant who is posing as Egyptian crime lord Amahl Farouk.
Xavier defeats the Shadow King, barely escaping with his life. This encounter leads to Xavier's decision to devote his life to protecting humanity from evil mutants and safeguarding innocent mutants from human oppression.
Xavier visits his friend Daniel Shomron, who runs a clinic for traumatized Holocaust victims in Haifa, Israel. There, he meets a man going by the name of Magnus (who would later become Magneto), a Holocaust survivor who works as a volunteer in the clinic, and Gabrielle Haller, a woman driven into a catatonic coma by the trauma she experienced.
Xavier uses his mental powers to break her out of her catatonia and the two fall in love. Xavier and Magneto become good friends, although neither immediately reveals to the other that he is a mutant.
The two hold lengthy debates hypothesizing what will happen if humanity is faced with a new super-powered race of humans. While Xavier is optimistic, Magneto's experiences in the Holocaust lead him to believe that humanity will ultimately oppress the new race of humans.
The two friends reveal their powers to each other when they fight Nazi Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and his Hydra agents, who kidnap Gabrielle because she knows the location of their secret cache of gold. Magneto attempts to kill Strucker but Xavier stops him.
Realizing that his and Xavier's views on mutant-human relations are incompatible, Magneto leaves with the gold. Charles stays in Israel for some time, but he and Gabrielle separate on good terms, neither knowing that she is pregnant with his son, who grows up to become the mutant Legion.
In a strange town near the Himalayas, Xavier encounters an alien calling himself Lucifer, the advance scout for an invasion by his race, and foils his plans. In retaliation, Lucifer drops a huge stone block on Xavier, crippling his legs.
After Lucifer leaves, a young woman named Sage hears Xavier's telepathic cries for help and rescues him, bringing him to safety, beginning a long alliance between the two.
In a hospital in India, he is brought to an American nurse, Amelia Voght, who looks after him and, as she sees to his recovery, they fall in love. When he is released from the hospital, the two moved into an apartment in Bombay together.
Amelia is troubled to find Charles studying mutation, as she is a mutant and unsettled by it, though she calms when he reveals himself to be a mutant as well.
They eventually move to the United States, living on Xavier's family estate. But the night Scott Summers moves into Xavier's mansion, Amelia leaves him, believing Charles would have changed his view and that mutants should lie low. Yet he is recruiting them to what she believes is a lost cause. Charles tries to force her to stay with his mental powers, but immediately ashamed by this, lets her go. She later becomes a disciple of Magneto.
Over the years, Charles makes a name for himself as geneticist and psychologist, apparently renowned enough that the Greys were referred to him when no other expert could help their catatonic daughter, Jean.
Xavier trains her in the use of her telekinesis, while inhibiting her telepathic abilities until she matures. Around this time, he also starts working with fellow mutation expert, Karl Lykos, as well as Moira MacTaggert again, who built a mutant research station on Muir Island.
Apparently, Charles had gotten over Moira in his travels to the Greek island of Kirinos. Xavier discusses his candidates for recruitment to his personal strike force, the X-Men, with Moira, including those he passes over, which are Kurt Wagner, Piotr Rasputin, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, and Ororo Munroe. Xavier also trains Tessa to spy on Sebastian Shaw.
Xavier founded Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which provides a safe haven for mutants and teaches them to master their abilities. In addition, he seeks to foster mutant-human relations by providing his superhero team, the X-Men, as an example of mutants acting in good faith, as he told FBI agent Fred Duncan.
With his inherited fortune, he uses his ancestral mansion at 1407 Graymalkin Lane in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York as a base of operations with technologically advanced facilities, including the Danger Room - later, Fantomex mentions that Xavier is a billionaire with a net worth of $3.5 billion.
Presenting the image of a stern teacher, Xavier makes his students endure a rigorous training regime.
Xavier's first five students are Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Beast, and Marvel Girl who become the original X-Men. After he completes recruiting the original team of X-Men, he sends them into battle with Magneto.
Throughout most of his time with the team, Xavier uses his telepathic powers to keep in constant contact with his students and provides instructions and advice when needed. In addition, he uses a special machine called Cerebro, which enhances his ability to detect mutants and to allow the team to find new students in need of the school.
Among the obstacles Xavier faces is his old friend, Magneto, who has grown into an advocate of mutant superiority since their last encounter and who believes the only solution to mutant persecution is domination over humanity.
When anthropologist Bolivar Trask resurfaces the "mutant problem", Xavier counters him in a televised debate, however, he appears arrogant and Trask sends his mutant-hunting robot Sentinels to terrorize mutants. The X-Men dispatch them, but Trask sees the error in his ways too late as he is killed by his creations.
At one point, Xavier seemingly dies during the X-Men's battle with the sub-human Grotesk, but it is later revealed that Xavier arranged for a reformed former villain named Changeling to impersonate him while he went into hiding to plan a defense against an invasion by the extraterrestrial Z'Nox, imparting a portion of his telepathic abilities to the Changeling to complete the disguise.
When the X-Men are captured by the sentient island Krakoa, Xavier assembles a new team to rescue them, including Cyclops' and Havok's long-lost brother, Vulcan, along with Darwin, Petra, and Sway.
This new team, composed of students of Dr. Moira MacTaggert, was sent to rescue the original X-Men from Krakoa. However, after rescuing Cyclops, McTaggert's former students were seemingly killed. Upon Cyclops' return, Xavier removed Cyclops' memories of the death of Vulcan and his teammates; and began assembling yet another team of X-Men.
Xavier's subsequent rescue team consists of Banshee, Colossus, Sunfire, Nightcrawler, Storm, Wolverine, and Thunderbird. After the mission, the older team of X-Men, except for Cyclops, leave the school, believing they no longer belong there, and Xavier mentors the new X-Men.
Xavier forms a psychic bond across galaxies with Princess Lilandra from the Shi'ar Empire. When they finally meet, it is love at first sight. She implores the professor to stop her mad brother, Shi'ar Emperor D'Ken, and he instantly aids her by deploying his X-Men.
When Jean Grey returns from the Savage Land to tell him that all the X-Men are dead, he shuts down the school and travels with Lilandra to her kingdom, where she is crowned Empress and he is treated like a child or a trophy husband.
Xavier senses the changes taking place in Jean Grey, and returns to Earth to help and resume leadership of the X-Men.
Shortly thereafter he battles his pupil after she becomes Dark Phoenix and destroys a populated planet in the Shi'ar Empire. It hurts Xavier to be on the opposite side of Lilandra, but he has no other choice but to challenge the Shi'ar Imperial Guard to a duel over the fate of the Phoenix.
Xavier would have lost against the greater power of the Dark Phoenix, but thanks to the help Jean Grey gives him (fighting her Phoenix persona), Xavier emerges victorious; she later commits suicide to prevent herself from endangering more innocent lives.
When the X-Men fight members of the extraterrestrial race known as the Brood, Xavier is captured by them, and implanted with a Brood egg, which places Xavier under the Brood's control.
During this time, Xavier assembles a team of younger mutants called the New Mutants, secretly intended to be prime hosts for reproduction of the aliens. The X-Men discover this and return to free Xavier, but they are too late to prevent his body from being destroyed with a Brood Queen in its place; however, his soul remains intact.
The X-Men and Starjammers subdue this monstrous creature containing Xavier's essence, but the only way to restore him is to clone a new body using tissue samples he donated to the Starjammers and transfer his consciousness into the clone body.
This new body possesses functional legs, though the psychosomatic pain Xavier experienced after living so long as a paraplegic takes some time to subside. Subsequently, he even joins the X-Men in the field, but later decides not to continue this practice after realizing that his place is at the school, as the teacher of the New Mutants.
After taking a teaching position at Columbia University in Uncanny X-Men #192, Xavier is severely injured and left for dead as the victim of an attack.
Callisto and her Morlocks, a group of underground-dwelling mutants, get him to safety. One of the Morlocks partially restores Xavier's health, but Callisto warns Xavier that he is not fully healed and that he must spend more time recuperating and restrain himself from exerting his full strength or powers, or his health might fail again. Xavier hides his injuries from the others and resumes his life.
Charles meets with former lover Gabrielle Haller on Muir Isle and discovers that they had a child. The boy, David, has autism and dissociative identity disorder. Furthermore, he has vast psionic powers like his father. After helping him and his team to escape from David's mind, Xavier promises he will always be there for him.
A reformed Magneto is arrested and put on trial. Xavier attends the trial to defend his friend. Andrea and Andreas Strucker, the children of presumed dead Baron von Strucker, crash the courtroom to attack Magneto and Xavier. Xavier is seriously injured.
Dying, he asks a shocked Magneto to look after the X-Men for him. Lilandra, who has a psychic bond with Xavier, feels that he is in great danger and heads to Earth. There, she and Corsair take Xavier with them so Shi'ar advanced technology can heal him.
Xavier leaves Magneto in charge of the school, but some of the X-Men are unwilling to forgive their former enemy. Cyclops loses a duel for the leadership of the X-Men against Storm, then leaves them and joins the other four original X-Men to form a new team called X-Factor.
In the meantime, Charles becomes stranded in space with the Starjammers, but he is reunited with his lover Lilandra and relishes his carefree lifestyle.
He serves as a member of the Starjammers aboard the starship Starjammer, mobile in the Shi'ar Galaxy. He becomes consort to the Princess-Majestrix Lilandra while in exile, and when she later resumes her throne he takes up residence with her in the Imperial palace on the Shi'ar homeworld. Xavier joins Lilandra in her cause to overthrow her sister Deathbird, taking on the powers of Phoenix temporarily wherein he is named Bald Phoenix by Corsair, but sees that he must return to help the X-Men.
Xavier eventually becomes imprisoned by the Skrulls during their attempted invasion of the Shi'ar Empire. Xavier breaks free from imprisonment by Warskrull Prime, and is reunited with the X-Men.
A healthy Xavier returns from the Shi'ar Empire and is reunited with both the current and original X-Men teams, and resumes his leadership responsibilities of the united teams. In a battle with his old foe, the Shadow King, in the "Muir Island Saga", Xavier's spine is shattered, returning him to his former paraplegic state, while his son David is seemingly killed. In the following months, Xavier rebuilds the mansion, which previously was rebuilt with Shi'ar technology, and restructures the X-Men into two teams.
While holding a mutant rights speech, Xavier is nearly assassinated by Stryfe in the guise of Cable, being infected with a fatal techno-organic virus. For reasons of his own, the villain Apocalypse saves him. As a temporary side-effect, he gains full use of his legs and devotes his precious time to the youngest recruit on his team, Jubilee.
With all his students now highly trained adults, Professor Xavier renames his school the Xavier Institute For Higher Learning. Also, he assumes control of a private institution, the Massachusetts Academy, making it a new School for Gifted Youngsters. Another group of young mutants is trained here, Generation X, with Banshee and Emma Frost as headmaster and headmistress, respectively.
Professor X is for a time the unknowing host of the evil psionic entity Onslaught, the result of a previous battle with Magneto. In that battle, Magneto uses his powers to rip out the adamantium bonded to Wolverine's skeleton, and a furious Xavier wipes Magneto's mind, leaving him in a coma.
From the psychic trauma of Xavier using his powers so violently and the mixing of Magneto's and Xavier's repressed anger, Onslaught is born. Onslaught wreaks havoc, destroying much of Manhattan, until many of Marvel's superheroes—including the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the Hulk—destroy him.
Xavier is left without his telepathy and, overcome with guilt, leaves the X-Men and is incarcerated for his actions.
He later returns to the X-Men after Operation: Zero Tolerance, in which he is shocked by the cruel act of being turned over to the mutant-hating Bastion, following a clash with the sentient Cerebro and a team of impostor X-Men.
Xavier questions his dream again and Magneto shortly thereafter is confronted by the X-Men. After the battle, the UN concedes Genosha to Magnus, and Wolverine is angered by Xavier stopping him from getting his revenge on Magneto. Charles and Logan are later trapped in a dimension with different laws of physics, wherein they have to coordinate their moves together and, in the process, gain a better understanding of the other's views.
Apocalypse kidnaps the fabled "Twelve" special mutants (Xavier included) whose combined energies would grant him omnipotence. After Apocalypse's defeat with the help of Skrull mutants, Xavier goes with the young Skrulls known as Cadre K to train them and free them from their oppressors, and eventually returns to aid in Legacy Virus research.
Mystique and her Brotherhood start a deadly assault on Muir Isle by releasing an altered form of the Legacy Virus, all in retaliation against the election campaign of Robert Kelly, a seeming mutant-hater. Mystique blows up Moira MacTaggert's laboratory complex, fatally wounding her. Charles goes to the astral plane to meet with her and retrieve information on the cure to the Legacy Virus, but after gathering the information does not want to leave her alone. If not for Jean and Cable talking him down and pulling him back, the professor would have died with his first love, who states she has no regrets.
As Beast cures the Legacy Virus, many infected Genoshan mutants recover overnight, providing Magneto, the current ruler of Genosha, with an army to start the third World War. He demands Earth's governments accept him as their leader, and abducts and crucifies Xavier in Magda Square for all to see. A loyal member of Magneto's Acolytes, Amelia Voght, cannot stand to see her former lover punished in such a manner and sets him free. Jean Grey and rather untrained newcomers, as most of the team are elsewhere, distract Magneto and Wolverine guts him. Xavier is too late to intervene.
Xavier's evil twin Cassandra Nova, whom Xavier attempted to kill while they were both in their mother's womb, orders a group of rogue Sentinels to destroy the independent mutant nation of Genosha.
Magneto, who is Genosha's leader, appears to die along with the vast majority of the nation's inhabitants. Nova then takes over Xavier's body. Posing as Xavier, she reveals his mutation to the world, something he needed to do but did not want to sully his reputation over, before going into space and crippling the Shi'ar Empire. The X-Men restore Xavier, but Lilandra, believing that too much disaster has come from the Shi'ar's involvement with the X-Men, annuls her marriage to Xavier.
Lilandra previously had gone insane and tried to assassinate Charles on a trip to Mumbai. During this period, a mutant named Xorn joins the X-Men. Xorn uses his healing power to restore Xavier's use of his legs.
When the X-Men receive a distress call from a Scottish island, they are surprised to find Juggernaut with nowhere to go, as the island was destroyed by his further-mutated partner in crime, Black Tom Cassidy, who died.
Xavier reaches out to his stepbrother and offers him a place in his mansion, with Cain reluctantly accepting. The Juggernaut redeems himself over the next few weeks and joins the X-Men. Xavier finds out that Cain's father preferred him to his own flesh and blood and that they both thought they deserved the abuse they incurred by Kurt; Cain believed this because his father loved someone else's child more than him, and Charles felt guilty about getting in the way. That it is why neither of them stopped Kurt Marko with their powers.
Now outed as a mutant, Xavier makes speeches to the public about mutant tolerance. He also founds the X-Corporation, or X-Corp (not to be confused with the X-Corps), with offices all over the world. The purpose of the X-Corp is to watch over mutant rights and help mutants in need.
As a result of being out, the school no longer hides the fact that it is a school for mutants and it opens its doors for more mutant (and even human) students to come in.
A student named Quentin Quire and members of his gang start a riot at the Xavier Institute during an open house at the school. As a result, Quire and two other students are killed. Uncertain about his dream's validity, Xavier announces that he will step down as headmaster and be succeeded by Jean Grey.
Afterwards, Xorn reveals himself to be Magneto, having apparently not died in the Sentinel raid on Genosha. Magneto undoes the restoration of Xavier's ability to walk, kidnaps him, and destroys the X-Mansion (killing several of the students). Then Xorn/Magneto assaults New York, where Cyclops, Fantomex and a few students confront him. After the rest of the X-Men arrive, Xorn/Magneto kills Jean Grey with an electromagnetically induced stroke, and Wolverine decapitates him.
With Jean dead, Xavier leaves the school to Cyclops and Emma Frost, to bury Xorn/Magneto in Genosha. In a retcon of Grant Morrison's storyline, there Xavier meets the "real" Magneto, who mysteriously survived Cassandra Nova's assault. The two resolve their differences and attempt to restore their friendship, leading a team of mutants, the Genoshan Excalibur, to rebuild and restore order to the destroyed island nation.
At the mansion, the Danger Room (the X-Men's simulated reality training chamber) gains sentience, christens itself "Danger", assumes a humanoid form, and attacks the X-Men before leaving to kill Xavier. With Magneto's help, Xavier holds off Danger until the X-Men arrive. Danger flees, but not before revealing to Colossus that Xavier has known it to be sentient ever since he upgraded it.
Colossus is especially offended by this because he had been held captive and experimented upon by Danger's ally, Ord of the Breakworld. Ashamed, Xavier tries to explain to them that by the time he realized what was happening, he could see no other course. The disgusted X-Men leave.
House of M
In a prelude to House of M, Magneto's daughter Scarlet Witch has a mental breakdown and causes the death of several Avengers. Magneto brings her to Xavier and asks him to use his mental powers to help her.
Although aided by Doctor Strange and the appearance of Cassandra Nova, Xavier is unsuccessful. Xavier orders a meeting of the X-Men and Avengers to decide Wanda's fate.
Her brother Quicksilver, believing the heroes plan to kill her, speeds off to Genosha and convinces Wanda that she could right the wrongs she inflicted by using her powers to alter reality.
Quicksilver somehow forces a tearful Wanda to reveal to him her heart's desires of Magneto, the assembled New Avengers, and the X-Men, and then uses her powers to make them all real.
Thanks to Magneto, though, this re-imagined world is a place where a much more numerous mutant-kind are the dominant species, humans a disenfranchised and oppressed 'silent majority', and Magneto himself rules supreme. In this reality, the only proof that Charles Xavier ever existed is a secret monument in Magneto's palace garden, with the engraved message "He died so Genosha could live".
After mutant Layla Miller restores the memories of some of the X-Men and Avengers, they head to Genosha where they discover that Magneto has erected a memorial garden for Xavier commemorating his death. Emma is horrified until Cloak fades into the grave and discovers there is no body inside.
After a battle, Scarlet Witch again uses her powers to restore reality and, as a slight against her father, causes a large majority mutants to lose their powers, leaving the mutant race on the brink of extinction and causing the lost powers to become an energy mass, the Collective. With reality restored, Xavier is still missing and the X-Men are unable to detect him with Cerebro.
Deadly Genesis
Xavier returns when Cyclops' and Havok's long-lost brother, Vulcan, is revived by the Collective energy released as a result of the "House of M" incident. Vulcan then attacks the X-Men.
Xavier, now depowered but able to walk in the wake of "House of M", reveals that he had gathered and trained another team of X-Men (this one composed of students of Dr. Moira MacTaggert) sometime between the original team and the new X-Men team introduced in Giant Size X-Men #1.
This team included Vulcan as a member. Like the "Giant Size" X-Men team, McTaggert's former students were sent to rescue the original X-Men from Krakoa, the living island. However, after rescuing Cyclops, McTaggert's former students were seemingly killed. Upon Cyclops' return, Xavier removed Cyclops' memories of the death of Vulcan and his teammates and began assembling the "Giant Size" X-Men. Vulcan skirmishes with the X-Men and eventually flees into space.
In spite of Cyclops' feelings, Xavier forms a new team including Havok and Darwin, the lone other survivors of Moira's students. Xavier seeks to confront Vulcan before he can enact his vengeance against the Shi'ar empire, which killed Vulcan's mother.
While en route to the Shi'ar homeworld, Xavier is abducted and is later thrown into the M'Kraan Crystal by Vulcan. Darwin follows Xavier into the crystal and pulls Xavier out. This somehow restores Xavier's lost telepathy. With help from his longtime lover, Lilandra, Xavier escapes back to Earth with several of his X-Men.
Upon Xavier's return to Earth, as seen in the World War Hulk storyline, he begins to search for lost mutants such as Magneto. Charles' search for more mutants is interrupted by the Hulk, who was sent into extraterrestrial exile by the Illuminati, a group of powerful superbeings to which Xavier belongs.
Xavier had no part in (and did not know of) the Hulk exile decision, but Xavier admits to Hulk that he would have concurred to a temporary exile so Bruce Banner could be cured of transforming into the Hulk.
However, he also tells the Hulk he would not have agreed to permanent exile. Xavier attempts to surrender to the Hulk, but after viewing the X-Mansion's large graveyard dedicated to post-M-Day mutant deaths, The Hulk concludes the mutants have suffered enough and leaves the Mansion grounds on his own accord. While the X-Men tend to the wounded, Cyclops finally forgives Professor X.
Messiah Complex
While using Cerebra and talking to Beast during the Messiah Complex storyline, Charles detects a new mutant so powerful it fries Cerebra's system. He asks Cyclops to send out a team to find out about the mutant.
Once the team has come back empty handed, he argues with Scott for not telling him about the team he deployed to find former Acolytes. Scott tells him outright that he does not need him to run the X-Men anymore.
This upsets Charles and annoys him later on when he overhears Cyclops briefing X-Factor on the situation. He also approaches the New X-Men in an attempt to help them figure out a non-violent way to help against the Purifiers, but is quickly rebuked by Surge, who questions where he was when they were getting attacked the first time, and that they did not need to learn from him.
Charles questions Cyclops' decision to send X-Force to hunt down his own son, Cable, in front of the students. Cyclops then tells Xavier that he is a distraction that will keep getting in the way and that he must leave the mansion.
Xavier is contacted by Cable, who lost the mutant newborn to the traitorous actions of Bishop, who in turn lost the child to the Marauders, and tells him that he is the only one who can help Cable save the future.
In the final fight, Xavier is accidentally shot in the head by Bishop. Immediately afterward Xavier's body disappears and Cyclops declares that there are no more X-Men.
Professor Xavier survives Bishop's gunshot but falls into a coma. Xavier is kidnapped by Exodus, Tempo, and Karima Shapandar. Exodus tries to heal Xavier, Xavier mentally fights Exodus.
Exodus finally approaches Magneto, who is apparently still depowered, for help. Magneto and Karima Shapandar are able to stir Xavier's memories and coax him out of his coma, though Xavier remains slightly confused and partly amnesiac. Later, Exodus confronts Magneto about Joanna Cargill's injury (Magneto was forced to shoot a laser through her eyeball to prevent her attempted an assassination of Xavier).
Exodus nearly kills Magneto, and Xavier drags Exodus onto the Astral Plane, putting Xavier's own newly restored mind at stake. Xavier defeats Exodus after a harrowing psionic battle, and Exodus reveals the reason he abducted Xavier and to restore his mind: Exodus wants Xavier to lead the Acolytes and find the mutant messiah child (now under the guardianship of Cable) to indoctrinate the child into their cause.
Xavier refuses. Emma Frost's telepathy picks up on the psychic fight, and Emma informs Cyclops that Xavier is alive. Xavier parts company with Magneto and Karima to try to regain his lost memories by visiting people from his past.
The first person Charles visits is Carter Ryking, who had gone insane after losing his powers. Charles reads Carter's memories and discovers that when the two were children they were used as test subjects by Nathan Milbury of the Black Womb Project, with the approval of Charles' father, Doctor Brian Xavier.
Xavier makes the connection Milbury and X-Men villain, Mister Sinister, who has apparently long been manipulating Charles' life in addition to other X-Men. Afterwards, he discovers he has been targeted by assassins.
Charles eventually discovers Mister Sinister had set up Charles, Sebastian Shaw, Juggernaut, and Ryking (Hazard) as potential new hosts for Sinister's mind.
Bleeding slowly to death, he apparently gives in to Sinister becoming the new Mister Sinister. But in reality, Xavier is still battling Sinister for control of his body.
As Sebastian Shaw and Gambit destroy Sinister's Cronus Machine, the device that he used to transfer his consciousness into new hosts, Xavier drives Sinister out of his body permanently.
Xavier thanks Shaw and Gambit for their help and declares he must go and see Cyclops immediately. Professor X returns to the X-Mansion to find it destroyed after recent events.
Afterwards, Xavier leaves the ruins of the X-Mansion to secretly meet up Cyclops by psychically coercing his former student for the visit. Xavier explains to Cyclops about the recent events with Mr. Sinister and tries to explain to Cyclops how Sinister has been manipulating Scott's and Jean's lives since when they were children.
Xavier attempts to have Scott give him permission to scan Scott's mind for traces of Sinister's influences, but instead, Scott turns the tables on Xavier by revealing that he has secretly invited Emma Frost into their entire meeting and also into Xavier's mind.
While in his mind, Emma forces Xavier to relive each of his morally ambiguous decisions under altruistic pretenses. As the issue continues, Charles realizes his human arrogance and that while some of his decisions were morally wrong, he must move forward with his life and deal with the consequences.
Emma ends her incursion into Xavier's mind by reminding him of Moira MacTaggert's last words. As he reflects on Moira's words, Xavier gives Cyclops his blessing to lead the X-Men and leaves to find his own path.
Following his encounter with Wolverine (in the "Original Sin" Arc) Professor Xavier seeks out his step-brother, the unstoppable Juggernaut in an attempt to reform him. After a conversation about the meaning of the word "Juggernaut" and a review of Juggernaut and Xavier's shared history Xavier offers Cain an empty box as a gift.
Confused by Xavier's gift Cain attempts to kill the Professor bringing an entire sports bar down over their heads in the process. Later Cain battles the X-Men in his full Juggernaut armor and conquers the planet.
Just as everything appears to be under the Juggernaut's control Xavier reappears and informs him that everything that has just taken place except for Juggernaut destroying the bar took place in Cain's mind.
A baffled Cain demands to know how Xavier managed to overcome his psychically shielded helmet to which the Professor replies that he decided to visit Cain in his sleep.
Professor Xavier then informs him that he now understands Cain as a person and that he will not attempt to get in his way or reform him again. But Xavier also warns Cain that if he gets in the way of the Professor's path to redemption Xavier will stop him permanently. Following his encounter with Cain it has been revealed that Xavier is now searching for Rogue.
After his bruising encounter with Cyclops and Emma Frost, Professor X is forced to revisit the biggest challenge and the biggest failure of his career, Wolverine, when the feral mutant asks for Charles' help in freeing his son from the clutches of the Hellfire Club.
As the two search for Daken, Wolverine reveals that when he first joined the X-Men he attempted to assassinate Xavier due to some unknown programming. In response, the Professor broke Logan's mind and rebuilt it so that any and all programming he received was forgotten. Logan also revealed that the real reason Xavier asked him to join the X-Men was that Charles "needed a weapon".
Eventually Professor Xavier and Wolverine locate Sebastian Shaw's mansion and attack his minions, just as they are about to enter a bomb explodes from within catching them both off guard. From the wreckage emerges an angry Sebastian who immobilizes Wolverine.
Meanwhile, Miss Sinister knocks Daken unconscious and has him taken to the med lab in the mansion's basement. As Shaw prepares to deliver a killing blow to Xavier, Wolverine recovers and stops him telling Xavier to rescue his son. Professor Xavier locates the med lab and after a quick psychic battle with Miss Sinister enters Daken's fractured mind. While in Daken's mind Xavier discovers Romulus's psychic tampering and comments that Daken's mind is even more broken than Wolverine's was.
Before Xavier can heal Daken a psychic bomb explodes causing Xavier to become comatose and Daken to wake up. Miss Sinister arrives and attempts to manipulate Daken who reveals that the psychic bomb in his head restored his memories and stabs Miss Sinister in the chest.
Meanwhile, Wolverine defeats Shaw and enters the mansion to find Daken standing over an unconscious Xavier preparing to kill him. Wolverine tells Daken that he will not let him hurt Xavier and the two fight.
Overcome with guilt over what happened to Daken and Itsu, Wolverine allows himself to be beaten. Just as Daken appears to have won Xavier pulls both of them onto the astral plane revealing that the psychic bomb had little effect on him because his psyche was already shattered.
Xavier then explains to Wolverine and Daken that Romulus is solely responsible for Itsu's death and that he lied to Daken about everything because he wanted Wolverine to become his weapon. As the three converse, Daken returns to the physical plane and prevents Shaw from killing Xavier.
With the truth revealed Wolverine and Daken decide to kill Romulus. As the two depart Wolverine tells Xavier that he forgives him for all of the dark moments in their history. Wolverine acknowledges that Professor Xavier allowed him to become a hero. Wolverine then tells the Professor that he hopes he will one day be able to forgive him for choosing to kill Romulus.
Professor Xavier recruits Gambit to go with him to Australia to find and help Rogue who is currently staying at the X-Men's old base in the Outback; unaware Danger is using Rogue as a conduit for her revenge against him.
In a prelude to the "Secret Invasion" storyline, Professor X was at the meeting of the Illuminati when it came to the discussion about the Skrulls planning an invasion by taking out Earth's heroes and posing as them. He claims he was unable to distinguish that Black Bolt had been replaced by a Skrull, and his powers were tested quickly by the Black Bolt Skrull.
Professor X leaves after learning even he can no longer trust the others, yet appears to have severely restricted the number of people he informs of the forthcoming alien invasion, as the X-Men were not prepared for the Skrulls, at least at first.
Xavier was not seen again during the events of Secret Invasion, though his X-Men in San Francisco are successful at repelling the invaders there through the use of the modified Legacy Virus.
Dark Reign
During the Dark Reign storyline, Professor X convinces Exodus to disband the Acolytes. A H.A.M.M.E.R. helicopter arrives and from inside appears Norman Osborn, who wants to talk to him.
During the Dark Avengers' arrival in San Francisco to enforce martial law and squelch the anti-mutant riots occurring in the city, Xavier appears (back in his wheelchair) in the company of Norman Osborn and publicly denounces Cyclops' actions and urges him to turn himself in.
However, this Xavier was revealed to be Mystique who Osborn found to impersonate Xavier in public. The real Xavier is shown in prison on Alcatraz and slowly being stripped of his telepathic powers while in psionic contact with Beast, who was arrested earlier for his part in the anti-mutant riots.
It was also revealed by Emma Frost that she and Professor X are both Omega Class Telepaths when she manages to detect the real Professor X.
Professor X helps Emma Frost enter Sentry's mind. However, as Emma frees him of the Void's influence, a minute sliver of the entity itself remains in her mind. Xavier quickly tells her to remain in her diamond armor state to prevent the Void from gaining access to her psi-powers. Professor X is later seen with Emma Frost where Beast is recuperating.
After what happened at Utopia, Xavier has come to live on the risen Asteroid M, rechristened Utopia, along with the rest of the X-Men, X-Club, and mutant refugees and is also allowed to join the Utopia lead council (Cyclops, Storm, Namor, Iceman, Beast, Wolverine and Emma Frost).
While he no longer continues to openly question every move that Cyclops makes, he is still concerned about some of his leadership decisions. Xavier had wanted to return to the mainland to clear his name, but in the aftermath of Osborn declaring Utopia as a mutant detention area, Cyclops refused to let him leave, stating that it would be a tactical advantage to have him as an ace in the hole in case the need arose.
To that end, he has kept Xavier out of the field and instead relied on Emma Frost, Psylocke and the Stepford Cuckoos respectively for their own psionic talents.
While attending the funeral of Yuriko Takiguchi, Magneto arrives at Utopia, apparently under peaceful motives. Xavier does not believe it, and attacks Magneto telepathically, causing Cyclops to force him to stand down. He later apologizes to Magneto for acting out of his old passions from their complicated relationship, which Magneto accepts.
Next, Professor Xavier is seen on Utopia delivering a eulogy at Nightcrawler's funeral. Like the other X-Men, he is deeply saddened by Kurt's death and anxious about the arrival of Cable and Hope.
Xavier is seen using his powers to help his son Legion control his many personalities and battle the Nimrods.
Afterwards, Professor X is seen surveying the aftermath of the battle from a helicopter. As Hope descends to the ground and cradles Cable's lifeless arm, Xavier reflects on everything that has transpired and states that, while he feels that Hope has indeed come to save mutant kind and revive his dream, she is still only a young woman and will have a long and difficult journey before she can truly achieve her potential.
AvX
During the "Avengers vs. X-Men" storyline, the Phoenix Force is split into five pieces and bonded with Cyclops, Emma Frost, Namor, Colossus and Magik (who become known as the Phoenix Five).
Eventually, Cyclops and Frost come to possess the full Phoenix Force, and Professor X is instrumental in confronting them both, and dies in the ensuing battle with Cyclops.
The Phoenix Force is subsequently forced to abandon Cyclops as a host by the efforts of both Hope Summers and the Scarlet Witch.
Xavier's body is later stolen by the Red Skull's S-Men while the group also captures Rogue and Scarlet Witch. Xavier's brain is removed and fused to the brain of the Red Skull. After Rogue and Scarlet Witch snapped out of the fight they were in, they find the lobotomized body of Professor X.
Red Skull uses the new powers conferred upon him by Professor X's brain to provoke anti-mutant riots. His plans are foiled by the Avengers and the X-Men, and the Skull escapes.
Professor X's spirit is later seen in the Heaven dimension along with Nightcrawler's spirit at the time when Azazel invades Heaven.
During the AXIS storyline, a fragment of Professor X's psyche (which had escaped the scrubbing of his memories) still existed in Red Skull's mind preventing him from unleashing the full potential of Professor X's powers.
During a fight with the Stark Sentinels, Doctor Strange and Scarlet Witch attempt to cast a spell to invert the axis of Red Skull's brain and bring out the fragment of Professor X to defeat Onslaught.
Doctor Strange was targeted and captured by the Sentinels before they could cast the spell. When Magneto arrived with his supervillain allies, Doctor Doom and Scarlet Witch attempted to cast the inversion spell again and Red Onslaught was knocked unconscious and reverted to his Red Skull form.
Although they did not know whether Professor X was now in control, the Avengers decided to be cautious and take Red Skull to Stark Tower.
It was later revealed that the spell had actually caused all the heroes and villains present to undergo a "moral inversion" rather than simply bringing out Professor X in the Skull, with the result that the Skull and other villains became heroic while the Avengers and X-Men present became villainous. Eventually, the inversion was undone.
After the Skull mounts a telepathic assault that nearly allows him to take control of the Avengers, he is defeated when Deadpool places Magneto's old helmet on Rogue, allowing her to knock out the Skull and take him to Beast.
Beast is subsequently able to perform brain surgery on the Skull, extracting the part of Xavier's brain that was grafted onto the villain's own brain without causing any apparent damage to the Skull. Rogers attempts to claim the fragment for himself, but Rogue flies up and incinerates the fragment with the aid of the Human Torch, the two expressing hope that Xavier will rest in peace.
Return
The astral form of Professor Xavier has since been revealed to be imprisoned in the Astral Plane after Shadow King somehow acquired it upon Professor X's death.
After what appeared to be years in the Astral Plane, Professor X is able to trick Shadow King into playing him in a 'game' that lures Rogue, Mystique and Fantomex onto the Astral Plane, while turning others into carriers for the Shadow King's 'contagious' psychic essence. With the Shadow King certain of his victory, he fails to realize that Xavier's apparent 'surrender' to his game was really just him biding his time until the Shadow King's influence was distracted long enough for him to drop his already-subtly-weakened guard long enough for Xavier to break his bonds, luring in the three aforementioned X-Men as their identities were already fundamentally malleable.
With the Shadow King defeated, Xavier is apparently returned to the real world in the body of Fantomex, Fantomex reasoning that nobody really knows who he is as an individual beyond his status as one of the X-Men whereas this act of sacrifice will ensure that he is remembered for a great deed.
Proteus has spent years trapped in a psionic hellscape of the Astral Plane, where The Shadow King reigned supreme, only to escape.
Part of the reason that he could was the escape of Charles Xavier (who now chooses to go by X, since he is now in a younger body after escaping), and now X leads the X-Men directly into an ambush, as Proteus has warped an entire village with his powers, leading to a mind-to-mind battle that leaves X on the receiving end of a psychic beatdown.
Proteus has started his garden and his seeds are planted all over the world. Psylocke is in command and has a plan which mainly consists of Archangel using metal and Mystique morphing into his mother.
Once they drain him, Rogue and Bishop convert his energy and release him back to the universe. Whilst this all went down Psylocke and X combined forces to burn out the seeds across the planet. As they are working on it they discover they are not enough to accomplish the task. X mentions the network of psychics the Shadow King was using and that Betsy who is in control should tap into it.
She agrees and does so yet unbeknownst to her X was possessed by the Shadow King who violently erupts from X's head.
Following X's apparent death after the Shadow King exploded from his skull, the psychic villain tears the X-Men apart until X literally pulls himself back together (a feat he later refuses to explain), and he and Psylocke team up to harness the power of all of Earth's psychics to destroy the Shadow King.
As Psylocke says she feels no psychic trace of him anywhere, X implants comforting post-hypnotic psychic suggestions in his allies and then erases their memories (including allowing Warren Worthington to switch between his identities at will). Only Psylocke's memory is left intact, with X telling her she will be the one to "keep him honest" while he embarks on a new mission.
Dawn of X
X has since made his presence known to his former students and reveals his new plan for all mutantkind. Now clad in a Cerebro-like helmet, Xavier has apparently abandoned his dream for peaceful coexistence, and had turned Krakoa into a sovereign nation state for mutants as well as use it to apparently heal the X-Men from their ordeals during the showdown against the forces of O.N.E.
He then leads the X-Men into planting in seeds in strategic locations around the world and Mars, which, overnight, grow into massive plantlike "Habitats". As it turns out, these "Habitats" – and the plants that grew them – are extensions of Krakoa.
Through the advancement of mutant technology combined with Krakoa's unique abilities as a living mutant island, Professor X and the X-Men have embassies around the world. Also through this combination of technology and mutant power, Xavier have developed three drugs that could change human life – a pill that extends human life by five years, an adaptable universal antibiotic, and a pill that cures "diseases of the mind, in humans".” In exchange for recognizing the sovereignty of Krakoa, Professor X will give these drugs to mankind, with mutants living in peace on the island.
Xavier and Magneto later meet with Raven Darkholm inside his sanctum. The two mutant leaders both greatly pleased with the success of her mission as she presents what they'ed petitioned her to steal. A mysterious USB tab containing sensitive information stolen from Damage Control, Mystique would inquire for her payment as she had met their demands.
However, Xavier mentions that he still had more demands that needed to be met as they were building their protected future of Homo Sapiens Superior, seeming to psychokinetically beckon the contents of her theft into his hands while Mystique questions how much more needed to be done for his ultimate pet project.
Xavier and Magneto reveal the contents of the USB drive to Cyclops, which are shown to be information on Orchis, an organization dedicated to responding to a large-scale mutant threat and the plans of a Mother Mold.
They believe that the creation of the Mother Mold will herald a new generation of Sentinels and along with it, Nimrod. They task Cyclops with assembling a team to destroy the Mother Mold station. Although the team (composed of Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Husk, Mystique, Archangel, and Monet) is successfully, they are all killed in the process. X mourns them, vowing "No more."
Xavier is revealed to have upgraded Cerebro with the help of Forge, which is now able to copy and store the minds of mutants in a database.
After the Five (Hope Summers, Goldballs, Elixir, Proteus, and Tempus) are able to grow the bodies of deceased mutants, Xavier is able to copy the minds back in these empty shells. Thus, he is able to restore Cyclops's team, thanking them for what they did.
At the U.N., Xavier, Beast, and Emma celebrate with other ambassadors for the recognition of Krakoa as a sovereign nation. Xavier telepathically converses with Emma, revealing that he knows that she manipulated the Russian ambassador to abstain from the vote, before thanking her for her service.
Two days after the U.N. vote, Xavier, Magneto, and Wolverine are in Krakoa waiting besides several portals. While Wolverine expresses his misgivings about the upcoming event, Xavier and Magneto assure him all will be alright. Soon after, several villainous mutants, including Mister Sinister, Sebastian Shaw, Exodus, Selene and Apocalypse arrive through the portals.
Apocalypse in particular expresses satisfaction at arriving and Krakoa responds in the same way. Magneto and Xavier reveal that they have invited all mutants, even those who have fought against them in the past, to Krakoa, to form a society. The assembled villainous mutants agree to their terms, and Xavier shakes Apocalypse's hand, welcoming him and the others to their home."
While peace reigns on Krakoa, a mysterious team of assassins HALO drops into the island and assassinates Xavier, destroying his Cerebro helmet in the process.
The Quiet Council hides Xavier's death from the rest of the world, and through the activation of a Cerebro backup, and the efforts of The Five, Xavier is reborn once more.
Soon after, he partakes in a global conference alongside Magneto and Apocalypse, professing that he still loves humanity, whilst subtly warning them in regards to his previous assassination - and his knowledge of an ongoing assassination attempt at the forum itself, foiled by Cyclops and Gorgon.
Powers and Abilities
Professor X is a mutant who possesses vast telepathic powers, and is among the strongest and most powerful telepaths in the Marvel Universe. He is able to perceive the thoughts of others or project his own thoughts within a radius of approximately 250 miles (400 km).
Xavier's telepathy once covered the entire world; although following this, Magneto altered the Earth's electromagnetic field to restrict Xavier's telepathic range.
While not on Earth, Xavier's natural telepathic abilities have reached across space to make universal mental contact with multiple alien races.
With extreme effort, he can also greatly extend the range of his telepathy. He can learn foreign languages by reading the language centers of the brain of someone adept, and alternately "teach" languages to others in the same manner. Xavier once trained a new group of mutants mentally, subjectively making them experience months of training together, while only hours passed in the real world.
Xavier's vast psionic powers enable him to manipulate the minds of others, warp perceptions to make himself seem invisible, project mental illusions, cause loss of particular memories or total amnesia, and induce pain or temporary mental and/or physical paralysis in others.
Within close range, he can manipulate almost any number of minds for such simple feats. However, he can only take full possession of one other mind at a time, and must strictly be within that person's physical presence. He is one of the few telepaths skilled enough to communicate with animals and even share their perceptions.
He can also telepathically take away or control people's natural bodily functions and senses, such as sight, hearing, smell, taste, or even mutant powers.
A side effect of his telepathy is that he has an eidetic memory and his brain can assimilate and process impossibly huge amounts of raw data in an astonishingly short amount of time.
He has displayed telepathic prowess sufficient to confront Ego the Living Planet (while aided by Cadre K) as well as narrowly defeat Exodus.
However, he cannot permanently "reprogram" human minds to believe what he might want them to believe even if he wanted to do so, explaining that the mind is an organism that would always recall the steps necessary for it to reach the present and thus 'rewrite' itself to its original setting if he tried to change it.
However, his initial reprogramming of Wolverine lasted several years, despite Wolverine overcoming the reprogramming much faster than an ordinary human because of his healing factor.
He is able to project from his mind 'bolts' composed of psychic energy, enabling him to stun the mind of another person into unconsciousness, inflict mental trauma, or even cause death. These 'bolts' inflict damage only upon other minds, having a negligible effect on non-mental beings, if any.
The manner in which Xavier's powers function indicates that his telepathy is physical in some way, as it can be enhanced by physical means (for example, Cerebro), but can also be disrupted by physical means (for example, Magneto's alteration of the Earth's magnetic field).
Xavier can perceive the distinct mental presence/brain waves of other superhuman mutants within a small radius of himself. To detect mutants to a wider area beyond this radius, he must amplify his powers through Cerebro and subsequently Cerebra, computer devices of his own design which are sensitive to the psychic/physical energies produced by the mind.
Professor X can project his astral form into a psychic dimension known as the astral plane. There, he can use his powers to create objects, control his surroundings, and even control and destroy the astral forms of others. He cannot project this form over long distances.
Uncanny X-Men writer Ed Brubaker has claimed that, after being de-powered by the Scarlet Witch, and then re-powered by the M'Kraan Crystal, Charles' telepathy is more powerful than was previously known. However, the extent of this enhancement is unknown.
Years prior to initial publishing, Charles Xavier had an undefined level of telekinesis. This aspect of his powers were potent enough to cause catastrophic system disruption in computerized appliances.
Such an attribute has faded, however. His evil counterpart Cassandra Nova Xavier would possess this ability, indicating he still possessed the potential for them.
This potential was proven true after his death and resurgence within the younger, stronger body of Charlie Cluster 7. The Professor, using the moniker X, fashioned a Cerebro like a helmet which acts as a focusing device for his psionic powers and used it to galvanize latent aspects of his X-Gene to stimulate some dormant properties, seemingly using telekinesis to will a flash drive on Mystique's person into his hand.
Charles Xavier is a genius with multiple doctorates. He is a world-renowned geneticist, a leading expert in mutation, possesses considerable knowledge of various life sciences, and is the inventor of Cerebro.
He possesses Ph.D.s in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology, and an M.D. in Psychiatry. He is highly talented in devising equipment for utilizing and enhancing psionic powers. He is also a great tactician and strategist, effectively evaluating situations and devising swift responses.
During his travels in Asia, Xavier learned martial arts, acquiring "refined combat skills" according to Magneto. When these skills are coordinated in tandem with his telepathic abilities, Xavier is a dangerous unarmed combatant, capable of sensing the intentions of others and countering them with superhuman efficiency. He also has extensive knowledge of pressure points.
Charles Xavier was also given possession of the Mind Gem. It allows the user to boost mental power and access the thoughts and dreams of other beings. Backed by the Power Gem, it is possible to access all minds in existence simultaneously. Like all other former Illuminati members, Xavier has sworn to never use the gem and to keep its location hidden.
The Xavier Protocols
Totally NOT a blatant rip-off of the Batman Protocols from DC... /end sarcasm
The Xavier Protocols are a set of doomsday plans created by Professor X. The protocols detail the best way to kill many powerful mutant characters, including the X-Men and Xavier himself, should they become too large of a danger.
The Xavier Protocols are first mentioned during the Onslaught crossover and first seen in Excalibur #100 in Moira MacTaggert's lab. Charles Xavier compiled a list of the Earth's most powerful mutants and plans on how to defeat them if they become a threat to the world. They are first used after Onslaught grows too powerful.
Only parts of the actual protocols are ever shown. In the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover Bastion obtains an encrypted copy of the protocols, intending to use them against the X-Men.
However, Cable infiltrates the X-Mansion and secures all encrypted files before Bastion has a chance to decrypt them.
Due to the tampering of Bastion and his Sentinels, the X-Mansion computer system Cerebro gains autonomy and seeks to destroy the X-Men by employing its knowledge of the Xavier Protocols. In a virtual environment created by Professor X, Cerebro executes the Xavier Protocols against the X-Men.
Each protocol is activated by the presence of a different combination of X-Men and were written by Xavier himself: Code 0-0-0 (Charles Xavier) was activated by Moira MacTaggert, Cyclops, and Jean Grey.
This file is both an entry on Charles Xavier, as well as an introduction to the Xavier Protocols. It contained a holographic image of Charles Xavier, reading the following message: "Moira, Scott, Jean; if you three are seeing these images, then I have become a mortal threat to my X-Men. In this instance, I must be stopped by any means necessary. Some years ago, I made a study of various forms of possible defense against my own psychic abilities. The image next to me is that of an anti-psionic armor. The wearer should be protected from my talent. When I finish speaking, a blueprint for this armor will be downloaded."
Code 0-2-1 (Wolverine) was activated by Archangel, Cyclops, and Jean Grey. Code 1-3-9 (Cable) was activated by Cyclops, Jean Grey, and Cannonball. Other X-Men who have faced their Xavier Protocols are Colossus, Rogue, Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Gambit.
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
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A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identity: Charles Francis Xavier
Publisher: Marvel
First appearance: The X-Men #1 (September 1963)
Created by: Stan Lee (writer)
Jack Kirby (artist)
Professor X last seen back in BP 2019 Day 234!
Wonder Woman 2/84 has gone into production. It’s confirmed Pine will return as Steve Trevor, meaning that he’s survived WW1 in 1918. So how he returns will be a great mystery.
Judging by this picture, he looks a little older and rougher, and he’s rocking those 80’s clothes.
I also have an outline of what will happen:
Diana has been working as a hero for nearly close to 70 years, and travels everywhere to fight against threats, but she chooses to settle in America. She gets new allies, an invisible jet, and narrates to a friend briefly of how she fought even more gods monsters during that period.
Then somewhere we get Cheetah’s quick backstory, and she decides to work with the Russians, and 1984 is going to be the height of the Cold War. They will be aided, hopefully, by some new villains (Circe = magic, Doctor Psycho = mental psychosis).
Then back in America, Diana is walking in the mall, and she meets amnesiac Steve, who doesn’t remember her, but he explains that he is working for ARGUS, which we can get to see more of the group before Suicide Squad. Then there’s the Blackhawks, who help the group.
Wonder Woman and her friends go to Russia, they fight the enemies, and Cheetah can be somewhat of a sympathetic villain. Diana can be tortured by mind control and has to fight magic. Cheetah will escape eventually in the end, and she could make future appearances as a member of the Legion of Doom/Secret Society of Super-Villains.
In the end, either Steve dies, because he doesn’t really belong in this period, or retires for good for his age (like Snake in MGS4). Diana is horrified by war, and promises never to fight again, rather becoming peaceful.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen invited the British artist Mike Nelson (Loughborough 1967) to produce a work for Sensory Spaces 8. Nelson will be presenting ‘Amnesiac Shrine’, an installation made up of a set of successive artworks that combine to form an extensive category in its own right within his oeuvre. The works of art on show in the Amnesiac Shrine act as metaphors; they make up a series of images that Nelson devised almost twenty years ago. They are members of an imaginary biker gang, born from the smouldering remains of the first Gulf War. In the umbrella installation ‘Amnesiac Shrine’, which can be seen from 13 February, Nelson uses these metaphors to challenge the perception of fundamental elements like time and space. By means of reflections, illusions and flashbacks, Mike Nelson unleashes a compelling experience at the interface of what can and cannot be defined as art
Please don't use my images on websites or any other media without asking for my written permission.
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Canon AV-1 , FD 50 mm/1.4 , F 2.8 1/60 , Neopan Presto 1600 , ASA 3200 , No additional preservatives added .
Kuala Lumpur , MY
Firestorm is a nuclear-powered super-hero with the ability to transmute elements. The Firestorm Matrix is a composite of multiple people bonded together, originally high school student Ronnie Raymond controlling the body and nuclear physicist Professor Martin Stein giving direction as an additional consciousness. Mikhail Arkadin became a later Firestorm, Stein took control at one point, and Lorraine Reilly was also part of the matrix for a period.
Jason Rusch takes over the identity after the death of Raymond during Identity Crisis, and goes through several partners including Mick Wong and his girlfriend Gehenna.
In an interview Gerry Conway discussed his reasoning and influences while creating the character "I always loved the idea of the hair on fire, I think it goes back to Johnny Storm, The Human Torch, an entire flaming character, of course."
Conway further elaborated, "I’d been playing around with the idea of a teenage superhero for DC, who could sort of fill the hole that had been left in my heart by leaving Spider-Man behind. I’d been thinking about the tropes — one of which was the meek, mild alter ego, the brainy kid who, in wish fulfillment, gets superpowers, is extremely powerful… able to do things that he hadn’t been able to do before. That was, I think, the major motivating force—I wanted to play on that trope.
To do that, I wanted to flip it around: create a guy who wasn’t the brightest guy in the room, the not-terribly-smart guy who became a superpowered character. The way I’d make that work: I’d bring him into contact with the smarter person, who would also share the powers. This led to… the multiple-people-in-one, Professor Stein/ Ronnie Raymond dynamic."
Jack Kirby's 1971 design for Lightray's costume influenced the look of artist Al Milgrom's creation of Firestorm in 1978. In an interview from 2019, Milgrom admitted: "The facemask on Firestorm, the way it comes around the chin, was probably inspired by Lightray more than anything... I liked the [Lightray] head-covering thing; I said, "I'm stealin' it!"
Aliases
Ronnie Raymond / Martin Stein
The original Firestorm was distinguished by his integrated dual identity. High school student Ronnie Raymond and Nobel Prize-winning physicist Martin Stein were caught in an accident that allowed them to fuse into Firestorm the Nuclear Man.
Due to Stein being unconscious during the accident, Raymond was prominently in command of the Firestorm form with Stein a voice of reason inside his mind, able to offer Raymond advice on how to use their powers without actually having any control over their dual form.
Banter between the two was a hallmark of their adventures. Stein was initially completely unaware of their dual identity, leaving him concerned about his unusual disappearances and blackouts, but Ronnie was eventually able to convince him of the truth, allowing them to bond as separate individuals rather than as parts of a whole.
Ronnie Raymond / Martin Stein / Mikhail Arkadin
When Conway left the series in 1986, John Ostrander (with artist Joe Brozowski) began writing the Firestorm stories. His first major story arc pitted Firestorm against the world as the hero, acting on a suggestion from a terminally ill Professor Stein, demanded that the United States and the Soviet Union destroy all of their nuclear weapons.
After confrontations with the Justice League and most of his enemies, Firestorm faced the Russian nuclear superhero Pozhar in the Nevada desert, where an atomic bomb was dropped on them. A new Firestorm resulted, a fusion of the two heroes: this new Firestorm was composed of Ronnie Raymond and the Russian Mikhail Arkadin but controlled by the disembodied amnesiac mind of Martin Stein.
Fire Elemental
The Firestorm with Arkadin proved to be a transitional phase, as in 1989 Ostrander fundamentally changed the character of Firestorm by revealing that Firestorm was a "Fire Elemental".
Firestorm now became something of an environmental crusader, formed from Ronnie Raymond, Mikhail Arkadin, and Svarozhich, a Soviet clone of the previous Firestorm, but with a new mind. Professor Stein, no longer part of the composite at all, continued to play a role, but the focus was on this radically different character.
New artist Tom Mandrake would create a new look to match. It was during this phase that Firestorm met and befriended Sango and the Orishas, the elemental gods of Nigeria. He also met their chief deity and Sango's older brother Obatala, Lord of the White Cloth.
By the series' 100th issue, Stein learned that he was destined to be the true Fire Elemental and would have been being it not for Raymond also being there by circumstance. Raymond and Arkadin were returned to their old lives, and Stein as Firestorm was accidentally exiled to deep space in the process of saving the Earth. He thereafter spent many years traveling through space as a wanderer, returning to Earth only rarely.
After the transition to the elemental Firestorm, all of the main characters from the series vanished from the comics for some time after the cancellation of the Firestorm comic in 1990.
Raymond eventually returned in the pages of Extreme Justice.
Raymond, at the time undergoing treatment for leukemia, regained his original powers after a chemotherapy session. It took the combined might of the Justice League led by Captain Atom, and the returned elemental Firestorm, to restore Ronnie's health. Firestorm began to appear regularly in a number of DC titles, though lacking the guidance and knowledge necessary to use his skills wisely.
Firestorm was drafted by Batman into a "replacement" Justice League that was commissioned in case something befell the original team (in this case, being stranded in the distant past in "The Obsidian Age" storyline).
After the original team returned, Firestorm stayed on as a reserve member and participated in events such as a team-up with the Justice Society of America (in JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice) and the intercompany crossover JLA/Avengers. He was also briefly a member of the Power Company.
Jason Rusch
In 2004, DC revived the Firestorm comic for the second time, with writer Dan Jolley and artist Chris Cross, but instead of the original Firestorm, Ronnie Raymond, there was a new protagonist; the teenager Jason Rusch.
Jason was a 17-year-old living in Detroit who wanted nothing more than to escape his home city. He lived with his father, who had turned abusive after he lost his hand in an industrial accident. His mother left the family sometime after the accident.
With the loss of a job he needed for college tuition, Jason turned to a local thug for money, accepting a job as a courier. It was on that job that he encountered the Firestorm Matrix, searching for a new host after Ronnie Raymond's death. In the aftermath, Jason struggled to cope with his new identity and powers—a struggle that led to the death of the man who had hired him.
Jason Rusch / Martin Stein
In the 2006 miniseries Infinite Crisis, it was revealed that Martin Stein, alive in space as the "Elemental Firestorm", had sensed the presence of Jason Rusch within the Firestorm Matrix, but was unaware of Ronnie Raymond's death. When Jason, as Firestorm, was gravely wounded in the line of duty, Stein linked with him in a variation of the merge, promising Jason a new Firestorm body to let him return into battle (although Martin had been unable to save Mick) and asking him about Ronnie's fate.
Accepting Martin's proposal, Jason asked Stein to become the permanent second member of the Firestorm Matrix. Sensing his "errors" (including Mick's death) were the result of his youth and lack of experience, he sought the experience and maturity of Stein. Stein refused at first, but later accepted Jason's request, thus ensuring both a new Firestorm body and the reconstruction of human bodies for both Rusch and Stein.
It was revealed in Infinite Crisis that if the Multiverse had survived up to the present, Jason would have been a native of Earth-Eight.
Jason Rusch / Firehawk
As the storyline jumped ahead one year (and the series itself was now re-titled as Firestorm the Nuclear Man from issue #23 on), Professor Stein has mysteriously vanished, and Jason Rusch has been merging with Firehawk to become Firestorm, allowing him to use her powers as well.
The two decided to look for Stein together. Stein had been kidnapped and tortured by the Pupil, a former teaching assistant of Stein's. Flanked by the D.O.L.L.I.s, a group of cyborg soldiers of limited cognitive ability, the Pupil (formerly known as Adrian Burroughs) questioned the nearly dead Stein about the secrets of the universe.
Jason and Lorraine, along with the mysterious teleporter Gehenna, freed the captured Stein and restored him to full health. Jason is a college freshman at New York City's Columbus University and seems to have ties with Dani Sharpe, a member of the senior staff at LexCorp.
The Firestorm team of Jason and Firehawk made several appearances across the DC Comics Universe before the search for Martin Stein ended. This included dealing with the latest OMAC and teaming up with Superman in the "Back in Action" story arc in Action Comics.
Firehawk later introduced Jason to Pozhar, a Russian superhero who was once a part of the Firestorm Matrix; together, the trio takes on a newly reborn Tokamak. This series ended with Firestorm the Nuclear Man #35 (April 2007).
Jason Rusch / Ronnie Raymond
In the 2009–2010 Blackest Night miniseries, Ronnie Raymond is called by a black power ring to join the Black Lantern Corps. Like other Black Lanterns, the undead Firestorm mimics the personality of Ronnie Raymond, often wisecracking and exhibiting other stereotypical teenage behavior.
In the 2010–2011 Brightest Day miniseries, Ronnie Raymond arrives at Jason Rusch's apartment with Professor Stein and Ray Palmer to attend Gehenna's funeral.
When Ronnie is actually unable to remember Gehenna's name, Jason angrily lashes out and punches him in the face. This causes the two young men to merge into Firestorm, and they begin arguing inside the Matrix.
Palmer manages to separate Jason and Ronnie, but not before the Firestorm matrix causes a huge explosion. It is revealed that Deathstorm intends to create enough emotional instability between Ronnie and Jason that the Matrix will trigger another Big Bang, thereby destroying all life in the universe. Ronnie and Jason must find a way to contain their Firestorm matrix from the explosion in less than 90 days.
After the events of the 2011 Flashpoint storyline, The New 52 reality altered Firestorm's personal history to the point of it being completely restarted. Ronnie Raymond is now introduced as a high school senior and the captain of the football team. During a terrorist attack on their school, classmate Jason Rusch produces a vial given to him by Professor Stein, which contains the "God Particle", one of Stein's creations.
The God Particle transforms both Jason and Ronnie into Firestorm, and the two teens briefly battle each other before accidentally merging into a hulking creature known as the Fury.
Sharing the identity of Firestorm, with Ronnie being the brawn and Jason being the brains, Firestorm is considered for recruitment into the Justice League along with several other heroes.
DC Rebirth
In the Watchmen sequel Doomsday Clock, Firestorm becomes a subject of controversy after claims arise stating that he was created by the American government. Firestorm profanely denounces the "Superman Theory" and insults his Russian counterpart Pozhar, much to the dismay of Martin Stein.
Firestorm subsequently becomes embroiled in a fight with several Russian superheroes before appearing to inadvertently turn a crowd of civilian protesters into a glass (a feat previously deemed beyond his capabilities). Firestorm flees with the body of an affected child and is found in hiding at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine by Superman.
With Superman's encouragement, Firestorm returns the child to normal. Firestorm and Superman return to the affected crowd and are engaged by the Russian military. The area then becomes engulfed in an explosion of blue light. Subsequent discoveries reveal that the 'Superman Theory' is actually partially correct, as Stein deliberately engineered the creation of Firestorm to make himself a superhuman, even if Raymond genuinely had no idea of this until recently.
Powers and abilities
Firestorm has the ability to rearrange molecular or particle structures of any substance into most anything else, creating different atomic structures of equal mass. He can transmute the basic composition of an object (e.g., transmuting lead into gold) and can also change its shape or form at will. Much like Green Lantern's limitations, Firestorm can only create items whose workings are understood by the "driver" of the Firestorm Matrix, through he can make more complex sentient constructs out of the Matrix's energies. Unlike Green Lantern's creations, Firestorm's alterations are permanent unless he reverses them.
Initially, he could not affect organic matter without painful, even lethal, feedback (i.e., fatal biophysical disruption or even localized particle motion phenomena like extreme changes in the weather). It was later revealed that Firestorm could always change organic matter, but opted not to. As Jason Rusch became Firestorm, however, this weakness appeared to have dissipated. With old and new variations, the organic limitation does not extend to his own person, as its users can molecularly change their driver self at will, allowing them to regenerate lost or damaged bodily tissue, boost immune systems, shape-shift, increase physical capabilities and survive indefinitely without food, sleep, water or air.
Capacities as such produce superhuman levels of strength, durability, stamina and resistance to injury great enough to challenge the New Gods—the likes of Orion, Lashina, or an empowered Kalibak—or surviving the rigors of outer space and sitting near the inner corona above the sun's photosphere without discomfort.
Firestorm's power has been stated by Prof. Stein to be theoretically infinite, harnessing the spark of creation, the Big Bang itself. However, infinite power runs the risk of burning out its host.
While the Firestorm Matrix can be utilized by a singular host driver—as was the case with Ronnie, Stein, and Rusch—it is not recommended. The Matrix functions best with two people, a pilot and secondary, to comprehend and master it. Martin instructed Rusch on how to study current and potential powers available to them within the Matrix and to manually adjust them on the fly at a later date. Its main source of energy stemmed from the ambient stellar energies of native stars and suns but could also use its co-pilot as a power source, though they will burn out over time and genetically disintegrate if not properly adjusted to its power.
The merging aspect of the Matrix can enable outside fusions which assimilate any inherent abilities these others might possess. However, this can diminish its effectiveness and stability. Rusch has shown he can spontaneously warp himself and others he had previously merged with to his specific location, triggering the neural pathway connection and allowing the gestalt to access each other's knowledge and memories to better utilize Firestorm's capabilities.
Users of the Firestorm Matrix can access a type of ancestral memory from the continuum of past Matrix users, allowing them to access the latest knowledge of the atoms comprising it. This also translates into a form of time-space sight in which the Matrix user can glimpse the past, present, future, and alternate lives of every other Firestorm throughout reality using a collective of subatomic wormholes which exist as a part of the Matrix. This power is too complex to properly control; thus, it has been highly unreliable as an ability.
The driver can fly at supersonic speeds in an atmosphere and reach escape velocities. The driver can also adjust the driver's body's size or pull and enlarge others from the subatomic universe at will, Rusch having once dragged Ray Palmer from his microscopic size to the natural world while on Apokolips. Manipulation of the self at the subatomic level allows the driver to become intangible and pass through solid objects. This allowed Rusch to communicate with John Stewart and sift through his mind telepathically after he had been taken over by the void beast. Firestorm is also adept at absorbing and redistributing radiation or energy both harmlessly and productively (such as in Green Lantern: Circle of Fire #7, having both absorbed Zeta Radiation from Adam Strange's body and repurposed it to turn a universe-destroying quasar back onto itself and absorb the fallout from a massive nuclear detonation).) He can generate destructive or concussive blasts of nuclear energy, through which he can also channel his transmogrification powers.
While the Matrix grants the fusers unique powers, it can also accidentally bestow them on individuals caught in the Matrix by mistake. One example is Nanette Phaedon, wife of the late Allen Phaedon, who gained the ability to change her quantum state for size-shifting and flight by her own will. Following Raymond's resurrection during Brightest Day, Firestorm gained the ability to switch "drivers" between Ronnie and Jason at will; before that, only the active driver was in control, with the dormant consciousness only able to advise the other on what action to take. One of the faults of a Firestorm fusion is that the stronger psyche will have dominance of the Matrix's power, such as when Jason fused with Luis Salvador who overpowered him from the passenger seat of the Matrix.
During The New 52, the Firestorm Matrix could be shared through multiple users at a time. Users could fuse and become stronger, but more unstable. The entity formed between Ronnie and Jason when using the Matrix in tandem created a nuclear being called "the Fury". It was also shown that The Matrix shares a kinship to the Quantum Field in some way, enabling Firestorm users to derive its power for subatomic transmutation and manipulation. Some believe it is key to the fabled God particle theory. Its merging properties can place a large burden on the user; Firestorm runs the risk of reaching critical mass and detonating. At worst, the fusion of too many users in the Matrix could trigger a second Big Bang.
⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽
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A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.
Secret Identities:
Ronald Roy "Ronnie" Raymond
Dr. Martin Stein
Dr. Mikhail Denisovitch Arkadin
Jason Thomas Rusch
Publisher: DC
First appearance: Firestorm the Nuclear Man #1 (March 1978)
Created by: Gerry Conway (Writer)
Al Milgrom (Artist)