FANTOMEX

FANTOMEX

Real Name: Charlie Cluster-7

First Appearance: New X-Men (Vol. 1) #128, August 2002

Powers: Charlie Cluster-7 was created within the Weapon Plus Program's time-variant experimental laboratory, the World, to become Weapon XIII. He was created to fulfill a particular archetype as a "stylish stealth fighter" for the intended team of Super-Sentinels, mutant hunters who won the public affection while eliminating mutantkind at the same time. Charlie Cluster-7 escaped from Weapon Plus and established his own identity as Jean-Philippe Charles, the French international jewel thief called Fantomex.

Fantomex has a nano-cybernetic and genetically-engineered physiology that gives him enhanced levels of strength, speed, agility, endurance, reflexes, and recuperative powers. His senses are extra-keen to a certain degree, making him an excellent marksman and capable of hearing ranges of sound above and below human detection. Fantomex possesses nano-active blood that protects him from various pathogens and multiple independently processing minds which increase his cognitive abilities, letting him think several different streams of thought at once. He has an intuitive ability to recognize and interpret body language and visual cues. This allows Fantomex to instantly identify shape-shifters like Mystique regardless of their current form, and effectively predict the mood and intentions of other people through simple observation. He has an elaborate power of "misdirection", letting him plant thoughts in the minds of other people. This allows him to give people ideas which they instantly accept as uncontested truth, such as when he convinced War to fall in love with Psylocke. Frequently, his misdirection power is used to create illusions, disguising his appearance or the appearances of others, and making his victims perceive radically different versions of perceptual reality than what is actually taking place around them.

Although he was designed with multiple brains for parallel processing, Fantomex's most notable (and radical) mutation is his detachable nervous system. He can expel a tiny flying saucer from his throat cavity, which rapidly grows to full size. Known as EVA, the saucer is somehow the external representation of Fantomex's nervous system. When EVA is separated from his body, Fantomex cannot experience pain or suffer under neurological assaults. EVA is guided by a self-motivated consciousness which is a feminized extension of Fantomex's own mind. Fantomex and EVA can communicate telepathically over a distance with one another. Fantomex can also plug into EVA during flight to directly guide her movements. EVA's bio-mechanical construction allows her to modify herself to create a variety of features, including supersonic flight, space travel, vertical take-off and landing capabilities, retractable landing struts and entrance ramps, bio-laser weapons, ranged scanning and audio-video display equipment, and seating for at least five people. EVA has shielding to protect herself from harm, and self-repair capabilities to regenerate her structure when damaged. A sufficient amount of damage on EVA can feedback on Fantomex, however, causing him to experience sympathetic pain and pass out. If EVA is significantly damaged and goes off-line, Fantomex can continue to function using a redundant secondary nervous system within his own body. This back-up system is not as effective as a regular nervous system, however, particularly, he is rendered colorblind when relying on the back-up.

Fantomex relies on different kinds of special equipment, depending on his mission. He often employs ceramic plating in his mask designed to prevent telepaths from reading or manipulating his thoughts. He has used special mutant-killing bullets, created in part of James Braddock Sr. using the sentient skin of a mutant named Pizer.

Fantomex was killed when the Skinless Man ripped out his heart. He was cloned and reborn at the White Sky Facility, but his three brains were separated into three different bodies, as Fantomex, Weapon XIII, and Cluster. Fantomex resembled the original Fantomex; Weapon XIII (or “Jean-Philippe”) also resembled the original Fantomex, but dressed in black; Cluster is a female Fantomex. Fantomex retained access to EVA, but the misdirection power rested with Weapon XIII. How his other abilities may be divided is unknown. Fantomex eventually developed mental instability with his brains separated as they were. EVA, as his "maintenance program", was amorally pragmatic in helping him repair himself, and only ended up driving him to further insanity. He was later cured, but what exactly became of EVA, Cluster, and Weapon XIII is unrevealed.

Fantomex's mind was later cast into the astral plane. While there, a disembodied Charles Xavier convinced Fantomex to trade places with him. This allowed Xavier to rewrite the nano-technology in Fantomex's body to make it a young duplicate of his original form, reborn in corporeal form as "X". Fantomex’s final fate remains uncertain.