SKINLESS MAN

 

SKINLESS MAN

Real Name: Harry Pizer
First Appearance: Uncanny X-Force (Vol. 1) #21, February 2012

Powers: The Skinless Man was originally a mutant with quasi-plastic, semi-sentient skin. The unique nature of Pizer's skin was extra resilient and elastic, able to absorb punishment and extend itself. His mutant physiology allowed Pizer to unravel his skin off his musculature without suffering pain or injury. These bands of skin could then reach out with prehensile dexterity to grab, bind, or slash at targets. His skin also had extra-sensory gifts of some sort, allowing him to read documents at a distance through his skin alone. Whether his skin had an enhanced sense of touch like Daredevil (allowing him to "read" the raised ink on the page) or actually had a form of genuine "vision" to "see" through his skin is unclear.

Pizer was supposedly neutralized when he was skinned alive, turning his skin into a collection of hardened mutant-killing bullets. However, his mutant power somehow transferred to his musculature after that. Though now lacking any skin on his body, Pizer could now unravel his musculature off of his bones in the same manner he used to do with his skin, presumably retaining all the enhanced qualities his skin demonstrated.

MESMERO

 

 

MESMERO

Real Name: Vincent
First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #49, October 1968

Powers: Mesmero has the mutant power of ultra-hypnosis, a psionic ability enabling him use eye-to-eye contact to place other people into a highly-suggestible state where they are extremely open to influence from him. This enables him to control his victims through powerful mental commands that can compel specific actions or specific behavior patterns from them. He can tell people to fall asleep, to hand over their weapon, to remain where they are, etc, and the hypnotic suggestion will be too powerful to resist. His influence over behavior allows him to convince people to do anything he asks without questioning their own reasons for doing so. He can command people to remain his willing slaves, create false memories or personalities for them to act out, or convince them to suddenly feel a different way about a topic or person. Mesmero can also psionically trigger intense pain and anguish in people simply by wishing it, construct mental blocks preventing them from ever accessing certain memories or carrying out certain actions, and create lasting illusions in the minds of others that convince them that they or someone else looks quite different than they actually do.

POST

 

POST

Real Name: Kevin Tremain

First Appearance: X-Men (Vol. 2) #50, March 1996

Powers: A former operative for the Central Intelligence Agency, Kevin Tremain's mutant genes granted him blue skin and an increased musculature that gave him augmented strength, agility, endurance, reaction time, and durability. His mutation also includes a highly analytical acumen allowing him to mentally calculate vastly large mathematical probabilities, outpacing most super computers. He could use this power to compute vectors, target trajectories, override computer locks and programs, etc.

Receiving a blood transfusion from Cable left him with a sample of the techno-organic virus in his system. This transfusion is what later allowed Onslaught to transform him into the cybernetic powerhouse called "Post" and more effectively interact with the suit of power pods later provided for him by Onslaught. Each pod may have only resembled a featureless stone, but were actually highly intricate circuitry. Many of them formed into a pair of trunks, boots, gloves, and headgear. The rest tended to hover around him, acting as sensory units that recorded audio, visual, energy-based and mutagenic signatures on various wavelengths, giving his analytical power vast amounts of information to cogitate on. He could combine and reconfigure groups of power pods into floating plasma blasters, a cloaking device built onto his chest plates that rendered him invisible, and possibly teleportation abilities as well. Furthermore, he could use the data he gathers on a target or another mutant to conceive of anti-personal weapons to counter someone's natural abilities.

EMPYREAN

 

EMPYREAN

Real Name: Jonathan Bartholomew Chambers

First Appearance: X-Men Unlimited (Vol. 1) #2, September 1993

Powers: Empyrean’s mutant power is the ability to absorb from fellow mutants the bio-energy emanations generated by their mutagenic auras.

The mutagenic aura is the radiant, but typically invisible energy signature produced as a by-product of the x-gene. This energy signature is unique to each mutant and is what Cerebro scans for when searching for mutants. This energy is also the biological power source that fuels a mutant's powers and abilities, whether they're energy-related or not.

His absorption can be done from a distance (drawing out energy from mutants), or the effect can be done passively, as he did for mutants afflicted with the Legacy Virus to prevent the inevitable and painful power flares the virus caused. Empyrean's energy leeching could also be performed forcibly, sucking the bio-energy out of his victims while triggering a mutagenic feedback effect that was excruciatingly painful for those he assaulted. The feedback on his victims also causes them physical weakness and power signature flares. Empyrean stores the stolen energy within himself and uses it to increase his health and extend his life.

It was also suggested that Empyrean's power could be fatal for other mutants, as his father was a mutant who died in a car accident when Jonathan was a teenager, after having mysteriously aged decades in the months prior despite being 38 years of age.

PHANTAZIA

 

PHANTAZIA

Real Name: Eileen Harsaw

First Appearance: X-Force (Vol. 1) #6, January 1992

Powers: Phantazia’s mutant ability gives her power over electromagnetic harmonics. She is capable of sensing the presence of various forms of energy in her environment, including detecting electronic systems and the atmospheric distortion that signals a teleportation effect. When in her power signature’s field, Phantazia is capable of levitation and drapes herself in a large cloak, leaving the impression that there's no body underneath. It seems she may transform at least partially into an electromagnetic energy form, but why it only happens from the neck down isn't clear.

In active use, Phantazia's power can be used to disrupt anything of an electromagnetic nature. She can generate masking effects, rendering herself and others invisible to human senses and undetectable to electronic surveillance. She can also produce offensive disruptor effects, either through contact with her "body" or as energy blasts from her eyes. Phantazia can scramble the function of electronics or computers, causing them to shut down or go haywire. Used against a living opponent, Phantazia's effect can cause intense pain, make them lose the coordination of their body, and cause their special powers to become unstable, such as making Cannonball's blast field protection unreliable or causing Sleepwalker's warp-vision to spray out uncontrollably.

AVALANCHE

 

AVALANCHE

Real Name: Dominikos Ioannis Petrakis

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #141, January 1981

Powers: Avalanche possesses the mutant ability to generate powerful vibratory waves from his hands. By focusing his power on a target, he can strike objects with shockwaves carrying a concussive impact, cause them to shatter, or destabilize his target at a molecular level so that it crumbles and disintegrates into powder. His power is ineffective against organic matter. Attempting to do so will cause his vibrations to reverberate and feedback on him, which once broke nearly every bone in his arms when he used his power on the Hulk.

By directing vibrations at the ground beneath himself, Avalanche can stimulate ground tremors, creating earthquake-like effects that throw his opponents off balance, open fissures in the earth, and can weaken the structural integrity of building foundations or the ground itself. This application of his powers is especially effective on earth that is already seismically unstable. He has practiced in using his powers to create ripple effects which alter the landscape under his control. Avalanche can create slopes and inclines from flat level ground, cause chunks of pavement or earth to blast up into the air and then fall in simulated landslides or avalanches, or summon "tidal waves" of matter that ripple across the ground. He can ride atop these waves for transportation, or use them to bury his opponents.

Avalanche is a trained mercenary and a talented landscape gardener.

DESTINY

 

DESTINY

Real Name: Irene Adler

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #141, January 1981

Powers: Destiny possessed the mutant power of precognition. She could psionically perceive the events of possible futures in her mind’s eye. Although she was blind, Destiny could mentally scan the probability spectrum of alternate futures and mentally perceive sounds and sights of events that distinguish them. By concentrating she could focus on only the most probable alternate futures.

The accuracy of Destiny's ability to foresee future events decreased in direct proportion to the distance those future events lie ahead in time. The greater the time factor, the greater the number of alternate futures to scan. She could comfortably scan the alternate futures that exist from one second away up until those that exist fifteen minutes away. Hence, she could be 97% accurate in her predictions of the future ten seconds away or less. Despite the limited extent of her certainty, her long-range scanning could be of great use in the early detection of possible random factors that could disrupt her or her partners' plans. The more likely that a particular alternate future would manifest itself in her reality, the clearer and more distinct her mental impression of it would be. Less likely alternate futures would appear hazy and indistinct. If she left her precognitive perceptions fully open, she would "see" an overlapping succession of images drift in and out of focus as probabilities shifted and further elements transpired. By active participation in the events around her, she could help shift the probabilities toward desired ends.

PYRO

 

PYRO

Real Name: St. John Allerdyce

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #141, January 1981

Powers: Pyro possesses the mutant ability to assume psionic control over fire. He can manipulate the size, shape and intensity of his flames. He can extinguish existing flames or feed the fire to make even the smallest spark grow to enormous size. Pyro can mentally regulate the flame's temperature, and shape it in any number of ways. He can cause columns or walls of flame to shoot up, form giant grasping hands out of flame, or project flame jets that tracked a moving target wherever it went. Pyro can create animated figures out of fire, forming fire-people, birds, or dragons that move and act under his commands. He can somehow forge flames that were solid enough to interact with physical objects, like flaming creatures which could lift up people in their hands. He can make his fire have sufficient solidity to achieve extra force, and make his fire so intense that bullets melt before they hit him. In order to control fire, it has to be within a 100 yard radius of Pyro and in his line-of-sight, he cannot manipulate a fire that he is viewing on live television. He is invulnerable to fire under his mental control, but if he was to take his attention from it, he could be badly burned. On two occasions Pyro has been known to fly or hover by propelling himself with fire.

Because Pyro can’t generate flames on his own, he always has a fuel pack and flamethrowers attached to his wrists as a part of his fireproof costume. His flame throwers provide him with a constant source of fire to manipulate and shoot on mental command, traveling a distance of 25 feet without Pyro's aid.

St. John Allerdyce holds a college degree and was an accomplished journalist for an Australian wire service. He was also a successful writer of gothic romance novels.

MYSTIQUE

 

MYSTIQUE

Real Name: Raven Darkhölme

First Appearance: Ms. Marvel (Vol. 1) #16, May 1978

Powers: Mystique possesses the mutant power of metamorphic shape-shifting. She can psionically shift the atoms and molecules of her own body in order to duplicate any humanoid form. Like most metamorphs, she seems to have a short-range psionic scanning ability, which allows her to perfectly mimic the proportions, coloration, fingerprints, retina patterns, vocal chords, etc. of anyone in her immediate area, purely by instinct. Mystique can also consciously control her morphing to assume different appearances conjured up entirely from her own imagination. She is skilled at rearranging the outermost layer of her skin to resemble clothing, creating virtually any outfit or style imaginable. She can even remove this clothing if necessary, though not too often without risking an unhealthy loss of her mass. Besides clothing, Mystique has also shown the ability to form glasses or jewelry onto her body as well.

Mystique was originally limited by the amount of mass she currently possessed: When she transformed into a larger person, like Sabretooth or Bishop, she still retained her initial 120 lbs. In fact, Mystique was actually weaker physically in these larger forms because she was expanding her mass to its limits to accommodate the massive frame: A large portion of her insides were hollow like this, filled with nothing but air and empty space. Since her powers were upgraded, Mystique has demonstrated an increased ability to generate mass at will, expanding her body to some degree, but even now this power is limited by the quantity of mass she can produce and the amount of time she can maintain these expanded forms.

Mystique has learned to use her powers for a number of purposes besides impersonation. Her mutant power renders her body immune to poisons and antigens, and also continuously revitalizes her body cells and DNA memory, slowing her aging process significantly, at least by a factor of 4. She can also heal many surface level injuries like cuts or bruises by rearranging her flesh and cleanse her system of pathogens or poisons in much the same way. Raven can blend in with her surroundings by altering the coloration of her skin, shape razor sharp claws from her hands, alter her vision to see in the dark, temporarily add extra limbs or reinforced bone armor outside her skin, etc.

Mystique is a cunning strategist in terrorist and commando operations, and a highly talented actress. She is self-trained in both armed and unarmed combat, and is an expert markswoman.

ROGUE

 

ROGUE

Real Name: Anna Marie LeBeau

First Appearance: Avengers Annual (Vol. 1) #10, October 1981

Powers: Rogue's mutant ability is to absorb the bio-essence of other people upon skin-to-skin contact, processing it to give her access to various aspects of their being. This includes special powers, knowledge, and memories. The absorption process strips a victim of some of their living essence, sending them into shock. They originally would tend to remain unconscious for the entire length of time Rogue possessed their template, and if they did awaken they would be weakened, partially amnesiac, and powerless. Rogue's power originally worked on a 1:60 time ratio: If Rogue was in contact with her victim for 1 second the transfer would be sustained for 60 seconds, 1 minute would sustain it for 60 minutes, and so on. Many factors were known to interfere with the standard operating procedure, though, such as magic, aliens, or strong emotional reactions during the transfer. This interference could take the form of Rogue maintaining active residue of her victim's minds or powers for weeks after the initial contact. During a battle with Ms. Marvel (Carol Danvers), this ended with Rogue permanently absorbing her, gaining a half-Kree genetic code, Class 50 superhuman strength, superhuman endurance, reflexes, and durability, increased tolerance for disease and poison, and the ability to fly at superhuman speeds. She only occasionally manifested Carol's “Seventh Sense”, allowing her to instinctively predict and move to counterattack an opponent's moves in combat.

After touching the telepathic Skrull Deviant known as Z'Cann, Rogue was transformed for a time into a Skrull. This altered her powers for a brief period so that touching someone not only gave her their powers, it also caused her to duplicate their appearance. Soon, the active Skrull genes faded and her features returned to normal, but now Rogue's powers fluctuated: The residual traces of her past victims were now spontaneously and unexpectedly activating themselves again, suddenly giving her powers like claws, organic metal skin, optic blasts, healing factors, and more. With the help of Sage's jump-start power, Rogue gained control and became capable of summoning up any set of powers from her past that she wished. Unfortunately, major wound trauma suffered at the hands of Vargas stretched her abilities to the limit and she burnt herself out, losing all of her power templates and her absorption power as well for a time.

Her abilities later returned, but her Ms. Marvel powers were gone permanently and her absorption power was working a bit differently. She seemed to be able to prioritize memories when she tapped them now, such as touching a pilot and maintaining his flight skills, while pushing the rest of it to the back of her mind. The effects of her power on other people seemed to be far less intense as well, as victims of a brief touch would only experience a brief dizziness instead of being knocked out for a few minutes. The 1:60 time ratio may still apply to Rogue's ability to maintain an imprint, but not for the effect on her victim. Put simply, originally it was a 1-second contact which gives Rogue their essence for 1 minute and knocking the victim unconscious for the same period of time. At this point, Rogue's victims recovered fast enough that she could absorb a fellow X-Man's powers and the two of them could use those powers together at the same time. She absorbed the powers of Sunfire permanently for a period of time, but never learned to use his abilities much beyond flame-blasting and flight.

After exposure to the viral Strain 88 courtesy of Pandemic, Rogue's power was amplified to uncontrollable levels. Her touch was now instantly fatal to other people, shutting down their minds and permanently rendering them to a vegetative state, while Rogue absorbed their entire lifetime of thoughts and memories. She almost fatally overloaded after making contact with the Hecatomb, a collective psychic entity containing thousands of minds, all of which were absorbed into Rogue's psyche. The psychic shock drove her into a coma until Hope Summers' touch somehow wiped Rogue's mind clean of all foreign presences and influences.

Briefly reduced to more manageable levels, Rogue's powers were perfected after Professor Xavier and Danger worked together to properly realign her powers and give her total control over her abilities. Rogue could now freely touch other people without absorbing from them. She can selectively use her power to absorb someone's abilities or sifting through their memories and skills as she chooses. The side-effects of her power can also be controlled, letting her render people unconscious, active but powerless, or merely momentarily weakened. Rogue can selectively manifest power imprints once she absorbs them: Touching Archangel doesn't give her his wings for a period of time, but the ability to manifest his wings for a period of time. The abilities she absorbs are optional and she can choose to access them sometime after the initial contact or not at all. They can also manifest without secondary indicators, such as when she duplicated Anole's agility and leaping ability without turning green and scaly. Rogue can also combine several absorbed abilities together into creative gestalt powers. She once combined the powers of Dust, Mercury, Rockslide, Gentle, and Armor to transform herself into super-dense shards of silicon-metal, erupting with explosive force while each piece was surrounded with impenetrable psionic force.

Becoming permanently imbued with the ionic flux of Wonder Man granted her ionically-sustained superhuman strength, limitless endurance, invulnerability to physical harm, and supersonic flight speed. A side effect was that she once again lost control of her mutant power. Rogue's powers increased after merging powers with Xandra, so her power would uncontrollably affects anyone within a general proximity.

BLOB

 

BLOB

Real Name: Frederick J. Dukes

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #3, January 1964

Powers: The Blob’s mutant powers lie in the mass, strength, and durability of his body. Originally, the Blob was a roughly normal sized man with a good deal of extra fat on his body. As the years have passed, his powers have evolved to make him abnormally tall, obscenely fat, and superhumanly strong, reaching nearly a Class 75 strength level. His body fat has a number of abnormal elastic properties which make it heavily resistant to injury, including blunt force trauma, penetration, laceration, intense cold, and radiation. He used to be somewhat susceptible to burning, but has proven to be resilient even to that in recent years. His eyes, ears, nose and mouth are not as resilient as the rest of his body, however. Bullets, missiles, knives or lasers can't harm him, they simply become stuck in his blubbery mass, which is flexible enough for him to hold objects within the folds of his flesh and pop them back out at lower velocities when he flexes his muscles. If someone were to punch him in his stomach, the Blob can trap their hand inside the rolls of his fat. Even individuals with nearly incalculable strength levels such as the Hulk and Hercules have had difficulty pulling their fists back out again.

He possesses the ability to generate a mono-directional gravity field beneath him that renders him completely immovable as long as he is in contact in the ground. If there is sufficient force to move him, then it would also uproot the ground he is standing upon. With intense concentration, he can extend his gravity field over ten feet, such as one instance when he extended his gravity field in his jail cell, causing it to implode and allowing him to escape.

In later years, his powers were increased by Onslaught. This allowed the Blob to exhibit control over his mass in a variety of ways (an aspect of his power he calls “mass-shifting”). He can shift his mass from one part of his body to any other, extending parts of his body outward (stretching similar to Mr. Fantastic), smothering people in his fat, and using his fat to catch oncoming projectiles and re-direct them.

On a further note, the Blob’s obesity is actually a compensatory portion of his mutant power. His fat and tissue cells are highly resilient and elastic so as to help him withstand the pressures of his power.