SQUID-BOY

 

SQUID-BOY

Real Name: Samuel Luc Paré

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #410, October 2002

Powers: Squid-Boy had an aquatic mutation which gave him various fish-like features including red scales, fins, webbed fingers and toes. He was an excellent swimmer who could breathe on land or underwater (and talk while submerged) because his entire anatomy was adapted for moving through the thicker medium of water. He had gills to enable him to extract oxygen from the water, a superhuman physiology to enable him to withstand the extreme water pressure changes beneath the sea, blood circulation enabling him to withstand freezing temperatures, and specially-developed vision which was more sensitive to the green portion of the spectrum enabling him to see in the murky depths.

BLACK TOM

 

BLACK TOM

Real Name: Thomas Samuel Eamon Cassidy

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #99, June 1976

Powers: Black Tom’s mutant ability is to bodily generate thermokinetic energy and discharge it as concussive blasts of intense heat and force. He uses non-conductive organic substances, such as wood, to channel his power. Black Tom's bio-blasts alternate between being force beams or heat beams. His assaults can cause combustion or physical impact and damage depending on how he applies them.

After being horribly beaten and wounded by Cable, Black Tom was put through a surgical procedure that grafted synthetic wood fiber into his wounds which grew to fill in the damaged and lost portions of his mass, making him a human-wood hybrid. This gave him a constant internal conduit through which to focus his power blasts, and his mutant energy was apparently amplified as it was now focused through his implants. As time passed, however, the implants seemed to take over Tom's body, converting him into a being more plant than man. After being critically injured in this form, his partner (Juggernaut) financed an operation to remove the synthetic grafts and return Black Tom to his normal human appearance.

Since that time, however, Tom underwent a secondary mutation which transformed him completely into a plant-like being. Black Tom came to exist as nothing more than a spectral consciousness inhabiting wood and vegetable matter bodies shaped in his image. Tom was capable of mentally manipulating various forms of vegetation, causing roots and vines to rip out from the ground and accelerate their growth to tremendous size and strength. By animating this plant matter he could form razor sharp wooden spears, prehensile vines to lift and move objects, and wrap such roots or vines around a person or object and constrict, crushing whatever was in their grasp. He could inhabit large amounts of wooden mass at once, expanding to gigantic sizes, and any injuries inflicted on his animate frame were negligible so long as he could relocate his consciousness to another section of vegetable mass.

After Decimation, Black Tom was restored to his human form, losing most of his secondary mutation. He retains his bio-blasting ability, and can still animate and manipulate wood and plant-life to some degree. He has even demonstrated enhanced bio-blasting, such as channeling massive amounts of power by conducting his bio-blast through multiple logs strapped on the back of a flatbed truck.

Tom Cassidy was educated at University of Oxford. He is a master of terrorist strategies and tactics, as well as a master swordsman.

JUGGERNAUT

 

JUGGERNAUT

Real Name: Cain Marko

First Appearance: The Uncanny X-Men (Vol. 1) #12, July 1965

Powers: Cain Marko was originally a baseline human who found the Ruby Gem of Cyttorak and was transformed into its Avatar of Physical Power after being exposed to the gem's mystical crimson bands. This gave him superhuman Class 100 strength, size, heightened reflexes, and an inexhaustible supply of stamina. The Juggernaut does not require sleep, food, drink, or oxygen in order to survive. He has multiple stages of protection giving him the equivalent of invincibility. First, his body is phenomenally dense and massive (he stands just under 7' tall and weighs 900 lbs.) which grants him natural invulnerability to most forms of attack. Even when standing still, he withstand a rocket flying at hundreds of mph to the chest without so much as a flinch. The Juggernaut also projects an inertia-canceling force field of mystical energy around himself at all times. This field bolsters his natural durability by causing projectiles and physical assault to lose some of their momentum as they come in to strike him. The Juggernaut can mentally expand the field's radius and intensify the effect, so much so that he can cause bullets to lose all momentum and drop to the ground a few feet away from him. Finally, he possesses tremendous regenerative powers which deal with any injury that actually manages to get through his protective measures. His armor, specifically his helmet, gives him protection from psychic attacks. Combined, all this serves to enable Cyttorak's decree that nothing can stop the Juggernaut once he is in motion.

The Juggernaut has experienced power losses in the past, such as when his power was halved while in the Ultraverse with the Exiles, and more recently when he fell out of favor with Cyttorak. The exact extent to which his power was depleted is unclear, but it was in direction proportion to Cyttorak's displeasure with him. Cyttorak values shows of strength and personal recognition, and the Juggernaut's time as a moderately humbled hero working privately with the X-Men provided neither. His powers increased again after returning to villainy, but not to their full potential. As a Thunderbolt, the Juggernaut was notably weaker than before, in particular because he now needed to breathe whereas before he walked hundreds of miles on the ocean floor without concern.

Chosen by the Serpent as one of The Worthy, Juggernaut was restored to his full might if not higher. He wielded an indestructible Asgardian hammer and his unstoppability was now magically affirmed by the Serpent's power. His feet formed bridges of magical energy so that he wasn't deterred by chasms, he could not be teleported from his chosen path. He even demonstrated telepathic abilities so that psychic assaults could not stop him either. Ultimately, however, both the Serpent and Cyttorak removed their influence, apparently reverting Cain Marko to a normal human. He’s since regained his abilities.