DEATH CHART - EVENTS

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31st October 2020

EVENTS

Deadly Genesis

When the original X-Men first went missing on the island of Krakoa, Professor Xavier turned to Moira MacTaggert and the small group of mutant teenagers in her care. Undergoing relative months of training for the mission thanks to the Professor's telepathic powers, Kid Vulcan and his friends became the new X-Men, setting out to rescue their lost teammates. They didn't stand a chance. After landing on the island they were cut off from Xavier's mental support and their powers slowly began draining away. Vulcan's team managed to locate Cyclops and load him into the Strato-Jet before the island overwhelmed them. As the Strato-Jet carried him to safety, Cyclops saw Sway torn in two by Krakoa's avatars, and the rest apparently incinerated in a volcanic blast. As a hysterical Scott reported to Xavier about the new team's demise, including his own newly discovered brother Vulcan, Xavier chose to wipe all memory of the quartet from Cyclops's mind.

No one was aware that Vulcan's team wasn't completely dead. Sway had unleashed a final wave of her time-slowing power as she died, allowing Petra to survive just long enough to pull what remained of the team far beneath the surface of the island. This desperate act wasn't enough to save her, but Darwin and Vulcan survived, after a fashion. Darwin's reactive mutation somehow caused him to bond with Kid Vulcan, holding them both in stasis far below the surface even as a third team of X-Men arrived and was successful in saving the original group. Krakoa was launched out into space by the power of Lorna Dane, and it floated there for years until the Decimation occurred. On M-Day, the Scarlet Witch's power robbed millions of mutants of their powers, but their bio-energy signatures did not just fade away -- they were banished into space and eventually consolidated as the Collective entity. Before they did, however, that energy passed over Krakoa and awakened Vulcan from his slumber. Absorbing this energy surge pushed him up to Omega Class power, thanks in part to Darwin's own living energy which still resided within him. After he eventually confronted the X-Men, Vulcan and Darwin were separated by Marvel Girl, who telepathically pulled Darwin's dormant consciousness out of his former teammate's body. Darwin's own powers then rebuilt him a physical form out of the energy state he had been reduced to. [X-Men: Deadly Genesis #1-6, January - July 2006]

Casualties: Kid Vulcan, Petra, Darwin, Sway


Magneto Triumphant!

Deep in Magneto's Antarctic base, the X-Men were fighting for their lives against their greatest foe. Ultimately, it wasn't Magneto or the X-Men that relented, but the battleground itself -- the fight had damaged the main control console, leaving the combatants helpless a mile beneath a live volcano. As lava began pouring in, Magneto made his escape and left his foes to their fate.

Beast and Phoenix were separated from their teammates moments before the thermal converters burst, lighting up the base like a roman candle. Hank and Jean nearly froze to death in an Antarctic blizzard before being rescued by a research installation's helicopter. Cyclops and the rest of the team survived as well by tunneling a shaft into the Savage Land, but each group believed the others to have perished in the volcano's core. It took the X-Men weeks to get back to the States, by way of Japan and Canada.

In that time, Beast and Phoenix had returned to Westchester and informed Xavier of their friends' demise. Cyclops' team returned to find the mansion mothballed, the equipment permanently shut down as Professor Xavier had left for the Shi'ar Galaxy with Lilandra in his grief. It wasn't until the threat of Proteus arose on Muir Island that the X-Men and their allies all learned of each others' survival. [Uncanny X-Men #113, September 1978 - Uncanny X-Men #125, September 1979]

Casualties: Phoenix and Beast believed that Cyclops, Banshee, Storm, Colossus, Wolverine and Nightcrawler were dead, and vice versa


Secret Wars

On Battleworld, the omnipotent entity known as the Beyonder had assembled heroes and villains from Earth to fight at his direction. Doctor Doom had loftier goals, however, and through some complex machinations was able to steal the Beyonder's power for himself. Although he claimed to be a changed, more benevolent man, the heroes of Earth had serious reservations about him. At Captain America's behest, they agreed to stand together against Doom, and find some way of stopping him. The moment they reached a unanimous decision, though, Doom struck them all dead with an explosive bolt out of the blue using his awesome powers. Unbeknownst to Doctor Doom, the Beyonder's consciousness had taken up residence in the mind of his unhinged ally, Klaw. Doom's only true weakness was that the power within him could conceivably rise up at his every stray thought. Taken advantage of this, the Beyonder - Klaw raised doubts in Doom's mind about whether the heroes had survived his attack. Using Klaw's powers to project an entire holographic scenario detailing how the heroes could have survived, the Beyonder influenced Doom enough so that his subconscious turned that scenario into reality, reviving the heroes from the dead. [Secret Wars #11-12, March - April 1985]

Casualties: Professor X, Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Magneto


Secret Wars II

When the Beyonder came to Earth and walked among mankind, he assumed several forms and undertook several quests in his attempts to understand desire and humanity. At one point, he became enraged and turned his frustrations on the world. The Beyonder had previously offered the New Mutants enlightenment, and in his madness he now returned to punish them for spurning his gift. The New Mutants fought bravely, but hopelessly. Cannonball and Magma were crushed to death in a crevice; Karma's mind was destroyed by the backlash from her own powers; the rest were simply reduced to ash one at a time. Eventually, the Beyonder's rage passed, and he began contemplating how to experience the last major aspect of humanity he had yet to sample -- death. To die, he would have to become mortal, and so the Beyonder crafted a machine with his power that would transform his essence into a mortal form. To test the machine, the Beyonder recovered the lingering essence of the New Mutants he killed and passed them through the machine. Thus, the New Mutants were re-birthed by the machine, back to full health and their proper ages. [New Mutants (1st series) #37, March 1986 - Secret Wars II #9, March 1986]

Casualties: Cannonball, Mirage, Karma, Wolfsbane, Magma, Magik, Cypher, Warlock


Horde

Along with Meggan and Captain Britain, the X-Men were unwilling recruited by the cosmic menace known as Horde to be his gofers, or else he would destroy their entire world. Horde wanted them to break into the Citadel of Light and Shadow, and steal the famed Crystal of Ultimate Vision. Unfortunately for the X-Men, the Citadel had the greatest of defense systems: dreams themselves. One by one, the heroes were confronted by their desires and consumed by them, leaving behind statues of ash, or just nothing at all. Only Psylocke and Wolverine were able to push past their desires and remain focused on the mission, but Betsy was killed by Horde as he followed the team into the Citadel, torn to pieces by his awesome strength. Wolverine was impaled on a spear moments before he could claim the crystal as his own. As Horde finished his kill by ripped out Wolverine's still beating heart, however, a drop of Logan's blood flew through the air and impacted the crystal. That was enough -- contact with the crystal's power allowed Wolverine to regenerate an entirely new body for himself out of that one drop of blood. With the omnipotence of the crystal behind him, Logan killed Horde by removing the fragment of the crystal that gave the villain his incredible might. Logan was almost corrupted by the limitless power at his fingertips, but in the end chose to destroy the crystal rather than succumb to the temptation. He therefore unknowingly passed the crystal's secret test -- to gain ultimate power and cast it aside -- and championed his entire race as a mature species, allowed to continue evolving to its full potential. Wolverine's selfless act restored all the X-Men, hale and hearty, back in Westchester County. [Uncanny X-Men Annual #11, 1987]

Casualties: Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, Havok, Longshot, Psylocke, Dazzler, Captain Britain, Meggan


Fall of the Mutants

When the Adversary attacked our world, the rules of chaos and order began to breakdown. The Great Trickster had gained a foothold in our reality years earlier, when an undisciplined shaman in training named Forge, the Maker, cast a spirit-spell in Vietnam with the souls of his dying unit, tearing open the fabric of existence. Mankind's only hope was for Forge to cast the spirit-spell again, and banish the Adversary from this plane of existence. But just as nine souls were sacrificed for the first spell, nine more needed to be gathered for the second one. Storm and the X-Men, along with their human ally Madelyne Pryor, volunteered to die so that the universe could live. In the Starlight Citadel, Forge cast the spirit-spell and the Adversary was defeated, the X-Men dead. After Forge's departure, however, Roma the Guardian of Otherworld retrieved the X-Men's souls and restored them to life. Storm took advantage of this to make the X-Men martyred legends to the public, while they anonymously struck out against mutantkind's enemies under the cover of their own deaths. The X-Men disbanded sometime later, and their survival was eventually revealed to the world during the events of the X-Tinction Agenda, when several members were televised on trial in Genosha. [Uncanny X-Men #227, March 1988 - Uncanny X-Men #271, December 1990]

Casualties: Storm, Wolverine, Colossus, Rogue, Havok, Longshot, Dazzler, Psylocke, Madelyne Pryor


Infinity Gauntlet

All of creation trembled when the Mad Titan known as Thanos assembled the six Infinity Gems and gained absolute control of existence. The Infinity Gauntlet gave him mastery of the Mind, the Soul, Power, Reality, Time and Space. With omnipotence at his command, Thanos followed through on his promise to his love, Lady Death, and extinguished half the living beings in the universe with a snap of his fingers. Adam Warlock and Doctor Strange assembled a strike team of the few remaining heroes from Earth and beyond to challenge Thanos. They were in vain. The casualties included:

  • Sub-Mariner - consumed by a viral growth
  • Wolverine - his adamantium skeleton reduced to spongy rubber
  • Scarlet Witch - incinerated by Thanos' optic blast
  • Cyclops - head encased in solid force, cutting off his air supply
  • Cloak - destroyed from within as he tried to contain Thanos in his Dark Dimension.

Existence ultimately had an unlikely savior to thank -- Thanos' granddaughter Nebula stole the Infinity Gauntlet from him and reversed all his acts, restoring to life everyone he had killed. [Infinity Gauntlet #1-6, July - December 1991]

X-related Casualties: Jean Grey, Archangel, Beast, Iceman, Dagger, Box, Guardian, Vindicator, Puck, Shaman, Diamond Lil, Northstar, Windshear, Sasquatch, Firestar, Quicksilver

Against Thanos: Cyclops, Wolverine, Scarlet Witch, Cloak, Sub-Mariner


X-Factor Underground

The government-sponsored X-Factor began as a public relations move, officially sanctioned mutant heroes who replaced Freedom Force in the public eye. The organization was slowly corrupted from within, however, as shadowy operatives in the US government began molding the team into a prototype group of Hounds, charged with hunting down their own kind. The team leader, Forge, tried to to deny it for months, but finally began taking steps to abandon their government superiors after X-Factor was tricked into hunting down one of their former members, Jamie Madrox. After officially turning in X-Factor resignation to the government, Forge and Mystique were forced off the road in a car accident, apparently dying in the explosive crash. The rest of the team was apparently killed as well in an explosion at their headquarters complex in Fall's Edge. Furthermore, an outbreak of bio-contaminants at Fall's Edge forced the government to contain the complex behind a powerful force field. And so, Forge and his team were officially underground, having publically faked their deaths and sealed off their headquarters against any intrusion. Their covert mission period was extremely brief, however, before one of their own members turned on the team. Sabretooth was a sleeper Hound for their enemies, who shook free his restraining collar and tore through his teammates. Val Cooper was forced to reveal the team's survival in order to get them hospital care. [X-Factor (1st series) #132-137, March - September 1997]

Alleged Casualties: Forge, Mystique, Polaris, Sabretooth, Wild Child, Shard


X-Force Counter X

With the help of their new mentor Pete Wisdom, aka "Professor W", X-Force got deeply embroiled in the shadow world of black ops and covert government experiments. Even after Wisdom's apparent death, they fell deeper and deeper into a web of spy v. spy, counter-intelligence and counter-counter-intelligence. Events reached their peak when X-Force's own ally, Major Valentina Rychenko, was revealed to be an LMD planted in their midst by their mysterious foes, outfitted with a vibranium-powered bomb to wipe them out. Jesse Bedlam's E.M. powers shielded them from the blast, but X-Force allowed their foes and the world at large to believe them dead, going deep underground in order to carry out their mission. For six months, X-Force used Wisdom's accumulated files to strike back at anti-mutant agendas, including genetic research facilities that harvested brain tissue from mutant infants. They couldn't stay underground forever, though, and were eventually targeted by Romany Wisdom, their old mentor's sister. Confronting Romany at her base of operations, X-Force was forced to battle a horde of alien symbiotes and hybrids. Domino gave a debriefing afterwards to Alistair Stuart and The Department, claiming X-Force was overwhelmed by the assault. Their only hope was for Jesse to give the bio-mechanical complex an "aneurysm", triggering a massive explosion which left a crater in the English countryside. Domino only survived because Warpath threw her clear of the blast at the last moment. Once again, X-Force was believed dead by the world, but they quickly turned up again to defend their name against the new media darlings of Spike Freeman's X-Force. [X-Force(1st series) #113-117, April - August 2001]

Alleged Casualties: Cannonball, Domino, Meltdown, Warpath, Jesse Bedlam


Matthew Malloy

Matthew Malloy was a mutant of unprecedented power levels, whose abilities were dampened by Charles Xavier. After Xavier died, however, Malloy's powers rematerialized and caused considerable deaths. Cyclops attempted to stabilize Malloy and had Magik bring him to the desert where he couldn't hurt anybody. S.H.I.E.L.D. launched an all-out strike on Malloy's position, though, killing Cyclops and Magik in the process. Even their firepower wasn't enough to kill Malloy, who teleported to the Jean Grey School. Another fight broke out as Matthew's powers erupted, killing Storm and looking as if it would consume all the mutants present. He was only stopped when Eva Bell and a younger Charles Xavier traveled back in time and prevented Matthew's parents from ever having met. The timeline reset itself and the deaths were reversed, now that Malloy was never born. [Uncanny X-Men (3rd series) #23 - 31, September 2014 - April 2015]

Casualties: Exodus, Cyclops, Magik, Storm, numerous others in the final moments before Eva Bell undid the timeline


X-Men Disassembled

During a massive battle on Quadra Island, the X-Men assembled nearly their entire historical roster to fight against X-Man and his Horsemen of Salvation. The conflict ended when X-Man used the power granted to him by the Lifeseed to transport all involved into a pocket reality for the Age of X-Man. To the outside world, it appeared as if the X-Men had all died. It would be several months before the X-Men returned from exile, revealing to the world that they survived. [Uncanny X-Men (5th series) #10 - 22, January - July 2019]

Casualties: Marvel Girl, Iceman, Archangel, Beast, Polaris, Nightcrawler, Storm, Sunfire, Colossus, Shadowcat, Magneto, Psylocke, Dazzler, Forge, Jubilee, Bishop, Maggott, Cecelia Reyes, X-Man, Sage, Thunderbird III, Northstar, Frenzy, Husk, Lady Mastermind, Surge, Hellion, Rockslide, Mercury, X-23, Anole, Pixie, Armor, No-Girl, Stepford Cuckoos, Magma, Match, Trance, Indra, Madison Jeffries, Gentle, Glob Herman, Bling!, Legion, Transonic, Oya, Genesis, Sprite II, Eye Boy, Shark Girl, Tempus, Goldballs, Firestar, M, Nature Girl, Scout, Trinary, Beak, Rictor, Meggan, Kylun

INTRODUCTION - CHARACTERS - EVENTS