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| X-Man | |
|---|---|
 Nate Grey from his first appearance in X-Man #1 |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | X-Man #1 (1995) |
| Created by | Jeph Loeb Steve Skroce |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | Nathaniel Grey |
| Species | Human Mutant |
| Team affiliations | X-Men Brotherhood of Mutants Outcasts |
| Notable aliases | 19X, Shaman of the Human Tribe |
| Abilities | |
X-Man (Nathaniel "Nate" Grey) is a fictional character, a comic book superhero in the Marvel Comics Universe and related to the X-Men franchise. Created by Jeph Loeb and Steve Skroce, he first appeared in X-Man #1 (March 1995).
Contents |
Overview
X-Man is an equivalent of the regular Marvel Universe hero Cable, hailing from the “Age of Apocalypse” reality. He is the biological son of his dimension’s Scott Summers and Jean Grey, born of genetic tampering by Mr. Sinister. His first name is derived from his creator; Mr Sinister's real name: Nathaniel Essex and his last name from his genetic mother Jean Grey. Due to not being infected by a techno-organic virus as Cable was, X-Man achieved vast telepathic and telekinetic powers and was one of the most powerful mutants in existence during his lifetime.
X-Man was originally a four-issue mini-series replacing Cable during 1995’s “Age of Apocalypse” alternate reality storyline. However, Marvel transported Nate Grey to its regular shared universe after the storyline ended. Although derided by some for a concept perplexing to anyone not a diehard X-Men fan, the series ran until 2001, during which Nate struggled with being the most powerful person in a strange world. The series ended with his seemingly sacrificial death.
Despite his name, X-Man was only briefly a member of the X-Men, both in the Age of Apocalypse reality and in the regular reality. Initially the character was referred to only by his real name, both in the Age of Apocalypse and the primary Marvel universe. Shortly before the Onslaught crossover event, Nate began to be sporadically referred to as X-Man, without explanation for the in-universe origin of the code name.
Fictional character biography
Age of Apocalypse
In the parallel reality known as "The Age of Apocalypse", Mr. Sinister, an underling of the High Lord Apocalypse, artificially created Nate, at the time Nathan Christopher, from genetic material from Cyclops and Phoenix. Sinister created Nate as the ultimate mutant and hoped to use him in his own bid for power against Apocalypse.
However, Cyclops, in his many subversive raids on Sinister's pens, helped Nate escape Sinister's hideout, neither knowing their connection to the other. Somehow, Nate wound up under the tutelage of Forge and several other mutant outcasts. Forge began the long process of teaching Nate how to control his powers as well as the benefits of being a "good guy". Nate also began to see the horrors of Apocalypse's world firsthand, and was determined to bring him down.
This alternate Forge was killed by a disguised Sinister who was following Nate's progress, and Nate then battled him, learning of his true nature and mortally wounding Sinister. Nate then left to battle Apocalypse, although that particular slugfest occurred during a time when the alternate X-Men were beginning their final gambit—defeating this reality with the M'Kraan crystal. Holocaust interrupted Nate's battle with Apocalypse as the X-Men’s plan succeeded and the Age of Apocalypse was washed away. In response, an angry Nate impaled Holocaust with a shard of the M'Kraan crystal. The consequences of that act were unexpected and far-reaching, as Nate and Holocaust were both transported to the actual reality when it reasserted itself.
A New World
Nate arrived in Switzerland, and in his confusion, unconsciously resurrected Madelyne Pryor in his subconscious attempt to reach out to his "mother". Pryor helped Nate adjust to this reality, but they were both separated soon after. Nate wandered the earth, being contacted and confronted by many who would want to be his ally -- Professor X, Moira MacTaggart, Mr. Sinister, and others. Instead, Nate was beginning to find himself (with the help of Sinister's old underling, Threnody) and took refuge in New York. He believed Threnody to be dead, and also took up a firm friendship with Spider-Man.
When Zero Tolerance troops attacked Xavier’s mansion in Westchester and downloaded Cerebro’s files, Nate was telepathically alerted by Cable that he was the only one close enough to rescue the children of Jean’s sister, Sara Grey, from the Prime Sentinels. Nate did as requested and left Joey and Gailyn in the care of their grandparents, as the Sentinels were curious about the unidentified telepath and still searching for him.
During the next few weeks, Nate kept a low profile. One night, he went clubbing with the three girls and many people recognized him from his performances in Central Park. Nate was asked to sing with the band and, surprisingly, he did quite well, though he never had been on stage before. However, the show was interrupted by the arrival of Jackknife, who was hunting down and killing every single person that Nate had contact with. Jackknife was actually Jack Cole, one of the many misfits belonging to the Abomination’s group. Turned out that, during Nate’s battle with the Abomination, he accidentally unlocked Cole’s latent psychic powers. Jack couldn’t handle himself and became psychotic, blaming Nate for the voices in his head. In direct battle, Nate defeated the mentally imbalanced misfit when the police arrived. They asked him to surrender, but the crowd who witnessed the battle intervened, claiming that Nate was a hero. The next day, Jam lost an arm in a motorcycle crash. When Nate, Bux and Marita visited her in the hospital, something strange happened. After touching Nate, one of the medics in the hospital developed the ability to heal and Jam's arm was restored. The miracle boosted Nate’s popularity even more and Nate was now admired by hundreds of followers like some kind of messiah.
Still not knowing what happened to Threnody, Nate would have been surprised by the events in New York over the past months. Shortly after her body had been brought to the morgue, the corpse rose and Threnody walked out. In her wake, several dead reanimated themselves too, following Threnody and chanting her name. She made her way to the loft that she and Nate had lived in and kept track of Nate’s activities through the news. Over time, her appearance slightly changed as her belly grew from pregnancy.
Nate visited his ”parents," Scott and Jean, who were at the time recuperating in Alaska. The strength of the newly forged bonds between Nate and his “parents” was shown when, soon after, as the X-Men had been disbanded, Nate (alongside Archangel, Wolverine and Cable) was one of the few people Jean and Scott called for help, as they needed to defend the new race “the Mannites” from the mysterious “Death”.
Shaman to the Mutant Tribe
Madelyne Pryor returned soon afterwards, but she was manipulating Nate in his sleep and making him destroy things. She finally revealed that she was a Madelyne from another dimension and she needed him to do something for her. This Maddie showed Nate how to shift between parallel earths or alternate realities, and she had Nate take them to the alternate reality that she was from. She wanted to use Nate's vast power to help her rule her Earth. Nate rejected her, and was located by that alternative reality's version of himself, who was a broken version of Nate Grey (meaning he could never reach his full potential in power) and was slightly insane from his experiences; he also considered himself a shaman to the people of that Earth. Nate read the mind of his alternate self to learn the intricacies of alternate realities. Nate also learned how Madelyne would take each Nate Grey from these alternate realities hoping to find "fully functional" ones to use as weapons to rule. He also showed Nate how to talk with a dead man so that they could get information from him about Madelyne; the dead man was that reality's Forge, who was at one time Madelyne's lover. Forge revealed that Madelyne was really an evil Jean Grey from another parallel Earth and was an impostor posing as Madelyne who at one time ruled that world. That reality's real Madelyne had died, but it was said she would return again. Forge also told them how this alternate Jean Grey had used him to make her a machine so she could travel from parallel world to parallel world. At this point, they were attacked by Madelyne's personal bodyguard, Mr. Scratch and in the process, merged parts of themselves to throw him off. Mr. Scratch's mutant power was that no other mutant power had any effect on him, so the Nates had to literally change characteristics to fool him.
After the merger, only one Nate remained, so Mr. Scratch crippled him and brought him back to Madelyne, who quickly realized that Mr. Scratch had the wrong Nate. The broken version of Nate told Madelyne he sent Nate somewhere she would never find him. She killed the broken Nate and began to power her parallel world device to find Nate again, but Nate returned and put an end to her world conquering days. As a result of the merger of the two Nates, a black x-shaped tattoo appeared on Nate's chest to act as a genetic brand - passed on to him from the alternate version of himself - that prevented his powers from killing him as they had threatened to do from the start.
After the defeat of this evil "Queen Jean", Nate set out to make a difference in the world and considered himself a Mutant Shaman, a teaching he embraced from the alternate version of himself. Nate became immensely powerful, and had few qualms about using his power to mete out justice to his fellow mutants. He then dealt with and stopped the madman Qabiri from destroying all alternate earths on the Spiral of Earths. Qabiri was a being from an alternate Earth far upspiral, he wanted to destroy every earth below his on the Spiral of Earths because he feared that someone from these lower earths would one day invade his earth and bring it to ruin. Qabiri succeeded in destroying several alternate earths before Nate was able to stop him.
Finally, he confronted the Anti-Man, an alien sent to Earth to insinuate his genetic code into all living cells on the planet so that his people could harvest the resulting energy. To save the world from destruction, Nate merged himself with the Anti-Man, in essence "poisoning" the cells of Earth with his presence, and dissipating both of them across the globe.
Dark Beast commented that the peculiar circumstances of X-Man's demise would theoretically allow him to be restored to life.
Return
Nathan resurfaces once more, in a small town, where his presence causes several of the inhabitants to dreamwalk and continuously repeat "I'm an X-Man." Norman Osborn sends his team of X-Men, consisting of Mimic, Weapon Omega, Dark Beast and Mystique, to investigate and to raise public opinion.
As Norman's X-Men investigate both Mimic and Omega are overwhelmed with Nathan's energies and go on a rampage leaving Mystique and Dark Beast alone with a patient that they were examining. Shortly Nathan once more takes physical form, much to Beast's shock and horror, believing Mystique to be his mother Jean Grey, since she had taken her form.[1]
Powers and abilities
The character has the ability to tap into the enormous psychic resources of the astral plane in order to manipulate matter and energy. This grants him incredible psychic powers including telepathy and telekinesis. He can use his telepathy to read minds and even read residual thought imprints left on objects touched by people (psychometry), communicate with others by broadcasting his thoughts, control minds, create illusions by altering the perceptions of others, fire psionic blasts that can scramble an opponent's thought processes (causing the victim either intense pain, or rendering them unconscious), project his mind into the astral plane and even pull the astral projections of other telepaths into the physical world, and sense dimensional rifts or anomalies.
His telekinesis is so powerful he can move massive objects with his mind, fire blasts of psychokinetic energy that can shatter steel, create mental barriers that can stop most attacks, and levitate himself to fly at supersonic speeds. His control over his TK is so acute he can create holograms by mentally manipulating water molecules and dust to refract light, bend security lasers around himself to avoid detection, and even move the atoms of a wall around his own so that he passes through the wall like a ghost. He can even use his telekinesis to bend the Earth's magnetic field and create electromagnetic pulses.
An alternate version of Jean Grey, "Queen Jean" described Nate Grey as the ultimate telekinetic with the statement: "It is what all Nate Greys have been on every earth".[2]
Upon examination by Moira Mactaggert, she suggested his psionic powers rivalled that of a Phoenix Force-imbued Jean Grey.[3] In another instance, he was measured as having a psionic energy output matching that of the Dark Phoenix[4]
Relationship to Cable
Nate Grey (X-Man) and Nathan Christopher Summers (Cable) are genetically identical "twins" (more accurately, half-brothers, as Madeline Pryor, a clone, is genetically Jean Grey's identical twin): both are descended from the genetic material of Scott Summers and Jean Grey. Nate was grown in a laboratory in an alternate dimension by Mr. Sinister from the genes of Scott and Jean, while Cable was born to Scott and Madelyne Pryor (a clone of Jean also created by Mr. Sinister), infected with a techno-organic virus, and raised in the future.
As a result, their genetic and psychic profiles are identical - including their mutant powers, which can cause a painful feedback to both parties when they interact, although Nate is much younger (having done no time travel) and much more powerful (because of Cable's exposure to the virus).
Moreover, Nate and Cable hail from completely different backgrounds. The juxtaposition of the two characters allowed writers to address issues of identity and nature versus nurture and explore the complex nature of family relationships in the X-Men world. When Cable was de-aged in Cable and Deadpool, he greatly resembled Nate Grey.
In other media
Wolverine and the X-Men
In the animated series' 23rd episode Shades of Grey, Mr. Sinister extracts DNA from Jean and Cyclops, similar to in the comics when Sinister did the same thing to create X-Man.[5]
Video games
X-Man is a hidden character in the PSP version of X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse.
Trading card games
X-Man appears as a character in both the VS System and OverPower trading card games.
References
External links
- The X-Man Homepage
- Uncannyxmen.net Spotlight on... X-Man
- X-Man on the Marvel Universe Character Bio Wiki
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