We try to keep things positive here but with the announcement of X-Men: Worst X-Man Ever we couldn’t resist to look back at some of the maybe not to popular mutants who made the team…even for a brief membership.
The new X-book by Max Bemis and Michael Walsh will star a new mutant. We don’t know his powers or back story or why he deserves this ominous title but it does make one think: Who are the worst X-Men?
Let’s face it, after decades and dozens of characters, it’s hard for writers and artists to create a new mutant that will take off. We’ve often said, for every Gambit and Rogue….there’s a Maggott and Marrow.
Yet there’s a fan who may love these odd (even for mutants) heroes and want them back.
For your consideration, here are candidates for Worst X-Man ever:
Lifeguard. Her mutation was instinctive adaptive powers aka whatever power needed she gets based on the threat. Heather Cameron was an Australian lifeguard who turned out to be half-Shi’ar and developed golden skin, wings and claws. Heather’s surfer brother, Davis, became known as Slipstream for his ability to create a “warp wave” to warp reality and teleport using a metal surfboard. The brother and sister act were brief members of X-Treme X-Men.
Marrow Her mutation was the ability to pull protruding bones from her body to use as weapons. The bones would keep growing back due to her healing factor. The second generation Morlock had a huge hate chip on her shoulder, hating her appearance and the world. Sarah was de-powered but turned up in the most recent version of X-Force before Secret Wars.
Maggott His mutation was his digestive tract? His intestines were slugs who could crawl out of his body and devour anything. Maggott called them”Eany” and “Meany” and started out as this big burly blue-skinned badass but quickly evolved into a pacifist coping with a bizarre mutation. The South African mutant had a very brief stint in the X-Men and later ended up as a victim in a mutant concentration camp but one of his slugs survived.
Joseph. No code-name. Just Joseph appeared to be a younger, amnesiac Magneto with all his powers. Joseph added a strange new angle to the love triangle of Rogue, Gambit and Magneto. Turns out Joseph was a clone of the Master of Magnetism and centerpiece of revenge plot by a villain named Astra. The clone sacrificed himself to correct the Earth’s magnetic poles.
Husk. Her mutation is the the metamorphic ability to change her body’s composition by shedding her skin. Paige Guthrie is Cannonball’s sister and founding member of Generation X who later had an affair with Archangel some called controversial due to the age difference. Paige became an instructor at the Jean Grey School, had a sympathetic relationship with Toad who loved her, left for the new Hellfire Academy due to a secondary mutation affecting her sanity (like shredding but of the mind) but came back in the fold.
In a class all his own…
X-Treme. His mutation was the ability to set fire to other’s people’s blood and his own blood was acid. The backwards hat wearing, multiple rat tail sporting mutant turned out to be half-alien. Adam X was the son of D’Ken, mad former Emperor of the Shi’ar Empire but an abandoned story idea was to make him the third Summers brother.
Except for the 90’s character above, we kept this hall of infamy strictly to mutants who actually who actually were on an X-Men team and left out Generation X, Excalibur, X-Factor and New Mutants.
Who is the worst X-Man to you?
Check out more X-Men stories here.
By Editor