Master Mold
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Master Mold is a fictional character, a robot supervillain in the Marvel Universe. Since his primary purpose was to act as a portable Sentinel-creating factory, and the Sentinel robots were primarily used to hunt mutants, Master Mold has almost exclusively appeared in the X-Men and related, mutant-themed, comic books.
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[edit] Fictional character biography
Master Mold was created by Dr. Bolivar Trask during the original run of X-Men comics. In the 1960s, out of fear of a race of superhuman mutants that could dominate the whole world and enslave normal human beings, Trask makes Master Mold, a super-computer, in the shape of a giant Sentinel robot, that will control and facilitate the construction of the Sentinels (mechanical warriors that are programmed to hunt and capture all superhuman mutants). Unbeknownst to all, the original Master Mold is also programmed by the time travelling Tanya Trask (aka Madame Sanctity), part of the Askani Sisterhood, with the mission to find and destroy The Twelve: a group of mutants that are linked to the rise of Apocalypse, which the ruthless Sanctity considered an event that must be stopped at all costs. For unknown reasons, some of the mutants that are catalogued as the Twelve are not part of the group.
Dr. Bolivar Trask also equips Master Mold with powerful weaponry and the ability to speak; Master Mold is also mobile so that it can defend itself from mutant attackers or so that it can be relocated easily if Trask has to find a new headquarters. The original Master Mold is eventually destroyed, but several others are later built by other people who want to manufacture Sentinels. In the late 1980s, the remains of Master Mold merges with the advanced Sentinel from the future, Nimrod, thanks to the Siege Perilous to form the being called Bastion, which acts like an almost-human Master Mold during the late 1990s and early 2000s.
Another Master Mold is built in secret in the jungles of Ecuador. This particular Master Mold builds a new breed of Sentinels, known as Wild Sentinels, which are capable of assmilating non-organic materials to assume different shapes, most of them insectoid, as well as a breed of Nano-Sentinels. This Master Mold is taken over by Cassandra Nova, who uses the Wild Sentinels to destroy Genosha and in her subsequent plan to destroy the X-Men.
[edit] Alternate Versions
In Weapon X: Days of Future Now, one of Madison Jeffries's Boxbots dubbed Bot becomes the new Master Mold and traps Jeffries' within its body in order to use his powers to build new Sentinels without exhausting Jeffries.
[edit] Appearances in other media
[edit] X-Men animated series
Master Mold also serves an important role during the first season of the mid-1990s X-Men animated series. In one episode, the X-Men Gambit, Storm, and Jubilee are kidnapped by Sentinels, sent by Trask and Henry Gyrich, while vacationing on the fictional island of Genosha. There, the three X-Men, along with several other mutants, are enslaved by Trask and Gyrich who are harnessing the mutants' powers to create a massive dam in Genosha whose water power will be used to run Trask's newly-created Master Mold.
The X-Men eventually escape Genosha and destroy most of the Sentinels by Storm's flooding the dam. Later on in the season, they learn that Trask has lost control of Master Mold, who is now stationed in Washington, D.C. Master Mold has Senator Kelly, and dozens of other important world leaders, kidnapped and demands that Trask replace their brains with computers that can be controlled by Master Mold. Master Mold rationalizes that his created purpose to protect ordinary humans from mutants is irrational, since mutants themselves are humans, so he tells Trask that he and his Sentinels are the only things that could protect humanity from itself. The X-Men help rescue Trask and Kelly from Master Mold, and at the end of the season's last episode, Professor Xavier, with the help of Magneto, flies the X-Men's jet full of explosives into Master Mold's torso.
Master Mold and all Sentinels are believed to be destroyed at this point, but they resurface in season four. It is revealed that several Sentinels, and Master Mold's head and intelligence, had survived Xavier's attack. Master Mold was commissioning Sentinels to steal top-secret, indestructible lightweight plastics in order to create a new body for himself. He also had Sentinels kidnap his creators, Trask and Gyrich, whom he felt had betrayed him, as well as Xavier, whom he blamed from having destroyed his body. The X-Men eventually freed them and Morph destroyed Master Mold's head once and for all.
[edit] Computer and video games
Although Sentinels appear in many computer and video games, Master Mold appears in only a few ones:
- He appears in the background of the Sentinel processing plant combat area of the video game X-Men: Children of the Atom, although he does not interact with any of the combatants, but talks with this featured Sentinel in the ending of this.
- In 2004's X-Men: Legends, Master Mold, actually a giant Sentinel piloted by anti-mutant extremist General Kincaid, is the final boss of the game.
- Master Mold appears as the final boss for Cyclops' stage in the 1992 game Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge, but his name was mistakenly put as Master Blast in the back of the box of the cartridges and the advertiments.
- Master Mold is the boss of Stage 4 in Konami's X-Men arcade game, which was largely based on Pryde of the X-Men series, having caught Kitty Pryde in a cage of vibranium and laser bars; he returns later in stage 7 as the fourth of five sub-bosses, after White Queen and before Juggernaut, inside of Avalon, Magneto's base in Asteroid M.
- In X-Men: The Official Game, Master Mold serves as the chief antagonist. In this continuity, Master Mold was a project developed by William Stryker in the bowels of Alkali Lake. On a trip back, The Master Mold is re-activated by Jason Stryker, who survived the events of X2, and set out to finish his father's work. The game thus details the X-Men's exploits of tracking it and destroying it, with the final portion of the game largely taking place inside the Master Mold. This version of the Master Mold is truly gargantuan, towering above Hong Kong's skyscrapers and containing internal chambers and tunnels that appear to stretch on for miles. This Master Mold is destroyed when Iceman destroyed its core, blowing it up and shutting down every Sentinel that was sent to destroy mutants.
