Onslaught (comics)

Onslaught is a fictional character that appears in comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character first appeared in X-Man #15 (May, 1996), and was created by writers Scott Lobdell and Mark Waid, and artist Andy Kubert.

Publication history

At the conclusion of the "Fatal Attractions" storyline in X-Men #25, Magneto rips the adamantium from Wolverine's skeleton, causing a furious Professor X to telepathically shut down Magneto's mind, absorbing Magneto's dark ego; the negative emotions, merged with Xavier's suppressed urges, form a powerful, dormant psionic entity - the self-dubbed Onslaught.

The character of Onslaught is first alluded when a shadowy figure with Onslaught's distinctive word-balloon coloring and design is seen speaking with a frightened Mystique in X-Men: Prime #1. Onslaught is first mentioned in Uncanny X-Men #322, when the Juggernaut crashlands in Hoboken, New Jersey, having been hit hard enough by Onslaught to send him across the country. Onslaught makes his first full appearance in X-Men #53, where the character communicates with Jean Grey on the astral plane. In X-Men #54, Onslaught imprisons Juggernaut within the Crimson Gem of Cyttorak and defeats the X-Men in Onslaught: X-Men. Onslaught intends to destroy all mutants and humans, and kidnaps Franklin Richards in Fantastic Four #414 (July) and Nate Grey in X-Man #19 (September), using their psionic powers to greatly increase his own, and changes his physical form. Onslaught fights the Avengers, Fantastic Four, the Hulk, and the X-Men. The Hulk is able to destroy Onslaught's psi-armor. However, Onslaught is now a being of pure psionic energy. Many of the non-mutant heroes -- along with the mutant Scarlet Witch, Bruce Banner (physically separated from his Hulk persona), and Latverian monarch Victor von Doom -- sacrifice their lives to disrupt Onslaught's form from within, and weakening it, allowing the X-Men to destroy Onslaught. In the aftermath of the battle, all the combatants are presumed dead except Franklin Richards, Nate Grey, Quicksilver, the Banner-less Hulk, the Magneto clone known as Joseph, and the X-Men. ^[1]

Thanks to the limitless powers of Franklin Richards, the heroes and von Doom do not die; instead, they are reborn in a pocket dimension (Heroes Reborn). In this pocket dimension, during a chaotic event involving the impending detonation of the gamma power core of the Avengers headquarters, Onslaught himself briefly appeared as a non-corporeal being. Meanwhile on Earth, two teams are formed to fill the void created by the heroes' apparent deaths: the Thunderbolts and a new, expanded version of Heroes For Hire.

With the departure of Rob Liefeld and Jeph Loeb from the Avengers title, the storylines were never adequately wrapped up; however, in late 2006, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Onslaught event, a five-issue miniseries, Onslaught Reborn, by Loeb and Liefeld, saw the villain return and explored these dangling plot threads. Set after Decimation but before Civil War, it sees the mutant energy from the depowered mutants reforming Onslaught.^[2] The series, Onslaught Reborn, ends with the villain floating in the Negative Zone. ^[3]

In other media

Onslaught appears in the video game Marvel vs. Capcom as the final boss. There have been two Onslaught figures released throughout the years; a helmeted version was released in the late 1990s, featuring snap-on armor to represent either form, and in 2006, Onslaught's second, monstrous form was used as the Build-A-Figure for Marvel Legends Series 13.

Notes

External links

• The official Marvel Universe article on Onslaught