| Sugar Man | |
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Sugar Man battles the New Mutants, From New Mutants vol.3 #27 (September 2011). Art by Marko Djurdjevic |
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| Publication information | |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | Generation Next #2 (1995) |
| Created by | Scott Lobdell Chris Bachalo |
| In-story information | |
| Alter ego | unrevealed |
| Species | Human Mutant |
| Team affiliations | Genegineer Seattle Core (Age of Apocalypse) |
| Abilities |
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Sugar Man is a fictional character, a mutant villain appearing in the Marvel Comics universe. Created by writer Scott Lobdell and artist Chris Bachalo, he first appeared in Generation Next #2 (1995).
Sugar Man initially appeared during the Age of Apocalypse, an event which caused the history of the Marvel Universe to diverge from its usual path. Although many Age of Apocalypse characters were alternate versions of existing heroes and villains, Sugar Man does not appear to have an Earth-616 counterpart.
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Sugar Man is originally from an alternate timeline in which Apocalypse conquered North America and mutants ruled. At one point Sugar Man was a student of Mr Sinister, learning from him all about genetics and science. He soon became a capable geneticist having a lab located at Niagara Falls and regularly tormented his slaves.[1]
He was later sent to run the human work camps in the Pacific Northwest - specifically known as the Core - housing thousands of humans. Magneto needed a mutant with chrono-variant powers—time travel—in order to go back in time and restore reality to its proper order before the death of Charles Xavier, whose existence was revealed by the displaced mutant Bishop. Apocalypse had ruthlessly killed all mutants with that power to prevent anyone from undermining his regime, but Know-It-All found one with latent powers: Illyana Rasputin, the sister of Generation Next's leader Colossus.
Magneto sent the fledgling group to the Core to rescue her. Sugar Man eventually encountered the group and killed several of the members himself, including Vincente and Mondo. Illyana's successful rescue costs all of the young members their lives (except for Husk which was not revealed until the revisit to the AOA reality called X-Men: Age of Apocalypse). Sugar Man was seemingly destroyed; however he had lost most of his mass during the attack and had shrunk to a minuscule size. Hidden in Colossus' boot, he accompanied Illyana, Colossus, Shadowcat, and the X-Men in their assault on Apocalypse's citadel.
In the 2000 Blink limited series, it is revealed via flashback that Sugar Man was at one point the jailer in charge of cellmates Illyana Rasputin and Blink (before she was rescued as a young girl by Weapon-X and Sabretooth) in a prison facility, and that he sexually abused both of them on a nightly basis. This is also shown that in the Generation Next series, where Sugar Man continued to regularly victimize the young girls who were part of the inmate population at Apocalypse's slave pits.
During the assault, Sugar Man took advantage of the chaos to escape, jumping into the M'Kraan Crystal—the "Nexus of all realities"—and vanished. He appeared in the Earth-616 timeline, arriving in an unspecified location some twenty years in the past. Sugar Man then traveled to Genosha, where he contacted the Genegineer and gave him the formula for the mutate bonding process which forcibly enslaved hundreds of mutants to the human Magistrates. When the first Genosha government, led by the Genegineer and Cameron Hodge fell, he quickly worked behind the scenes affecting the seemingly more peaceful new government run by Sasha Ryan.
Eventually this government fell into a brutal civil war. When the mutant team Excalibur was investigating the first Mutate slave of Genosha, they almost learned the secret of the Sugar Man, however Sugar Man activated a device that killed the Mutate before his involvement in Genosha's history could be revealed.[2] When Excalibur continues to keep searching for the secret history of Genosha, Sugar Man prevented them from finding it by destroying a master computer that held the truth.[3]
Detecting that X-Man, another refugee from Earth-295 was active in this reality Sugar-Man send his agent Rex to eliminate him in order to maintain his anonymity.[4] However, Sugar Man's first attempt to assassinate Nate would be interrupted by Selene, much to his frustration.[5] Sugar Man would next seek to capture this reality's Alex Summers, using Scarlet McKenzie as his operative. However, she would fail to do so and he eventually gave up on this endeavor after learning that another refugee from "The Age of Apocalypse", in the form of Beast, now calling himself "Dark beast", was also seeking to capture him.[6]
When Nate Grey's Earth-616 counterpart Cable traveled to Genosha, getting involved in the conflict, Sugar Man incorrectly believe him to be Nate and decides to finally reveal himself to the world after 20 years of secrecy.[7] However when tracking Cable down, Sugar Man realizes he made a mistake believing that "someone" was manipulating the events to uncover his secret rule of Genosha when Cable discovers his lab.[8] Sugar Man was forced to activate the self destruct mechanism in his lab. As Cable, Domino, Jenny Ransome, Phillip Moreau and the brainwashed ex-Magistrate Pipeline were busy with trying to deactivate the bomb, Sugar Man eventually captured Phillip Moreau for his own purposes. Sugar Man's plans for Phillip remain unrevealed, and with the database destroyed, Sugar Man existence was kept secret. The clues themself where revealed to have been passed to Phillip by none other than Mister Sinister, who had long suspected that the Genosha mutate process was based on his own genetic handiwork.[9]
Having a near brush with this realities Mr. Sinister in Genosha, Sugar-Man began working together with the Dark Beast in continuing to keep their existence secret, as Sinister learning of their presence in this reality using his techniques would work against theirselfs interests. They would target Bishop, who retained memories from the Age of Apocalypse.[10] After the failed attempt to slay Bishop, by using the Dark Beast's operative Fatale, the two refugees would part company.[11]
Returning to Genosha, Sugar Man attempted to return to Earth-295. Utilizing a hyper dimensional device that would allow him to travel back to Earth-295's past. When he succeeded, he quickly began resuming his experimentation on a super-virus that he hoped to use to bring back to Earth-616 to wipe out humanity. Unfortunately, Nate Grey would follow him into the past and with the help of Magneto and Forge would thwart Sugar Man's plot and send him back to Earth-616.[12]
Back in that reality, Sugar Man and the other refugees from Earth-295 soon became targeted by the Shi'ar empire who saw the fact that Holocaust having a shard of the M'Kraan Crystal embedded in him as sacrilege. However as the shard was removed from Holocaust, all refugees where sent back to Earth.[13]
Afterwards Genosha was soon destroyed by the wild Sentinel attack on the island that was orchestrated by Cassandra Nova and the whereabouts of Sugar Man was unknown until he reappeared once again in Genosha, killing a band of Magistrates who were exploring the island with the Dark Beast. Callisto and Karima Shapandar confronted Sugar Man and apparently killed him with a pipe through the head.
He however recovered from Calisto's attack and was one of the villains contacted by Beast for information to reverse the effects of M-Day. Sugar Man declined to help, telling that Beast could not afford the cost of his services.[14]
After the events of Dark Reign, Sugar Man left his hideout to find the device known as the "Omega Machine". He found the device in an abandoned H.A.M.M.E.R. facility with, to his delight, a still Nate Grey hooked up to it.[15] He remade the device to open portals to other realities, and also began creating technologically-derived mutates as part of his experiments to use while he tried to reach the Age of Apocalypse.[16] Realizing that the only way Sugar Man would leave him alone was to give him what he wanted, Nate used all of his strength and willpower to open a portal to his home reality; but before Sugar Man could escape into it, he was forced to return to the main reality by Moonstar and taken into custody by Captain Steve Rogers.[17]
Sugar Man is a mutant who possesses four arms, hands with razor-sharp claws, a giant mouth full of razor-sharp teeth, and a dense razor-sharp tongue of indeterminate length that is enfused with a type of bio-energy able to pierce and damage stone, steel, and even beings in gaseous or liquid form.
He has an enhanced sense of smell and can use it to detect fear.
He can also control his own body size and mass. If he loses mass, the lost mass is shunted off to Hammerspace.
Sugar Man is an expert, at least by modern standards, in sciences including biology and genetics.
The Earth-616 counterpart of Sugar Man as yet to make an appearance.
Dazzler, in the dimension ruled by Mojo has encountered child-like versions of the Age of Apocalypse villains, including Sugar Man. These entities were seemingly created by Mojo himself, who then lost control of them.