Alternative versions of Professor X

Alternate versions of Professor X
Publisher Marvel Comics
First appearance X-Men #1 (September 1963)
Created by Stan Lee
Jack Kirby
See also Professor X in other media

In addition to his mainstream incarnation, Professor X has had been depicted in other fictional universes.

1602

Professor X is Carlos Javier in the miniseries Marvel 1602 (set in the alternative reality known as Earth-311), set at the end of the Elizabethan Era in an alternative universe. In this reality Carlos Javier set up a school for the Witchbreed in order to train them and prepare them to survive in a world that distrusted and hated them. He hid them away and would only send them out on mercy missions to retrieve other witchbreed who were in danger. When the young man named Werner -born with angel’s wings-was to be burnt at the stake by the Inquisition, Javier sent his team leader, Scotius Summerisle, and Roberto Trefusis to rescue the boy. They did, and brought him back to Javier’s school.

Nicholas Fury, the Queen of England’s spymaster, came to visit Javier at his school and warn him of the danger posed by Elizabeth’s death and the eventual rise to power of King James of Scotland; who had no love for witchbreed. Javier acknowledged the threat, but did nothing about it, though he showed Fury his team of super-powered youths. Fury also asked a favor, and requested that Javier use his powers to read the thoughts of a captured assassin. All Javier could tell him what that he was one of three; another was to kill a girl from the colonies, and the third, the queen. Fury later sent his protégé, Peter Parquagh, to Javier’s school, to warn him that Fury would be coming for him in the name of King James soon, and that Javier should go quietly, rather than risk a war that would have serious consequences. Javier agreed, and when Fury arrived with an army of men, he and his students went without a fight.

While captive, Javier joined a discussion with Fury and Doctor Strange-the physician and magician of Queen Elizabeth. Strange told them that the world was coming to an end and the only way to save it would be to launch an attack on the castle of Otto von Doom, and steal away the treasure of the Templars and the survivors from the Four of the Fantastick. Fury disbelieved him, thinking his friend Sir Richard Reed dead, but Javier read Strange’s mind, revealing that Strange thought he was telling the truth; and so it was decided. They traveled upon a ship that Javier’s student Jean Grey lifted into the air with her mind, while Javier bolstered her powers with his own, and they flew to Latveria. Javier and Jean remained in meditation the whole way; keeping the ship afloat, for if they set down they would not get airborne again.

As the battle commenced, Javier led his men. He sent Angel and Scotius down to silence the cannons, while he ordered Roberto to deflect cannonballs, which he himself would try to steer off course via the cannoneer’s minds. His beast-like student Henry he asked to protect the ship from the flying minions of Doom that soon boarded the ship from the air. When the Captain of the Fantastick raged against his stone prison beneath Castle Doomstadt, it freed the members of the Captain’s crew, along with Donal (Thor) and Matthew Murdoch. Donal quickly used the staff that was his greatest treasure, and turned himself into the Thunder God, Thor. When Thor created a massive storm to use against Doom, Roberto used the sudden moisture in the air to freeze the cannons and save their ship. Doom also used Thor’s storm to electrify the golden globe he held-a distraction given to him by Donal-but it exploded in his face; scarring him and bringing him to the brink of death. Victorious, Thor and the members of the Fantastick joined Javier’s crew, and with Thor’s help they got the boat to sea, as Jean Grey had collapsed.

The band of heroes set sail for the New World to fix the tear in time that had created the weather anomalies circling the globe, as well as endangering the universe itself. On the way, Jean Grey’s body finally gave up under the strain of the use of her powers, and as per her final wish, she was flown into the air and vaporized by Scotius’ eye blasts, falling to the sea as ash; but not before Angel saw an image of an immense, flaming bird in the air. Almost to the Roanoke Colony, Javier sensed a trio of ships making their way to the New World; the first, Virginia Dare returning to the colonies with her time-traveling friend; the second, containing James’ men, set to kill Fury; and the third, the witchbreed Enrique with his two children. Enrique was an old friend of Javier’s, later set against him. Javier’s group intercepted Enrique’s boat first, and Roberto encased it in ice to imprison them, while Javier demanded to know what they were doing. Enrique explained that the winds had taken them to the New World, but Javier did not trust him.

Javier soon participated in another group discussion; this led by the severed head of Doctor Strange, brought from England by his wife, Clea. Strange told them through his head that the faux-Indian Rojhaz was actually a visitor from the future, Captain America, whose arrival had jeopardized the universe itself. In order to fix it, the heroes would have to return him to the rift. They soon found the rift, and Javier had no choice but to make a deal with his old friend, Enrique, who was the only one with the power to open the rift to put the man back. Enrique agreed without hearing the proposal, but demanded that his own terms be meet when his job was done. As Javier had no other choice, he agreed. Together with Enrique, Thor, and Fury, they opened the rift enough for Fury to drag Captain America through, and it closed, healing the universe permanently. Though instead of reverting things back to the way they should have been, it separated the universe from the original, creating a pocket universe where the out-of-time heroes continued to exist.

Before parting, Enrique explained his terms: that he would head north, and no one would follow him or investigate him; and that Javier would teach his children, Wanda and Petros, but not reveal to them that he was their father, though he would return one day to fetch them. Javier agreed, and parted with his old friend.

Age of Apocalypse

In the Age of Apocalypse, Charles Xavier was killed when he sacrificed himself to save Erik Lensherr from his own future son, David Heller, who had gone back in time to eliminate Magneto in the belief that his father would thus be there for him and succeed in his dream without Magneto to 'hinder' his efforts. As a result, Magneto founded the X-Men and sought human/mutant co-existence in Xavier's name- even naming his new son with Rogue 'Charles' after his friend- but Heller's rampage also prompted Apocalypse to awaken decades before the world was ready for him, resulting in Apocalypse conquering North America and most of the world, eventually forcing Magneto's X-Men to attempt a daring mission to gain the power necessary to go back in time and save Xavier from Heller as they recognised how vital Xavier was to the future.

Amalgam Comics

In the Amalgam Comics community, Charles Xavier was combined with DC's Dr. Fate and Marvel's Dr. Strange to create Dr. Strangefate. He was the only character aware of the nature of the Amalgam Comics community.

He was also combined with Martian Manhunter to create Mr. X, leader of the JLX.

Deadpool Corps

In the second issue of Prelude to Deadpool Corps, Deadpool visits a universe where Prof. X runs an orphanage for troubled kids that includes Kidpool (kid version of Deadpool), Cyclops, Wolverine, Angel, and Colossus, with Storm being the headmistress and Beast as a teacher. In this universe, the professor has a fondness for Emma Frost who runs an orphanage for girls that includes Jean Grey and Rogue. He tries to get her attention by wearing wigs, throwing a dance for both orphanages, and trying to alter her memory.

Exiles

House of M

When the Scarlet Witch altered reality so Magneto ruled over the Earth and mutants were the dominant species, Professor X is initially depicted as missing; Wolverine attempts to locate him but his search turns up fruitless. Later on Genosha, Magneto is seen staring at a grave for the Professor, with the epitaph "He died so Genosha could live". However, when the grave is searched by Cloak, he finds there is no body. The question of Xavier's status in this world was left open-ended until House of M: Civil War, detailing the history of Magneto in this world. Xavier, while living, sought out Magneto when the latter was attempting to halt the oppression of mutantkind, declaring war on humans. He saved Magneto's life from a sniper attack and joined him, hoping to influence Magneto's actions into benevolence. He was crippled during the mutant takeover of Genosha and slowly grew more distant from Magneto as the latter's actions grew more bloodthirsty. Ultimately, when the United States sent a team onto Genosha to assassinate Magneto, Xavier found himself trying to appeal to a furious Bucky Barnes, who stabbed Xavier through the chest. What became of his body afterwards is unknown.

Marvel Zombies

In the Marvel Zombies one-shot Marvel Zombies: Dead Days, a zombified Alpha Flight attacks the X-Mansion. Storm informs the X-Men during the battle that Alpha Flight has ripped Xavier to pieces. Cyclops, trying not to deal with the fact that Xavier is dead, continues to fight. In the Marvel Zombies/Army of Darkness crossover, a zombified Beast informs Doctor Doom of Xavier's death, and that it was the Zombie Reed Richards who reprogrammed Cerebro to seek out humans.

In Marvel Zombies Return however, another alternative Xaiver is zombified and turned into a human-detection system, his brain being permanently connected up to Cerebro so that he can find any remaining human beings.[3]

Mutant X

In the alternative reality known as Mutant X, Professor X believing in harmony between man and mutant, formed, along with his friend Magnus, the X-Men and led the team towards that peaceful goal . However, the day they fought the Shadow King, everything changed. The good in Xavier was corrupted, and he left the team to explore his powers further. When he returned, it was during an attack by the Juggernaut. Xavier fired a blast at Juggernaut, but it missed and killed Magneto's lover Moira MacTaggert, instead. Xavier left the X-Men for good then, and traveled the world seeking out telepaths, whom he captured and incarcerated around the globe. He joined forces with Sinister in a bid to transfer all the mental energy of all the world's telepaths into himself. To that end, they created the X-Man, and Xavier took control of S.H.I.E.L.D., captured Gambit's adopted daughter Raven, and had Fury attempt to kill the X-Men with a nuclear strike. Xavier met up with The Six in New York, "fleeing" from Apocalypse and the Four Horsemen. However, when Xavier made several attempts to abduct Scotty, Havok was alerted to the truth by Jean Grey and Magneto, and realized who the true villain was. After a pitched battle, Xavier donned his psychic armor, and he and Sinister released a giant replica of Galactus in order to induce fear in the citizens of Earth, on which Xavier could feed his power. In the end, the replica was destroyed and the Six beat the fear phantoms that had comprised it. Xavier turned on Sinister and destroyed him, and X-Man ran off, leaving Scotty and Raven, who with X-Man were to be Xavier's psychic batteries, to help Havok blast away at Xavier. Xavier was knocked out of his armor and fled the scene, but not before unleashing a blast at Havok that hit Brute when he jumped in front of it to save Alex. Fortunately, the blast temporarily restored Hank to his former levels of intelligence, and he was able to devise cures for his friends before the effect faded away. Xavier was later summoned by Dr. Strange to help fight the Beyonder (Goblin Queen) by adding his psychic power to others to help Havok reach a higher plane of reality. While hooked up to the psychic amplification machine, Xavier was about to be killed by Dracula when he was saved by Bloodstorm, who staked her former master.

Ruins

Warren Ellis' Ruins was set in an alternative version of the Marvel Universe where "everything went wrong". In this world, "President X" leads a corrupt regime over the United States. He moved the White House from Washington to Westchester, New York, letting the capital fall to waste and corruption. He never formed the X-Men, with only Warren Worthington working for him as a secret serviceman. Some of his would-be X-Men are locked in a Texan prison by his orders and are sometimes forcibly deformed in an effort to keep their powers under control. He was known to frequently visit and verbally abuse them "leaving them all sobbing and throwing up". The Avengers were depicted in this world as a Californian pro-secessionist revolutionary cell that opposed Xavier's regime, who were all killed when the Avengers Quinjet was shot down. President X also started the 'Genoshan Police Action', also known as the 'Genoshan War'.

Shadow Xavier

In the first arc of New Excalibur the team is brought together partly as a response to a clash between Dazzler and a group of homicidal mutants bearing a resemblance to the Original X-Men. It turns out that these are the X-Men of an alternative universe where Charles Xavier is possessed by the Shadow King and has gone on to use his mind-controlled and thoroughly corrupted X-Men to wipe out all the other superhumans. This version of Xavier can walk, and insists that his followers refer to him as 'Master'.

He, along with the Shadow King, are killed by Lionheart.

Ultimate Marvel

In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Professor Charles Xavier is the world's most powerful telepath, the founder and patron of the X-Men and a world-famous lecturer for pacifism and mutant emancipation. In contrast to his mainstream version, he is publicly open about his mutant status from the beginning and also has limited telekinetic abilities. He leaves his wife Moira MacTaggert, whom he collaborated with to create new therapies and surgical techniques for their mutant patients, and their sick son David to pursue Magneto's dream of a mutant society, but Magneto turns on him, crippling him with a shard of metal through his spine.

Xavier also repeatedly tampers with other people's minds to reach his goals, but he recognizes his flaws. In one instance, Xavier finds that Iceman has told a girl several secrets about the X-Men and is forced to erase the conversation from their minds. He generally believes that reading minds without permission is unacceptable, or so he leads his students to believe. In Ultimate X-Men #40, when Angel flies away, the Professor sends Storm after him because he telepathically knows that Angel is attracted to her. Similarly, Beast questions whether Xavier has made Storm love him.

In this timeline, his former love interests include Mystique and Emma Frost. In Ultimate X-Men #77, he tells Cyclops that he is in love with Jean. He also has a pet cat which he has named Mystique.

In Ultimate X-Men #78, Xavier is apparently killed by Cable who was trying to prevent the horrible events in the future. In Ultimate X-Men #80 it is revealed that he is in fact alive, and a captive of Cable in the future. It has also been revealed that Cable has repaired his spine and is training Xavier to fight against Apocalypse. However, once the battle came, Jean Grey manifested as the Phoenix and destroyed Apocalypse. Jean returned everything back to normal, giving Xavier a "fresh start". As she did so however, she undid the repair to his spine that Cable had performed, leaving him once again crippled. Xavier reformed the X-Men upon return as the Headmaster of the Xavier Institute.

Soon after, Xavier left the school temporarily to aid Moira in some research on Muir Island. While he's away, the school is attacked by Alpha Flight whose mutant powers are enhanced by a drug called Banshee. Furthermore, it is revealed that Colossus has been using Banshee during his entire time at the Xavier's School, in order to use his power without pain. Due to the sudden and apparently rampant use of the drug, Xavier and Jean begin screening all the students for traces of Banshee. However, it is later revealed the Banshee drug was created by Xavier himself, during his time in the Savage Land, and that it was created from Wolverine's blood. When Xavier tested Banshee, he was given powers that mimicked Wolverine's, including claws, enhanced senses, and a healing factor. Xavier and Magneto, however, deemed the drug too dangerous and stopped production of it. When Wolverine discovered that he was the source of the drug and that Xavier was responsible for its initial creation, Wolverine attacked Muir Island. Xavier admits to creating the drug but denies that he is responsible for its continued creation and use. It is revealed then that Moira got hold of Xavier's research and began creating and selling the drug in order to finance Muir Island. Moira, who had used the drug to give herself a sonic scream, begins to do battle with Wolverine, and Xavier evacuates the children moments before the research facility explodes.

In the Ultimatum story arc, Charles informs all mutants that Magneto is behind the actions. Magneto confronts Charles, explaining that he believes that he shall act as God did to cleanse the world and usher in an era of mutant supremacy. When Charles states that Magneto is not God and that he will stop him as he always has in the past, Magneto then snaps Charles's neck, killing him.

He recently returned, revealed as Rogue's benefactor, secretly sending her on an undercover mission and stating that he doesn't want his former students to know about his plan. It is unconfirmed if this is truly Xavier, as both William Stryker, Alex Summers and Quicksilver have been seen talking to their supposedly dead loved ones, Hinting at a foe mentally manipulating several characters.

X-Men Noir

Charles Xavier is a psychiatrist who ran the "Xavier School for Exceptionally Wayward Youth", in Westchester where he took in juvenile delinquents, but instead of reforming them, he actually further trained them in criminal talents, due to his belief that sociopathy was in fact the next state in human behavioural evolution. The paper in which he stated this led to his expulsion from the American Psychological Association. He is currently in Riker's Island, awaiting charges after the truth about his reform school were made public. Xavier had been framed by Chief of Detectives Eric Magnus for the murder of one of his own students: Warren. Magnus had murdered Warren after Xavier refused to make his X-Men join Magnus' Brotherhood.[4]

X-Treme X-Men

An alternative of Earth-616's Professor X, there was seemingly little to distinguish Charles Xavier until the day he was kidnapped by the forces of the Savior (unbeknownst to him, an alternative of himself), who removed his head from his body, placed in a life-giving "jar", and placed it with the heads of all the other alternative Xaviers put through the same procedure and made to scan the multiverse for the next mutants to be kidnapped. When the Savior was defeated, the collective of Xavier heads put themselves to work finding a new home for the people of the world they had been kidnapped to. However, in the process, all of the heads exploded, except one. This Xavier head would later aide a cross-dimension X-Men team in defeating ten evil Xaviers who are scattered throughout the multiverse and threaten existence itself.[5] During the X-Termination crossover, AoA Nightcrawler's trip home resulted in the release of three evil beings that destroy anyone they touch. Several casualties resulted, including the AoA's Sabretooth, Horror Show, and Fiend, as well as the X-Treme X-Men's Xavier and Hercules.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Exiles #1-2
  2. ↑ New Exiles #15
  3. ↑ Marvel Zombies Return #5
  4. ↑ X-Men Noir #2
  5. ↑ X-Treme X-Men vol. 2 #1 (2013)
  6. ↑ X-Termination #1 (2013)