Latest / Vigilante Vibes Podcast / Ep. 217. Who is Mister Sinister in Marvel Comics?!
Transcript
- 0:10Hello You Beautiful nerds. I am Megan with vigilante vibes
- 0:13and I'm here with another character breakdown and I'm
- 0:16talking about someone who is such a big deal in the X-Men
- 0:20world and for the all the wrong reasons.
- 0:23Today we're going to talk about Mr. Sinister.
- 0:26Mr. Sinister first appeared in Uncanny X-Men #213 in October of
- 0:301986 as Shadow, but his first full appearance was in Uncanny
- 0:35X-Men #221 in June of 1987. He was created by Chris
- 0:40Claremont and Mark Silvestri. Mr. Sinister is actually a clone
- 0:45of the original Nathaniel Essex, one of the three clones created
- 0:49in 1895, along with a clone of his late wife Rebecca.
- 0:53So a lot of clone action happening.
- 0:56The idea was to tackle the looming threat of machine
- 0:59supremacy from different angles. Like the others, Sinister
- 1:02believed he was the real Essex and had no memory of the
- 1:04original dying in Bedlam. He kept the shape shifting
- 1:08powers the original Essex gained by splicing in DNA stolen from
- 1:12the Courier in 1899. Sinister woke up Apocalypse
- 1:17which is why. And then immediately betrayed
- 1:21him. Which, yeah, he infected
- 1:24Apocalypse with a techno organic virus he'd created at
- 1:27Apocalypse's own request. Apocalypse survived thanks to
- 1:30his molecular control, so Sinister ran, But from then on
- 1:34he was obsessed with engineering a mutant powerful enough to kill
- 1:37Apocalypse. He became fixated on Cyclops and
- 1:41Phoenix, who's Scott Summers and Jean Grey, whom he'd met before
- 1:45his transformation, and decided that a Summers Gray child would
- 1:49be the ultimate weapon. You X-Men 97 fans who have not
- 1:54read these comics, you know where we're going with this.
- 1:57Over the decades, Sinister carried out experiments
- 2:00everywhere. In 19 O 7, one of his creations,
- 2:04which was a polar bear, slaughtered the Wolfpack Logan
- 2:07was living with in Canada. Sinister later captured and
- 2:11experimented on Logan multiple times, vivisecting and
- 2:15tormenting him. Logan seemingly killed Sinister
- 2:19once, but of course, he came back because that's what
- 2:21Sinister does. He's like a disease.
- 2:23While working at the Ray Rivecroft Institute, Sinister
- 2:27lobotomized Logan again before being exposed and leaving.
- 2:31He later traveled to Russia and teamed up with Gregory Rasputin,
- 2:35convincing him to help breed a race of superhumans.
- 2:39Rasputin fathered children as part of Sinister's project until
- 2:43his assassination. Around World War One, Sinister
- 2:46manipulated the Shaw family line, forcing Jacob Shaw to
- 2:50develop shape shifting powers and murder his own brother.
- 2:54In the early 20th century, Sinister crossed paths with
- 2:58people like Irene Adler and even influence Herbert Wyndham, who
- 3:02would become the High Evolutionary by providing
- 3:06advanced genetic research in Hollywood.
- 3:08During the Great Depression, he hosted glamorous parties while
- 3:13secretly abducting, experimenting on those people,
- 3:15including radio star Faye Livingston, who he imprisoned
- 3:21for months before he believed that she could produce mutant
- 3:24offspring. It's dark.
- 3:27It's dark stuff. During World War 2, Sinister
- 3:31worked alongside Joseph Mengele in Nazi concentration camps,
- 3:35earning the nickname Nosferatu from captive children.
- 3:40He bribed kids with candy to collect blood samples and
- 3:44conducted horrific genetic experiments.
- 3:46He cloned Neymar, tried to weaponize mutant genes, and
- 3:50recruited John Gray Crow, who is scout punter, as his first
- 3:55marauder. Later in Vietnam, he continued
- 3:58abducting soldiers and villagers for experimentation under the
- 4:03alias Dr. Millberry. Sinister was part of Project
- 4:07Black Womb in New Mexico where thousands of children, many
- 4:11mutants, were studied. He secretly encoded parts of his
- 4:14own psychic matrix into the DNA of children like Charles Xavier
- 4:19Kane, Marco Carter Ryking, and Sebastian Shaw as a long term
- 4:24backup plan. He later worked as a lecturer at
- 4:28Oxford, teaching genetics to young Charles Xavier and Myra
- 4:32Kinross, subtly interfering in their lives.
- 4:36Eventually, Sinister took over the state Home for Foundlings
- 4:39Orphanage in Omaha, building a high tech lab underneath it.
- 4:43There, he secretly experimented on children while posing as both
- 4:47the director Mr. Pearson and a fellow orphan named Nate.
- 4:52When young Scott Summers optic blast activated during a plane
- 4:55crash, Sinister detected it immediately.
- 4:58He experimented on Scott while he was comatose and then placed
- 5:03him and his brother Alex in an orphanage, deliberately
- 5:06separating them. He created Ruby Quartz lenses to
- 5:10help Scott control his powers and carefully manipulated his
- 5:13entire childhood, even staging traumatic events and murdering
- 5:17potential adoptive parents to keep Scott isolated.
- 5:21Scott eventually escaped and was taken in by Professor X, but
- 5:25Sinister never stopped watching him or Jean Grey.
- 5:29After the X-Men formed, Sinister collected secretly collected
- 5:34their DNA. Unable to access Jean Grey
- 5:37directly, he cloned her, creating Madeline Pryor, Maddie
- 5:41the baddie, the Goblin Queen. When the Phoenix Force later
- 5:45reignited the clone, she met Cyclops, married him, and gave
- 5:48birth to Nathan Summers, the powerful child Sinister had
- 5:52engineered all along. He continued perfecting cloning
- 5:57tech on his island base bar Sinister, filled with copies of
- 6:01himself. He orchestrated the Morlock
- 6:04Massacre through the his Marauders.
- 6:06He deeming the Morlocks genetically useless.
- 6:10He manipulated Gambit into assembling the team that carried
- 6:13it out. After Jean returned, Sinister
- 6:16tried to kill Madeline and take her child.
- 6:19That led to the Inferno crisis when Madeline as the Goblin
- 6:23Queen nearly destroyed everything.
- 6:25Sinister was apparently killed by Cyclops optic blast.
- 6:29But if you've learned anything thus far, Sinister just does not
- 6:34die. And it was another fake out.
- 6:37He later unleashed the Legacy virus, which was accidental
- 6:40while dealing with strife, experimented on Threnity to
- 6:44track infected mutants tangled with Cable.
- 6:47Who is Nathan Summers grown up, sorry if that's the spoiler, and
- 6:52obsessed over Nate Gray, the Age of Apocalypse version of his
- 6:56perfect creation. Overtime, Sinister repeatedly
- 7:00died, returned via clones and backup plans.
- 7:03He infiltrated Weapon X, created armies of clones including
- 7:07Phoenix powered ones, tried to capture cosmic forces,
- 7:12manipulated apocalypses Rise, and even attempted to mutate the
- 7:16entire planet. After M Day decimated the mutant
- 7:21population, Sinister became desperate to preserve mutant
- 7:24kind, largely for his own experiments.
- 7:27He haunted down the first mutant child born after which was Hope.
- 7:31Summer's battled the X-Men and Purifiers, and was killed off
- 7:34again, this time by Mystique, triggering one of his psychic
- 7:37backup transfers. Eventually he resurrected
- 7:41himself yet again, and when Kurkowa was founded by Professor
- 7:44X Magneto and Meyer Mctaggart, Sinister's massive mutant DNA
- 7:49database made him too valuable to exclude.
- 7:52He was granted a seat on the Quiet Council on Krakoa.
- 7:57He led the Hellions, secretly harvest a rocky DNA, built
- 8:02hidden clone labs, and continued scheming.
- 8:05Then he got his most dangerous idea yet, cloning Myra
- 8:08Mactaggart and exploiting her mutant ability to reset
- 8:12timelines upon death. He built the Myra engine,
- 8:16allowing him to create save points in reality and retry
- 8:19events until he got the outcome he wanted.
- 8:22So life is basically like one big video game to the sky.
- 8:26After countless resets, Sinister succeeded in corrupting Krakowa,
- 8:31spreading his influence across a Galaxy in one timeline, only to
- 8:34discover another Sinister clone had already ascended to Dominion
- 8:40Hood first. That timeline collapsed.
- 8:43Back in the restored reality, Sinister was exposed and exiled
- 8:47to the Pit on Krakowa. Even then, a fragment of him
- 8:51survived inside Professor X due to childhood tampering.
- 8:55As Krakoa fell and the Dominion threat rose, Sinister worked
- 8:59reluctantly with Xavier, Rachel Summers and Raps Butan the 4th
- 9:04to try to stop a multiversal catastrophe he'd help create.
- 9:09He was killed again, resurrected again, helped stop Enigma and
- 9:13Orcas, and when things finally started turning around on him,
- 9:17he slipped away. Because if there's one constant
- 9:21with Mr. Sinister, it's this. He always has another clone,
- 9:24another backup, another plan, and he will see it to the end.
- 9:29So that is Mr. Sinister. He is 1 bad guy, a really,
- 9:33really bad guy. And his story is interesting.
- 9:38There are many layers. He is, he's a compelling
- 9:40character, but you know, he's a bad guy just doing his thing.
- 9:43So that is my breakdown for Mr. Snooster.
- 9:47I really hope you enjoyed it. If you want to hear more about
- 9:50villains, let me know in the comments because I always say I
- 9:53like doing these so much. And I'm not lying.
- 9:57I do love doing these. It's a lot of work, but it's
- 10:00fun. So yeah, please let me know in
- 10:03the comments what character you want to see next.
- 10:05Thank you to all the listeners who have been sending in their
- 10:08requests. I really appreciate it.
- 10:10And yeah, so be sure to like and subscribe and have a marvelous
- 10:14day.