MIMIC: Page 3 of 3

BIOGRAPHY - Page 3

After the fall of H.A.M.M.E.R. and Norman Osborn, his dark X-Men were disbanded. Osborn had tampered with Weapon Omega’s powers, causing him to become addicted to absorbing mutant energy. Calvin took his friend far away from all other mutants, in the hopes he could ween him off his addiction by feeding him his own energy in small doses. Unfortunately his plan failed and Michael took a turn for the worse; the energy within him was growing and would soon detonate, killing him and anyone around him.

Fearing for his friend’s life, and remembering how Beast had helped him with a similar life force draining problem, Calvin rushed to the X-Men for aid. With the help of Rogue, the pair replicated Weapon Omega’s power, hoping to absorb and divide the growing energy within him. Unfortunately the energy had become self-replicating; the pair only succeeded in creating two additional time bombs in themselves. Believing he was going to die soon, Calvin went and to the spot where he experienced the best moment of his life: the lake where he saved the original X-Men from the Super Adaptoid. Reminiscing about the fight made him realize a potential solution to their problem: the three of them try to copy each other’s powers, which should cancel each other’s out.

Mimic’s plan was somewhat successful, as he and Rogue were both saved from their rapidly growing energy. Sadly, Weapon Omega was not. Realizing the only way to stop Michael from detonating was to psychically shut down his mind, Calvin agreed to do it for his friend. After earnestly expressing to Michael how much his friendship meant to him, he shut down his friend’s mind, so that he could rest in stasis while the excess energy depleted. Not wanting to leave his friend, he was welcomed into the school as a teacher. [X-Men Legacy (1st series) #264-265]

It wasn’t long until Calvin was thrown into his first crisis as an X-man. When the X-Men went to war with the Avengers over the fate of the Phoenix and Hope Summers, every X-man had to chose a side: stand with the Avengers, stand with the X-Men or stay out of it. Mimic, not even knowing most of the involved parties, opted to remain at the school. However, soon the choice was taken out of his hands when a contingent of Avengers came to them. While they initially came in peace, a fight soon broke out between the groups, in which Mimic took part. After an intense fight, the Avengers were defeated and several X-Men changed their minds about abstaining from the conflict. Calvin, however, remained at the school. [X-Men Legacy (1st series) #266-267]

Later, Weapon Omega recovered from his condition, and Mimic was of two minds about staying or leaving the Jean Grey School. He felt that while he had learned a great deal about his powers and working in a team, he hadn’t learned a great deal about himself. While deciding, he aided Rogue with quelling a superhuman prison riot in the Raft. With so many strong personalities and powers present, it was a struggle for Calvin mentally, but he persevered against multiple supervillians to buy Rogue the time she needed to save the day. After the battle, and some helpful advice from Rogue, Mimic decided to leave the school with his friend Michael. [X-Men Legacy (1st series) #275]

After leaving the school, Mimic and Weapon Omega dedicated themselves to using their abilities to help regular people. While they respected the X-Men they felt they were too caught up in cosmic crises to truly help regular folk. While helping people recovered after a hurricane, the pair were approached by X-Man ForgetMeNot who asked them to take his powers from him. Both men were intrigued, for ForgetMeNot had a unique ability that caused anyone to instantly forgot him after looking away from him. Both Calvin and Michael felt this ability could help them a lot in achieving their good work without drawing unwanted attention.

Before they could reach a decision, however, they were interrupted by Cyclops and his X-Men, who wanted the pair to join his mutant revolution. Mimic grew agitated after Magneto tried to block his path and Emma Frost even questioned his status as a mutant. Cutting loose with his powers, Calvin mimicked everybody present and was on the verge of fighting when ForgetMeNot had them copy his powers. Cyclops’ team instantly forgot the trio existed and subsequently left, letting them return to their earlier conversation. Mimic still wasn’t certain ForgetMeNot had thought things through and convinced the man to think about it some more. While the man was considering, both Mimic and Weapon Omega forgot he existed and left. [X-Men Legacy (1st series) #300]

One day, Mimic's services were required by Nathan Summers, a younger incarnation of the grizzled time traveler known as Cable. Unfortunately, no one ever taught Kid Cable to ask nicely, as he shot Mimic fully of tranquilizers at a grocery store and kidnapped him. Kid Cable was determined to fix the temporal paradox that was the original five X-Men, who had travelled into the present from weeks' after the founding of the X-Men and spent months learning about the future, thereby risking the entire timeline. Of the changes they had gone through, one major one was Angel getting new wings from the cosmic artifact known as the Black Vortex. Since Mimic had permanently copied the original Angel's wings, Kid Cable used future technology to surgically remove Angel's new wings and graft Mimic's wings from Calvin's body onto Angel.

All of this was only explained to Cal in his sleep telepathically, while the surgery was already underway. Despite this, Mimic wanted to help any way he could. When young Jean Grey and X-Force tracked down Kid Cable, Calvin didn't hold grudges and he joined with the young X-Men and X-Force in traveling to Searebro, where Ahab had targeted young Cyclops. Ahab was a mutant-hating cyborg from the future who wanted to engineer the very paradox Kid Cable was trying to stop, by murdering one of the original five. Young Cyclops had already been injured when everyone arrived, and Mimic took up Cyclops' visor to carry the fight to Ahab. He was unable to stop Ahab from hurling his energy harpoon, however, and Cal was impaled on the wall of the base. Calvin Rankin's last words were how he just wanted to help. His sacrifice stalled Ahab long enough for Kid Cable to get the original X-Men back to where they belonged. [Extermination #2-5]