Biography - Page 2
Mister Sinister continued to seek out mutant bloodlines that might be of use to him. In 1915, Essex made contact with Jacob Shaw, second son of the prestigious Shaw family in London. 
While Esau Shaw inherited the family estate and was offered a position in the Hellfire Club’s Inner Circle, Jacob appeared left out in the cold. Sinister chose to unlock the ambitious Jacob’s latent mutation for mass-shifting and shape-changing, finding a willing partner in his endeavors. Jacob murdered his brother and rose high in the world, owing his success to Essex, who remained patiently ready to collect. [X-Men: Hellfire Club #3]
Essex traveled far and wide, looking for examples of the “Essex factor” to study. In Czarist Russia, he heard the stories of Grigory Rasputin, mystic advisor to the royal family. He found not only the nigh-unkillable Rasputin, but his telekinetic associates the Romany siblings Ivan and Elena. Essex provoked Rasputin at first, proving his own strength to the Russian before they could speak. Sinister explained the power of the Essex factor in bloodlines and encouraged Grigory to take many partners and spread his seed so that the family tree would blossom. The arrogant Rasputin eagerly took to Essex’s theories, and both men agreed Elena should be favored above all others, for she already possessed the Essex factor.
Rasputin impregnated many of his “celestial brides” as time passed. Sinister extracted raw genetic material from Rasputin’s own Essex factor and injected it into the women’s wombs to increase the likelihood of mutant children. There were many failures, and Ivan began to fear for his sister Elena’s safety. In 1916, he conspired with Rasputin’s other enemies to make another 
assassination attempt on the mad monk. Poison, blunt force, bullets and eventually drowning was enough to mortally wound Rasputin, but he still made his way back to Elena and Essex. In a final ceremony with his celestial brides, Rasputin declared that his spirit would live on in his children before finally expiring. The Essex factor had spread, but it would be a generation before Sinister could test his results. [X-Men: Colossus Bloodline #3]
By 1919, Essex was already acquainted with a young mutant precog named Irene Adler. In Paris, in a park, on an otherwise beautiful day, she told him secrets that shook him to his core. [Immortal X-Men #1] In the late 1920s, a young scientist in London named Herbert Edgar Wyndham dreamed of doing what Sinister had already accomplished: unlocking the genetic code of human DNA. Wyndham would one day become the god-like genetic manipulator known as the High Evolutionary, but in the 20s he was still a mortal man, seeking entry at Oxford and working in the new field of genetics alongside his mentor at the university, one Dr. Essex. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #380] According to one source, Sinister may have cycled back around and posed as Wyndham’s assistant years later as well, always keeping track of him and the potential of his work with evolution. [Excalibur (3rd series) #14]
During the Great Depression, Nathan Essex became a darling of the Hollywood party scene for unknown reasons. He hosted a gathering at his mansion in the Hollywood Hills where he became enchanted by a radio comedienne named Faye Livingstone. Essex and Faye became lovers for a time, until she discovered his laboratory beneath the mansion and learned the truth about his work. Sinister had identified the Essex factor in Faye’s genetic code, believing her children would 
be powerful mutants. With the lie of their relationship exposed, Sinister kept her prisoner for some time, taking samples and performing experiments as he wished. Eventually, though, Essex threw open the doors to Faye’s cage and wordlessly allowed her to flee into the night. Despite his lack of expression, Faye couldn’t help but wonder if he actually experienced something akin to guilt, or perhaps even more. [X-Men Annual ’95]
Mister Sinister was comfortable working alone, but he also saw the advantage of well-financed patrons and scientific collaboration… properly disguised, of course. Under these conditions, the remorseless Sinister eagerly became associated with the Nazi party, gaining access to a replenishing supply of test subjects at Auschwitz and the other concentration camps. His political influence and telepathic abilities acquired by this point allowed Sinister free reign of the camps to pick and choose whom he liked from the prisoners. Some believed he was secretly ferrying subjects to freedom, and Essex cultivated this rumor among the lambs he brought to slaughter. 
But young Max Eisenhardt trusted his instincts and became a sonder-kommando to stay clear of Essex’s eye. He knew he had been right when he found the horribly mutated bodies of his friends who volunteered in the remains for the crematoria. [Excalibur (3rd series) #7] Gabrielle Haller also had encounters with the mad doctor nicknamed “Nosferatu” at the camps. [Excalibur (3rd series) #14]
As he wandered the battlefields, Essex recruited an American soldier named John Greycrow as an assistant, a mutant who survived his own firing squad. In 1944, Essex made another valuable find when the Sub-Mariner attacked a Nazi ship he was aboard. Namor was injured by Master Man and Sinister acquired a sample of the Atlantean mutant’s blood. Dubbed Experiment N2, Sinister cloned an augmented version of Namor with new powers to absorb and redirect moisture. Expecting to face the Invaders one day, Essex prepared N2 to defeat both Sub-Mariner and the 
Human Torch. When they eventually found his laboratory, N2 did exactly that before facing the third Invader, Captain America. Mister Sinister had dismissed the super-soldier and made no special preparations for him. The Captain’s perseverance and the triumph of the human spirit proved to be too much for Sinister’s cold, clinical science, and Experiment N2 was beaten and disposed of. [Weapon X (2nd series) #14] The Nazis eventually fell, and Sinister moved on as he always did. He left some of his work behind, however, where it was discovered in a liberated camp by American military scientist Truett Hudson, who made extensive study of Nathan Essex’s journal in the years to come. [Weapon X (2nd series) #23]
Essex continued to take advantage of opportunities to further his work wherever they came up. In 1968, he set up a lab near Saigon, Vietnam during the war. The local strife allowed Sinister the freedom to make nearby villagers disappear for his experiments. His old acquaintance Victor Creed was hired to find out more about the “White Devil,” but Sinister and Greycrow had Creed’s client killed and paid him off rather than deal with Sabretooth directly. [Weapon X (2nd series) #27]
Decades ago, Mister Sinister had influence with Project: Black Womb, an American government research program stationed at Alamogordo, New Mexico. Outwardly seen as a nuclear research station, Alamogordo actually studied genetic mutation, with many of the top staff aware of the burgeoning mutant population, even being mutants themselves. The precognitive Irene Adler worked as an archivist at the project, and Amanda Mueller oversaw much of the research behind 
the scenes. Nearly one hundred years old by this point, Mueller was still alive thanks to her mutation, although her body had continued to age into a highly weakened state. She welcomed her further association with Essex, hoping she might one day receive new vitality from his work to go with her lifespan.
Sinister walked among the staff in the unassuming role of Nathan Milbury. He recruited scientists based on their genetic potential as well as their minds, and added staff such as Brian Xavier, Kurt Marko and Alexander Ryking because their genetic profiles indicated the likelihood of mutant offspring. These men were brought to Sinister’s attention by his agent and recruiter, Jacob Shaw. Jacob had squandered his family’s fortune over the years, but his own increased lifespan and genetic profile still made him useful to Sinister. After Apocalypse’s transformation of his core structure and the additions drawn from Courier, Sinister seemed to be virtually immortal. Essex 
wished to establish backups and redundancies, though, to make sure he would always survive to continue his work. His Cronus Project was one of the first of many self-preservation plots. In his guise as Milbury, Mister Sinister implanted a portion of his own genetic material in Charles Xavier, Cain Marko, Carter Ryking and even Jacob’s son Sebastian. [X-Men: Forever (1st series) #4, X-Men: Legacy (1st series) #211-214]
Essex made it a habit to keep track of his Cronus subjects. Nearly two decades later, he just happened to be a professor on genetics lecturing at Oxford University to a young Charles Xavier and Moira Kinross. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #389] He even served as Moira’s thesis advisor. [Excalibur (3rd series) #14]
Using the technology he became familiar with under Apocalypse, Mister Sinister maintained many bases connected to his central "Forever Laboratory" through tesseract space. In this manner, he could travel almost instantaneously anywhere in the world, using his laboratory as a remotely-linked hub. One of his assets was the Essex State Home for Foundlings, an orphanage near Omaha, Nebraska. On the surface, this orphanage seemed like any other, housing orphans and other underage wards of the state. Unknown to the staff and the world at large, the children who lived in the 
orphanage were hand picked and often even deliberately orphaned by Mister Sinister. After identifying children with promising genetic potential, Sinister would have the parents suffer fatal accidents or other deadly fates. The children would then be transported to the State Home, where Sinister could watch and monitor their development. No doubt some of these children were originally identified from Project: Black Womb.
It is unknown how well Mister Sinister charted the bloodline of Daniel Summers after his escapades with Amanda Mueller, or whether he knew and recognized the boy Scott Summers as the same man he met back in the 1850’s. Regardless, Sinister acted quickly once Scott and Alex Summers were orphaned after their parents’ plane was destroyed and the boys barely parachuted to safety. He detected the output of mutant energy when Scott used his optic blast for the first time, slowing their descent in the burning parachute enough to save their lives. Through bureaucratic and likely psychic manipulation, he arranged for the boys to be transferred from where they were found in Alaska to his State Home in Nebraska before they even left the hospital. Scott was catatonic from his injuries after their crash, making the process easier. [X-Factor (1st series) #39]
Scott Summers was Essex’s prize, and so he arranged to isolate him early on for study. To accomplish this, Alex Summers was quickly adopted away by the Blandings to keep the brothers from supporting each other. Some reports indicate Alex was adopted even before Scott awoke from his year long coma, although false memories implanted in the boys by Sinister have obscured this timeline. Mister Sinister still monitored Alex and provoked his powers to manifest early as well. After getting his data, however, Sinister placed a genetic lock on Alex to prevent his powers from fully developing until much later in life. [X-Factor #minus 1] Sinister still collaborated with Apocalypse when it suited him, despite their rancor, and En Sabah Nur had a plot involving the latent mutant Ahmet Abdol. He wanted Sinister to combine the genetic material of Alex Summers with Abdol, allowing the older man to tap into the same wellspring of cosmic energy that 
would be linked to Alex’s powers when they manifested. Apparently intrigued by the scientific possibilities, Mister Sinister did the work Apocalypse asked. Although not confirmed, it’s possible the genetic lock Sinister already placed on Alex is what allowed Abdol to tap so deeply of their shared cosmic reservoir as the Living Pharaoh, at least until Alex’s powers fully emerged. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #376]