Biography - Page 7
As he considered new avenues for his work, Mister Sinister uncovered that Doctor Doom had acquired a DNA sample of the Asgardian God of Mischief, Loki. Intrigued by the cloning possibilities after the arguable success of a Thor clone during the Superhuman Civil War, Essex vowed to steal the sample from Castle Doom. After a successful infiltration, though, Sinister found that Kid Loki himself had leaked the information to him. Loki feared Doom’s work, but also feared the likelihood of traps set specifically for him and used Sinister as a cat’s-paw. Essex refused to let Loki make off with his own ill-gotten gains, but their squabbling brought out Doom’s defenses. 
They barely escaped alive by working together and Loki questioned what Sinister’s intentions were once they were safe. Once he learned Mister Sinister was a creature of pure, unapologetic science, Loki gladly departed and left the sample with Essex. Doom was a sorcerer AND a scientist, but Loki was confident Sinister would never unlock the mysteries of his mythology using science alone. [A+X #5]
Eventually, Mister Sinister evolved past his Victorian-era trappings, returning to his more traditional appearance and activities. Always interested in improving upon his genetic storehouse, Mister Sinister commissioned the Wrecking Crew to recover the body of Wolverine and other potential salvage from his rivals in genetic engineering, the successors to Weapon X known as Paradise and the Arcadia Corporation. A group of Paradise test subjects and their unlikely allies were also trying to retrieve Wolverine, and the two groups clashed. Sinister not only acquired Wolverine’s Adamantium-encased body, he ripped an arm and an eye off of Wolverine’s son Daken for good measure in his genetic comparisons. [Wolverines #1]
Back at his base in Finland, Sinister prepared a tau neutrino web to penetrate the Adamantium shell and extract Wolverine’s body from inside. His sensors detected the Arcadia renegades approaching, and he made preparations to counter them. A wave of clones, folded space-time events, and other traps hampered the infiltrators until one of them tried to make a deal. Neuro of Paradise revealed several of their number had been implanted with Control words, and he would share the secret with Sinister in exchange for help stalling their own genetic deterioration.
Matters became even more complicated when the X-Men also tracked down Sinister’s lab to recover Wolverine’s body for burial. Sinister accepted Neuro’s proposal and gained control over Lady Deathstrike before Sabretooth and the others put out their own ears to avoid hearing the Control words. Storm of the X-Men was in no mood to dally and electrically triggered a seizure in 
Sinister’s brain for withholding Logan from them. A restored Deathstrike then finished the job, taking revenge for Sinister trying to command her. However, as the invading parties left, a clone that Sinister dispatched three hours into the future when the invasion began emerged back in normal space. This clone activated a contingency plan that restored Mister Sinister and recovered all of his genetic data. [Wolverines #4-6]
Sinister desired revenge against his assailants, and the genetic possibilities found in their personal make-up. He arranged for Neuro and the other traitors from the group Endo and Skel to lure Mystique and Shogun’s group to an Arcadia site he had taken over. Sinister’s clone troopers toyed with his prey for a while, but Essex was no longer amused after being stabbed by X-23. He used the Control words Neuro taught him to take over X-23, Daken, Sabretooth and Deathstrike. Mystique tried a kamikaze strike by crashing her ship the Changeling on top of Sinister’s facility, but it only slowed him down. Shogun was able to disable the Control word programming in the others during the chaos that followed, though. Sinister emerged from the wreckage, restored thanks to the self-healing matrix in his body’s cellular design. He battled Shogun while Mystique rallied her assets and unleashed the Arcadian mutate Siphon. This captured entity could absorb healing factors on contact, neutralizing Mister Sinister’s ability to recover from harm. Once Siphon was done, Shogun decapitated Sinister, leaving him for dead (at least until Sinister’s next contingency plan reawakened him). [Wolverines #16-19]
Mister Sinister eagerly accepted a mole in the Jean Grey School in the form of the student named Ernst. The child-like mutant wanted a body for her best friend, the sentient and independent mutant brain called No-Girl. Sinister agreed to Ernst’s terms in exchange for her acquiring fresh genetic samples for him of all the X-Men and students. The school’s substitute guidance counselor Spider-Man uncovered the existence of the mole and was kidnapped by Sinister and 
Ernst. Mister Sinister complied with his deal but sewed Martha into a Bride of Frankenstein-style clone of Storm, programmed to obey Sinister’s commands. The Special Class tracked down their missing teacher and classmates but were forced to face Sinister’s Six: Martha and other clones of Beast, Iceman, Wolverine, Nightcrawler and Firestar. Despite the odds, the students freed Spider-Man, got Ernst and Martha back, and forced Sinister to self-destruct his lab and flee. [Spider-Man and the X-Men #5-6]
The mutant race faced unexpected challenges when the Inhumans’ Terrigen Mist entered the atmosphere as a mobile cloud. The Mists were essentially harmless to normal humans and triggered latent Inhuman genes, but they proved hazardous to mutants. A sickness called M-Pox developed among mutants exposed to the Mist, killing some and leaving others infected. Sinister saw the opportunity to improve upon the mutant race and prepared experiments to engineer an immunity to Terrigen in the mutant genome. To accomplish this, he assembled a new team of Marauders to help him gather test subjects of mutants and Inhumans for his work.
Progress never comes without setbacks, and Sinister murdered a number of mutant subjects while trying to breed Terrigen immunity. He appreciated the irony that his best results came from adding Inhuman genes to his mutant victims. His Marauders captured Nightcrawler for Sinister’s 
work, which naturally drew the attention of the rest of the X-Men. Sinister’s lab in Manhattan was assaulted and Colossus snapped his spine. Undeterred, Mister Sinister merely called forth a sturdier body from his storages and moved his head from the dying body to the new one. Essex unleashed a genetic construct made of Cyclops’ genes and Inhuman mutations, but the X-Men were able to defeat this puppet as well. It was finally Magik who severed the head from the second Sinister, leaving Essex’s schemes unfulfilled for the time being. [Extraordinary X-Men #1-5]
A NuHuman named Kid Kaiju came to Mister Sinister’s attention thanks to his ability to summon “monsters” from a distance or even create them out of thin air. Seeing vast potential at work if Kid Kaiju’s abilities could be harnessed for genetic experimentation, Sinister joined forces with the 
Leader, M.O.D.O.K. and the Mad Thinker as the New Intelligencia to exploit him. They employed Monster Masters like Mole Man, Animax and Lady Hellbender to drive Kid Kaiju into the open, but the kid and his guardian Elsa Bloodstone were able to defend themselves and keep his powers out of the Intelligencia’s grasp. [Monsters Unleashed (3rd series) #1-5]
Sinister’s next foray with the Inhumans came from the former magister of the Royal Family, Karnak. The Terrigen Mists had been destroyed in the wake of the M-Pox crisis, and Karnak needed to find a way to restore his people’s future. Karnak provided Sinister with the Inhumans’ data on Terrigen and even his own son Leer (an un-triggered Inhuman) with the mandate to recreate the Terrigen Mists somehow. [Secret Warriors (2nd series) #5] Karnak never expected Sinister to succeed – he withheld a sample of Terrigen itself to prevent the geneticist from unlocking the true secrets of Terrigenesis. He merely hoped to take Sinister’s half-finished work and build upon it when the time came. Sinister joined his efforts with the Dark Beast (
whom Sinister had saved from near-death months earlier) as they tried to recreate Terrigenesis in spite of Karnak hindering their work. Even together, Mister Sinister and Dark Beast were unable to make the progress they wanted. Sinister modified Leer enough to partially unlock his Inhuman power, but no more. During Hydra’s takeover of America, Sinister even gave Leer over to Hydra to see what they could accomplish with the boy. In exchange, Hydra gave him access to their records of latent Inhumans, and he kidnapped dozens of children with un-triggered Inhuman DNA.
Karnak decided to end Sinister’s research and guided a team of Secret Warriors to destroy Dark Beast’s lab and reacquire Leer. Switching tactics, Sinister allowed the Secret Warriors to find his stolen children and return them to their parents. The children had been altered by Sinister to declare an Inhuman race war before exploding, framing the Warriors as Inhuman terrorists and making them fugitives. He then held the niece of the Warriors’ Inferno hostage, compelling him to find a surviving sample of Terrigen crystal and bring it to Sinister’s labs. Karnak and the Warriors 
brought the forces of New Attilan to stop Sinister from succeeding. They were too late, for Sinister had already examined Inferno and the Terrigen sample to recreate a form of the mists. Unfortunately for Sinister, Moon Girl shattered his vial of Terrigen Mists, which were toxic to the mutant DNA in his body. Mister Sinister was forced to flee, leaving his work behind. [Secret Warriors (2nd series) #8-11]
Sinister ran into trouble protecting his investments. An independent contractor helping to maintain his genetic database stole some of the information and tried to sell it on the black market. Mister Sinister fought to reclaim his data and punish the transgressor, but he ran afoul of the New Avengers, who reformed because they suspected someone of stealing Wolverine’s body, and Sinister had already tried once. Sinister retreated to his archives where a third party called Soteira 
attacked. He was unable to fight off their entire Killteam, and Soteira escaped with a copy of the database for themselves. The New Avengers caught up with Sinister and he was too weak to stop them from destroying his work. (Sinister clearly has back-ups for his genetic database, so it’s unclear what was actually lost in these raids.) [Hunt for Wolverine: The Adamantium Agenda #1-4]
Mister Sinister continued with his independent genetic research. Learning a new generation of Morlocks had begun populating the sewers, Sinister hired some mutant supremacists from the dark web to hunt the fodder and bring him test subjects. Instead, they were routed almost single-handedly by Iceman of the X-Men, who had begun creating ice golems to supplement his manpower. Intrigued by the idea of a self-replicating army, Sinister turned his attention towards this previously ignored Omega-class mutant. He partially replicated the ice golem effect and used pawns to draw Iceman’s attention. Sinister seemingly captured Iceman after luring the X-Man to his lab and prepared to extract the genetic data necessary to control his own ice army. Iceman deceived Sinister, though, by sending an ice avatar in his place and controlling it remotely. Sinister could extract nothing from this golem and was beaten by the real Iceman who tossed him into the stratosphere. [Iceman (4th series) #1-5]
Sinister was concerned when the Office of National Emergency produced Vaxx, a vaccine that could be introduced to children in order to prevent the manifestation of the X-Gene. His research partner Dark Beast had been captured by the X-Men and was working off a sample of the vaccine to counteract its effects. Sinister had a delicious idea to have the X-Men do the work for him, and he helped McCoy finish his counter-virus while planning to telepathically prod the X-Men into trusting McCoy enough to release their concoction without further testing. After learning the X-Men had hunted and killed his protégés the Marauders, though, Sinister chose not to just disappear into the night and actively assaulted the team. He used a new trick with his clones, causing them to physically merge into a massive Sinister construct to punish the heroes. Once he had enough revenge knocking the X-Men around a bit, Mister Sinister surrendered and was turned over into the custody of Captain America, confident that his work and McCoy’s would be released soon. [Uncanny X-Men (5th series) #18]
As it turned out, Mister Sinister wasn’t the only one manipulating the X-Men at the time. Emma Frost and the Hellfire Club had been pressed into service by O*N*E, and Mystique was posing as Captain America to “arrest” the X-Men’s captives. Wolverine was the first to discover Emma’s hand in the X-Men’s recent activities, and he assaulted the Hellfire Club and O*N*E as Mystique was delivering Sinister. Emma was working her own angle, however, and linked up with the X-Men to pool resources for her big plot. With the help of Sinister, Fabian Cortez and Doctor Nemesis, Emma augmented her telepathic abilities through a Cerebro to create a “blindspot” in all human minds, making them incapable of recognizing mutants or the expression of mutant abilities. Mister Sinister’s brief period of cooperation with the X-Men and Hellfire came to an abrupt conclusion when the injured Wolverine awoke and stabbed Sinister, revealing that the geneticist in their company had actually been another Sinister clone. [Uncanny X-Men (5th series) #19-22]
At an undisclosed point in the past, Essex’s efforts towards cloning had turned inward, and he mass-produced himself with slight variations to seek the optimum Sinister. This became a small pseudo-society maintained on an artificial island dubbed Bar Sinister. Into this ostentatious and self-flagellating pomp and circumstance strode Charles Xavier and Magneto, the Master of Magnetism. These two mutants knew of Sinister’s interest in cataloguing the world’s DNA and wished to support his efforts, provided that Essex prioritized mutant DNA for his database. The iteration of Sinister they first spoke to was dubious, having already tried to introduce the X-Gene into his own genetic structure and not liking the results. Said result was another version of Mister 
Sinister who emerged to execute his doppelganger and eagerly agreed to devote his resources to the mutant cause. This Sinister accepted both the new priorities for his database and Xavier’s telepathic intrusion to remove the memory of their deal until the time was right. Xavier and Magneto walked away knowing they had gotten exactly what they had intended, and that Sinister certainly hadn’t known of their coming in advance and arranged a failsafe of his own. [Powers of X #4]
[Note: It is difficult to surmise exactly when the above events took place in Sinister’s timeline. Xavier’s hover chair would indicate it was shortly before Magneto’s falling out with Moira and Charles in X-Men (2nd series) #1-3. However, the visual identifiers for the new “mutant” Sinister and his obsession with mutant genetics predate that moment considerably. It also seems implied that this was before Sinister became an active foe of the X-Men. Furthermore, at no time was Sinister known to have mass-produced himself like this before Uncanny X-Men (2nd series) #1-3.]