BIOGRAPHY - Page 1
This is a story about a woman named Nanny and her favorite little boy, the Orphan Maker. From their appearance, it would be easy to assume that Nanny and the Orphan Maker are robots, but they are in fact humans. Born Eleanor Murch, “Nanny” was once a gifted scientist who worked in the field of cyborg technology, alongside her husband Harold. She was employed by an organization known as The Right, an anti-mutant group founded by Cameron Hodge. Despite this, 
she declined to reveal her mutant status to both Hodge and her husband. One day, she found out that her inventions were being used to create super-soldiers that were designed to hunt and kill mutants. She became angry but, when she tried to stop Hodge, she was locked inside one of her own inventions, an egg-shaped suit of armor. The intention was to force her to work for The Right against her will but, instead, being trapped in the suit made her insane. Eventually, she used her suit to help escape the hate group and go into hiding, leaving her husband behind in the process. Soon after, she found a young boy called Peter, who was being experimented on by Mister Sinister. Sinister initially wanted him to be used as a doomsday weapon when all else failed but he realized Peter’s powers were going to become too unstable, so he was slated to be destroyed. Instead, Nanny saved him from destruction and built him a suit of armor that would help stop him from developing the instability Sinister had anticipated. [X-Factor (1st series) #40, Hellions #16]
After saving Peter, Nanny realized she had found a new calling and vowed to save as many mutant children as she could. She figured that she was better equipped than the parents to protect the young mutants. She outfitted herself with high-tech gadgets, vans and aircraft that would allow her to track and “save” her new children. She also built Peter a suit of armor so he was able to capture the children and eliminate their parents. Given his new role, he was dubbed the Orphan Maker and sent after his first target, a boy named Johnny Gallo. Unaware that they 
were being tracked, Johnny and his mother were out shopping one day when a display of Johnny’s newfound power confirmed what Nanny’s instruments told her. Johnny had wandered off, so Nanny confronted his mother from the back of an ice-cream van. However, the Orphan Maker got a little trigger happy and shot the woman before she could say anything. With the woman dead, the duo had to make a quick getaway. They abandoned their plans to kidnap Johnny and he was sent to live with his father. [Slingers #9]
That small setback didn’t stop Nanny and she set off to recruit more children. She decided to take a different approach this time and soon found two young girls whose mutant genes had yet to activate. Though she sent the Orphan Maker into their house whilst everyone was asleep, the two girls woke up, so the Orphan Maker doused them with pixie dust, a powder that acted as a sedative. When their parents burst in, the girls were in a trance-like state and were unable to stop the Orphan Maker from gunning the two adults down. With the two new “Lost Girls” safely on board the aircraft, Nanny flew off into the night to recruit more. [X-Factor (1st series) #33]
Nanny had continued keeping track of Hodge and The Right and soon picked up word that he was talking with a demon lord. Learning that The Right intended to sacrifice a group of mutant infants, Nanny decided to save them instead. Realizing that one of them was very close to their current location, she sent the Orphan Maker to retrieve the little girl. He was more direct this time and entered the house whilst the parents were awake. He murdered them and took the baby girl. [X-Factor (1st series) #34]
Following the list obtained off Hodge, they found themselves at an orphanage in Nebraska. By now, Nanny had drafted a number of young children into the Lost Boys and Girls. They were kept in a docile state using a mixture of Nanny’s telepathy and the pixie dust. Realizing there were too many mutant babies in the orphanage to handle alone, she decided to send in a squad of children to retrieve the babies. By chance, though, Jean Grey and Cyclops from X-Factor were also at the orphanage, as they were trying to track down Cyclops’ son, Nathan. They found a number of babies in incubation chambers in the basement but, as they were freeing them, Nanny and her group burst through the roof. Nanny ordered her children to collect the babies and put them in their craft. When she found out that Cyclops was the father of baby Nathan, she decided she needed to dispatch him so the baby could grow up with her. However, when Cyclops proved more than a match for the Orphan Maker, Nanny came to his aid and entered the fray.
Entering the fight as well, Jean soon realized that two of the Lost Children were in fact her sister’s kids, Gailyn and Joey, who had been missing for a while. Whilst Nanny preached about protecting the children, she was more than happy to spray the area with bullets, something Jean tried to point out. When it became obvious that Nanny wasn’t listening to reason, Jean moved the fight away from the children and goaded Nanny into talking in a bid to distract her so she could come up with a plan to penetrate their armor. However, Nanny soon revealed that she had the same plan of distracting Jean, so that her Lost Boys and Girls could ferry away the babies. Ironically, what neither side realized, until it was too late, was that some demons had been sent to the orphanage to obtain the mutant babies. Whilst the two sides were fighting, the demons had slipped in and kidnapped all the babies. With the babies gone, Nanny scooped up her remaining children and flew off again. [X-Factor (1st series) #35]
Unable to go after the babies, Nanny set her sights on another mutant child, Franklin Richards. They tracked the young son of Mister Fantastic and the Invisible Woman to a house in Connecticut where he was currently living with his parents. Sneaking in and finding him asleep in their bed, the Orphan Maker doused them all in pixie dust and took Franklin. However, when he tried to shoot the two adults, he discovered his bullets were unable to penetrate the Invisible Woman’s shields, which she had subconsciously put up whilst asleep. He left without making Franklin an orphan and then lied to Nanny later on about it.
Nanny quickly discovered exactly who Franklin was and became very alarmed at the prospect of two angry superhero parents chasing them. She punished the Orphan Maker for lying to her and then prepared for the inevitable. By now, Nanny was flying over New York, which had become overrun by demons thanks to an attempted take over from Limbo. [Inferno crossover] The two distraught parents quickly caught up with the abductors and, with help from Steve Rogers, attacked them. The Orphan Maker proved a tough match for them at first but, when he was knocked over, he started to cry like a child and the superheroes became confused as to what was going on. Nanny had a back-up plan and, using some pixie dust, she manipulated Franklin’s 
mind. Then she dressed him up in another suit of armor and sent him to attack his parents. He proved to be much tougher than the Orphan Maker and it was only with the arrival of another hero that the tide was turned. Realizing the situation, Mister Fantastic captured the Orphan Maker and bargained with Nanny for Franklin’s release. Distraught at seeing her favorite child in distress, Nanny reluctantly let Franklin go. However, as she was getting into her aircraft with the Orphan Maker, she sang out one of her trademark nursery rhymes, which acted as a hypnotic trigger in Franklin, causing him to attack his parents. In the chaos, Nanny tried to escape in her ship, only for it to be destroyed by the Invisible Woman. Nevertheless, Nanny jettisoned an escape pod and she and the Orphan Maker disappeared before the heroes could capture them. [Avengers (1st series) #299-300]
Not one to sit around whilst there were children that needed saving, Nanny set her sights on the babies that had been taken from her by the demons. After the failed demon takeover of New York, X-Factor was now in possession of thirteen babies, including Cyclops’ own son, Nathan. Nanny discretely followed X-Factor’s ship and waited for the perfect opportunity to strike, which presented itself when X-Factor took the children to Washington so they could be handed over to the authorities. Using her ship to grab hold of X-Factor’s plane, Nanny and the Orphan Maker boarded it. However, when her suit was damaged in the ensuing fight, Nanny lost control of her ship and would have crashed, had Jean not managed to land the craft using her powers. When X-Factor confronted the duo, they realized for the first time that their foes were actually humans in suits and so the Orphan Maker recounted Nanny’s origin to them. Concealed behind a wall on the ship, Jean discovered Nanny’s Lost Boys and Girls, who were being kept in a stasis that stalled their development so they could never grow up and never get hurt. Outraged at what was being done to them, Jean freed the children, including her niece and nephew. Injured and outnumbered, Nanny and the Orphan Maker teleported away, leaving their ship and all the children they had kidnapped behind with X-Factor. [X-Factor (1st series) #40]