All superheroes come with baggage, and they usually emerge only after overcoming numerous challenges as a result of their magical skills. Maggot, an X-Men member who fought to control his odd abilities, was one such hero.
He initially appeared in the Uncanny X-men comics, created by Scott Lobdell and Joe Madureira, and possessed the ability to swallow all kinds of matter. Maggot developed his abilities throughout time and became a member of the core X-Men team. He has developed into a powerful mutant with the help of certain external animals. Let us take a look at his background and see what makes him unique among the X-Men.
The first comic book appearance explored
Maggot’s character was first introduced in the Uncanny X-Men comics. He appears only for a brief moment when he rescues a nun from an unknown supernatural entity. It so happens that a nun gets cornered by a monster, who demands to know about a man named ‘Joseph’ and even threatens her life over the information.
The panicked woman ends up driving her car into a tree- honking her car and hoping to get noticed by anyone around. Maggot picks up her signals for help and sends the two slugs that reside in his body to go after the unknown monster. The slugs make their way through his armor and attack the monster’s vitals and flesh.
As the monster weakens and finally collapses, the nun looks around to find Maggot appearing at the scene while the slugs return to their host. As the nun exclaims that the events of the last few minutes were quite ‘disgusting,’ Maggot assures her that it is definitely not as disgusting as what could have become of her if he wasn’t around to save her.
From a harsh childhood to discovering himself
Maggot’s life was full of hardships ever since his birth, as he tried to make sense of his powers. A young Japheth [who later evolved into the Maggot] was born in a tiny village in South Africa, where he lived with his parents and five siblings. From an infantile age, Japheth’s physical growth was tainted by the slugs that lived in his guts, creating a lot of trouble for his parents. They struggled with the finances of his hospital visits as they tried to find a cure for the excruciating stomach pains that Japheth endured.
Eventually, the doctors concluded that he must be suffering from cancer, and Japheth decided to leave his family. Just at the young age of twelve, he left his village and almost committed suicide so that he didn’t burden his family with his medical expenses. He made his way to the Kalahari desert, where the powerful mutant ‘Magneto’ prevented him from taking his life. Magneto recognized that the young boy had mutant abilities and even helped Japheth uncover the two slugs that lived in his intestines.
Along with some help from Magneto, Japheth managed to rid his body of the slugs, and they named them ‘Eany’ and ‘Meany.’ Magneto accompanied Japheth back to his village, where they received the news that his father had been brutally murdered by a rebel group known as ‘the Afrikaners’.
Magneto helped the village folks by getting rid of the Afrikaners, while Japheth witnessed the fight go down. Magneto even made him an offer to join hands with him, but the young boy vowed to never work with him or assist in such violence. Though Magneto is enraged to hear his refusal, he leaves Japheth alone but not before declaring that he will one day change his mind.
As the years progressed, Maggot struggled with his powers and was unable to control the slugs. The creatures slithered in and out of his stomach every time they needed food, and he had a hard time dealing with the pain. His attempts to subdue the slugs were futile, and they made their way in and out of his body every few hours. After some time, the pain got too excruciating to deal with, and Maggot finally gave up trying to get a hold of the slugs on his own. He decided to look for Magneto and ask the mutant for some help in dealing with the slugs.
Maggot used his powers to track Magneto down and ended up in New York. However, he does not find Magneto there and instead runs into other X-Men such as Psylocke and Archangel. Eventually, they all get teleported to Antarctica, where they end up on the jury for an ongoing trial among the X-Men. Maggot locates Magneto, though this version of the mutant was a clone whose real identity was ‘Joseph.’ Maggot believes him to be the real Magneto and expresses his thanks for looking out for him in his childhood.
Once the trial ended, Maggot decided to accompany the other X-Men to the Xavier Mansion. As the group arrived, they discovered that Cyclops had been in a fight and had a bomb in his body. They extracted the bomb from his chest cavity and saved him, but the bomb continued ticking. While the X-Men looked for ways to detonate it, Maggot’s slugs acted fast and devoured the entire bomb.
Though the bomb exploded in their body, it did not cause much harm to the slugs. Relieved that the crisis has been resolved, the X-Men express their gratitude to Maggot and officially ask him to become one of them. Even as a part of X-Men, Maggot kept to himself and did not share much about his past. He felt uncomfortable eating with others and was positive that they would be horrified by the real nature of the slugs that resided in him.
However, things took a turn when creatures similar to Eany and Meany were attacking humans, resulting in a massacre at the Salem Centre. Furthermore, these creatures also attacked the Wolverine, and the X-Men uncovered that these attacks were caused by Ru’Tai demons that worked for a blood-thirsty monster known as Pilgrimm. Finally, Maggot opened up to Wolverine and talked about his childhood and the true nature of his slugs, and the two X-Men shared a close bond.
Maggot worked alongside the X-Men for some time until the mutant ‘Beast’ returned to Xavier Mansion. Beast suggested that Maggot would have a better place at the Massachusetts Academy, which was a more suitable place for gifted mutants. Maggot agreed to migrate there, but he was soon cornered by a threat in the form of hunters who were looking for Eany and Meany.
He escaped with some help from Generation X, a group of mutant teens that trained with him at the academy. He decided to leave the place and look for the hunter on his own. Maggot then traveled by himself for many years and was not heard of until he returned to Xavier’s Academy to attend Joseph’s funeral.
Death and Revival
When Maggot ventured out on his own, he got cornered by the secret organization called ‘Weapon X.’ Weapon X was a U.S. government project that dealt with experiments with supernatural powers, and they decided to imprison him to study his powers. They kept him at ‘Neverland’ – a concentration camp explicitly made for mutants and supernatural entities.
However, they soon concluded that Maggot’s superpowers were not of any use to their project, and they only required the two slugs – Eany and Meany. The organization allegedly killed Maggot and handed the slugs to young mutant children instead. One of these slugs later ended up in the hands of the mutant-obsessed scientist, Mister Sinister.
Meanwhile, Maggot was brought back to life by using magic as well as an alien virus. He was revived with some help from Selene Gallio, a notorious supervillain who went against the X-men on many occasions. Maggot was also exposed to the ‘techno-organic’ virus that helps revive the dead. After having turned a new page, Maggot returned to the X-Men; and was in attendance when Cyclops spoke about a peaceful mutant revolution in Washington DC.
What makes him such a strange and powerful mutant?
What sets Maggot apart from other mutants is his unique digestive system which was composed of two slugs. These slugs were no regular creatures and were gigantic techno-organic beings that provided Maggot with energy and strength. Though this mutant himself could not consume any food, the slugs devoured almost anything and everything with utmost speed.
They left his body to get their nourishment and even fed off other beings or Maggot’s enemies before returning to their host. The slugs then shared the energy they had obtained with Maggot, thereby supplying him with the strength to keep going.
This energy caused Maggot’s body to turn blue and gave him an extraordinary amount of power and superhuman durability. These slugs also had their own minds and could communicate with Maggot through telepathy. They were pretty intelligent beings and even acted of their own accord at times.
While Maggot is quite capable on his own, he is entirely dependent on the slugs to work as his digestive system. Though he can live apart from them for a short period of time, the slugs help him survive in the long term, and total separation from them could result in his death.
Besides this, Maggot also has the ability to psychometrically recall any event, meaning that he can access information about any incidents that happened in a particular area by just visiting the place. This power also helps him to track people down or even look into the places they may have visited in the past.
Admittedly, his powers are quite strange and different in comparison to the other X-Men. But that doesn’t imply that he is any less mighty, and it is his strange powers that make him the powerful mutant that he is!
Conclusion
To conclude, Maggot is a powerful X-Men, and with added help from his slugs, he is quite undefeatable. After having been through difficulties his entire life, he has become a seasoned fighter. Though he is not a typical mutant, Maggot still possesses a great deal of powers and it is best to stay out of his path!