Let us ask you a question: what do birds, insects, dogs, and humans have in common? Was it the fact that they all share a life together that drew your attention first? Okay, now think about it some more. We do not have beaks as birds have. So they must be a completely different species, right?
If you answered yes, then congratulations; you have arrived at the same conclusion about genetics and biological evolution as pre-19th century humans. Fun fact: when it was originally found, it was denounced as heresy! To call On the Origin of the Species a foundational work of literature that has affected world history unlike any other before or after it is not an exaggeration.
Because how many people can claim to have cracked the human genetic code as well as the secret of all life on the planet? Charles Darwin is regarded as one of the most influential figures in history. We can safely tell you that the answer to the question we posed before is that they all evolved from a common universal ancestor who lived roughly 3.8 billion years ago, thanks to him.
Ed Brubaker and Pete Woods decided to immortalize The Father of Evolution by introducing him as a member of the mutant community to Marvel readers in 2006. Darwin, who first appeared in X-Men: Deadly Genesis Vol 1 issue #2, has the ability to survive in any environment. He is one of Professor X’s Uncanny Mutants’ most dependable and fascinating members. This is Darwin’s Origins, Explored, and we are going to look at the man who can adapt to anything.
Darwin Backstory Explored
There are many explanations for the existence of mutants in the Marvel Universe; but for the most part, they face the same reaction right after they’ve been born. Though they’re classified as Homo superior by biologists the world over, mutantkind has always been treated as an abomination.
It was no different for a young Armando Muñoz, who in his parents’ eyes, was born an abomination. Soon after his birth, it became clear that Armando was a mutant when his reactive evolutionary powers caused his body to mutate in accordance with the environment. His father, Hector, would claim that Armando “wasn’t his” and ended up abandoning his family when Armando was just 4 years old because he looked so…alien.
He was bald as an egg, had abnormally elongated arms, and his eyes suffered from a constant, fluctuating state of Heterochromia iridum. His mother would later blame Charles Darwin and his discovery of the theory of evolution for her son’s accursed existence.
Growing up, Armando faced brutal discrimination from his peers. Being an Afro-Hispanic male, he led a marginalized existence as it is, facing all the discrimination that a minority community suffers from in the rougher parts of America. His misery was compounded by his mother, who completely rejected his existence and wanted nothing to do with him. But Armando didn’t take that to heart; she was still his mother, hateful or otherwise, and he loved her with all of his beings.
He would do anything in his power to make her love him. Armando thought the day had finally come when his efforts would be reciprocated with love when, at 8 years of age, an IQ test revealed that he possessed a genius-level intellect; far beyond anything ever seen for a child so young.
Unbeknownst to anyone at the time, in his desperation to impress his mother, Armando Muñoz subconsciously activated his mutation which allowed him to test off the charts. Delighted by the prospect of her son being a super-genius in the vein of Albert Einstein, Mrs. Muñoz enrolled Armando into the Biltmore Academy for Advanced Education.
Or at least that’s what she told him; because her real reason for shipping Armando off to boarding school was to get rid of him, once and for all. We imagine her celebrating that very night for finally getting rid of the freak who lived in her house; but for Armando, his hardships were just beginning.
Boarding school was hell for him. His teachers loved him; he was the straight ace of the institute, the model student who could do no wrong in their eyes. Well, Armando was very disciplined. But his peers didn’t like all the attention that he was getting from the people who were supposed to be helping shape their futures. They turned their frustrations toward the new kid and bullied him relentlessly for his achievements and his perceived “otherness”.
During one such confrontation, Armando decided that he’d had enough; he was done with the oppression and discrimination he had been facing since he began his life on Earth. When his bullies shoved his head in a toilet bowl, Armando discovered that he could somehow breathe underwater.
He lifted his head out of the toilet and for the first time in his life, Armando Muñoz fought back. It was as if his body was responding to the rage and the emotions welling up inside of him; his body became hard as concrete, and he beat his bullies so far into submission that they never so much as touched him again.
He realized that day the true nature of his existence; that he, like a rare few, was a mutant. And that his genetic makeup was the source of the discrimination he had faced his entire life; not evolution.
By this point, Mrs. Muñoz had taken to smoking heavily within the house. Packets of cigarettes rushed through her lungs like oxygen for a regular human being. And then one night, she left one of her cancer sticks alight and fell asleep. By the time she realized the smoke she smelt wasn’t from her cigarette, it was already too late; the house was on fire and they had to do something about it; quick.
Unaffected by the flames to the astonishment of firefighters, paramedics, and his own mother, Armando carried them both out of the burning house and saved their lives from burning away to ashes. He finally embraced his nature and told his mother what he really was; a Homo superior, a carrier of the X-Gene, an uncanny Mutant.
Though he had just saved her life and loved her unconditionally despite her horrid treatment of him, Mrs. Muñoz rejected her son because of what he was. Dejected, he allowed scientists and government officials to test his cellular structure and learn more about his mutant abilities; all in the name of science, of course.
They’d put him in a pitch-black room and he’d develop night vision. They’d subject him to immense heat and his body would adapt to block its effects mere microseconds post-impact. The scientists gave him the name that he would go on to use as a member of Charles Xavier’s X-Men; Darwin, the Evolving Boy.
Eventually, frustrated with his position in society and by his constant failure at finding love and companionship, Armando tries to end it all. He climbs to the top of a very tall building and decides to take the leap that will lead to endless peace. His body betrays him by turning him so soft & light, that he lands like a feather on the ground.
Let down by everything and everyone that he knows, a broken Armando Muñoz takes his troubles where he can; to his school’s psychiatrist. All he’s ever wanted was to be treated normally; to be a part of society as best as he can be, to make his mother proud, to get the love that he’s been denied since the crib.
Instead, his father abandons him, his mother rejects him, and everyone that he knows is only interested in him for what he is, not who. He gets a ray of hope in the form of a certain someone who works with other kids like him, and was very interested in meeting him; Moira McTaggert, the woman who ran an institution for Mutants quite similar to Charles Xaviers’.
Moira recruited Armando to become a part of an emergency ops team that was assembled to rescue the X-Men from Krakoa, the Living Island. Since then, Darwin has become a part of the main X-Men team and has played a vital role in helping mutantkind co-exist with all other forms of sentient life in the cosmos.
Darwin Various Story Arcs
Darwin’s career as a superhero was cut short almost as soon as it began. Moira McTaggert’s team for taking care of the Krakoan Problem included Vulcan, Petra, Sway & Darwin. Only one of those four would make it out of the encounter with his body intact; the rest would be much less fortunate. After battling it out with Krakoa and realizing that they were no match for him, Petra & Sway were killed by the being, while Darwin and Vulcan were engulfed into a void created by their combined powers, unleashed at the time of their deaths. Darwin, realizing that his friends would be lost forever if he didn’t act fast enough, decided to essentially sacrifice himself.
After absorbing the life essence of his teammates, Darwin dissipates his corporeal form into pure energy and integrates it with Vulcan’s consciousness to ensure that all of them make it out of Krakoa alive; one way or the other. After Polaris shot Krakoa’s body into space, the duo laid dormant for years before Vulcan was re-awakened due to the events of M-Day; aka the Day Mutantkind Died. The Shi’ar returned to Earth with a bloody vengeance, vowing to make the X-Men pay for abandoning him for years on end.
He started off his twisted crusade by killing the mutant Banshee, and almost killed Wolverine too. It was only when Jean separated Darwin’s energy from Vulcan’s consciousness that he became vulnerable enough to be subdued. Vulcan simply brushed off their attacks and fled to his home planet Shi’ar, with images of his mother’s homicide plaguing his rage-filled mind. In the meantime, Beast marveled at the fact that Darwin’s powers had amplified to the point he was able to regain his physical form after converting himself into pure energy.
A rejuvenated Darwin then played a key peacekeeping role in Vulcan’s brutal Shi’ar Empire coup-de-tat. Professor X had hoped that the presence of his old friend would make Gabriel see reason. Little did he know how wrong his intuition was. Darwin did manage to get through to Vulcan, where the other X-Men were simply getting themselves mauled by his immense strength. Unfortunately, he was also enslaved by the man he once shared a consciousness with and forced to serve as the “Best Man” for his wedding ceremony with Deathbird.
He eventually broke out of his bonds and saved his mentor from being trapped in the cosmic labyrinth that is the M’Kraan Crystal. In the aftermath of M-Day, when the first mutant was born into the world, Darwin helped protect her from the Marauders, the Purifiers, Predator X & Cable, alongside his fellow X-Men. Sometime before that, in what has to be one of the most hilarious manifestations of his mutant ability, Darwin was fighting The Hulk during the World War Hulk storyline and his body decided that the best course of action would be to simply teleport away from Bruce Banner!
Darwin suffered through an awkward reunion with his father when Hector tracked him down with the help of X-Force Investigations. But as it turns out, once a deadbeat, always a deadbeat. Hector tried to sell his son to the mysterious Karma Project for half a million dollars, but Darwin had had enough of the emotional abuse and escaped, leaving his father to go to prison for life.
He joined X-Factor and helped save Lenore from Cortex and Invisible Woman from Dr. Doom as part of the special unit. Armando went through an existential crisis after he helped rescue Pip the Troll from the Goddess of Death, Hela. After undergoing a metamorphosis unlike any before, which saw him “absorb” Hela’s powers of Death, Darwin became traumatized by the experience.
He started getting visions of the apocalyptic Tier and became embroiled in a journey that marked him out as the potential savior of all life on Earth from the forces of Hell. When he failed to bring himself to inflict lethal force against Tier, he re-joined X-Factor and battled against the demonic entities known as the Hell Lords. Most recently, as part of the Dawn of X storyline, Darwin became a part of a 3-man team that was going to infiltrate The Vault and learn the secrets of its ultra-advanced civilization, known to us only as The Children.
Wolverine and Synch, Darwin’s teammates, would be killed off in the course of their centuries-long intel assignment, while Darwin himself would be captured and experimented upon by The Children. Using his mutant ability, they were able to further evolve themselves into Fourth-Generation Beings of limitless powers and capabilities. He was later resurrected alongside his teammates by Professor X and Moira McTaggert in a hidden chamber on the mutant nation of Krakoa.
What Makes Darwin Powerful?
Well, for starters, we don’t even know the full extent of his mutant powers! Darwinian evolutionary theory suggests that all evolution is based on the concept of the “Survival of the Fittest”. Well, Armando Muñoz’s body takes that mantra quite literally. Darwin can adapt to any distressing environment- physical, emotional, or mental- with a near-instant reaction time.
He gained night-vision after a few seconds of being left in the dark during his time as a test subject; manifested functional gills after being given a nasty swirly; increased his own intelligence just to impress his mom; and acquired comprehension of the Shi’ar language merely by looking at written samples. But while it would be a more conventional mutant ability if he could control the powers he manifested, it’s their reactionary that makes Darwin so unique; and so damn hard to kill. When he was exposed to flames, his body immediately reacted by turning his skin fire-proof, as if on instinct.
Darwin’s mutation effectively makes him a cockroach during a nuclear apocalypse: he can survive any damn thing thrown at him. It also makes him functionally immortal, as he has shown the ability to survive being disintegrated into pure energy. Darwin was able to survive Hela’s Touch of Death, which works literally the way you think it does. She touches you, and you’re as good as dead.
But Darwin’s body allowed him to actually siphon off some of Hela’s cosmic powers and transformed him into a Lord of the Dead-type figure for a brief time; such is its tenacity. Additionally, it seems like his powers also manifest as a reaction to his thought process. He can be as strong as he needs to be to “adapt” to his opponent’s strength. Or, he can simply escape a situation if his body deems his opponent to be too strong to engage with.
While his powers may seem meager at first, Darwin has constantly proven himself to be an invaluable member of the X-Men, as he is one of the only people who can survive under truly inhospitable conditions. He has breathed in space, walked across the halls of the M’Kaar Crystal’s hidden dimension unharmed, and spent 200 years with The Children of the Vault. Even though the powers he gained from Hela have long since been drained from his body, Darwin can still detect when someone is dying. That’s the reason why, after all these years, he still continues to be called the Harbinger of Death.
Darwin In X-Men: First Class
Though he is one of the newer additions to the mutant society, it seems Darwin enjoys some mainstream popularity. How else would you explain his presence in the 2011 movie X-Men: First Class, just 5 years after he was created for Marvel Comics?!
This version of Darwin was portrayed by Edi Gathegi and was Kenyan-American, as opposed to being Afro-Hispanic. By profession, Darwin was an immigrant cab driver trying to earn an honest living in the Greatest City in the World. That all changed when Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr approached him to join a CIA-backed team of mutant operatives.
Darwin’s team members included Havok, Banshee, Angel, Beast & Mystique. The team blew off some steam by partying in the CIA compound and getting to know each other, with Darwin using his abilities to show off his “party tricks”. Sadly, his performance would be cut short by Sebastian Shaw, who forced Darwin to swallow a blast so strong, that the only acceptable reaction his body could think of was spontaneous combustion. Talk about a bleak after-party. He made another cameo appearance in the Wolverine and the X-Men episode “Future X”, where he was seen escaping a sentinel attack in the Future.
Why Darwin Deserves More Recognition
In a world that is all about embracing the very idea of being different, Darwin is still one of the unique things to exist in it. Despite being conceived relatively recently, it’s actually surprising that Darwin even made it to the big screen; considering how massive and ancient the X-Men pantheon is. But you won’t hear us complaining too much about that. Armando Muñoz is a character that, once you get to know him personally, is too hard to not root for.
All of us have been where he was at one point in our lives, no matter the degree or intensity of the act itself. We know what it’s like to be abandoned, to be told we’re “not enough”, to be ostracized just because we are different. For Armando, that hell was doubly worse, because he was marginalized on all fronts of his life. That makes us feel for him on a deeper level than most other X-Men.
And of course, Darwin has one of the coolest superpowers in the history of superpowers, period. I mean, adapting to the Goddess of Death by literally becoming her anti-thesis? Thanos cannot even stop tripping over his laces when he sees her, for crying out loud! Armando Muñoz is one of the most interesting X-Men to be created in recent memory and is someone you should definitely keep an eye out for.