Dr. Nathaniel Essex of Marvel was undeniably brilliant. He was an ordinary family man who was fascinated by evolutionary research and the future prospect of mutants. A normal biologist, to be sure.
Alright, perhaps(?) not so regular. Only one of those events led to his designation as a “crazy, madman,” and there are no brownie points for guessing correctly.
But the reader only realizes this when Essex admits to “not minding becoming a monster for science’s progress.” His family — a wife expecting his second child and a first child he had lost – all took a back seat. Nothing, except ‘science not bound by moral turpitudes,’ was worth his time, according to our villain.
Another super-villain, the mutant Apocalypse, who figuratively was a present topped with a ribbon for Essex’s study objectives, appreciated that mentality. It was enough of a draw for Essex, who eventually became Mister Sinister after undergoing genetic mutation at Apocalypse’s hands.
MISTER SINISTER – From a Scientist to a Dangerous Mutant!
A Victorian scientist regarded as a genius like no other, Nathaniel Essex was born in England sometime during the 19th century. He was an ardent follower of Darwin’s, and his ideas included making mutants someday in the future. Essex’s fascination with science was to an extent where he kept all feelings and morale aside and dug up his 4-year-old dead son Adam’s body to experiment upon. Marc Silvestri and Chris Claremont seemed to have no filters about gruesome details, and that makes for this back-story to be quite dark.
The horrific extent that he went to, to prove his way of thought process to the Royal Society was so morally corrupt that it caused his membership to be at risk. At one of their lectures, he attempted to shed light on the evolution and how fast it could go if science and humans were to utilize their true potential. Dramatically as he had planned to, he unveiled a monstrous creature made during one of his botched experiments, entirely composed of human and animal organs put together. The other people present there were rightfully disturbed by the sight, banishing him from society right after. Needless to say, Essex had no regrets. He had no plans of stopping his work and research on ‘Essex Factors’ that would establish the existence of mutants in the future he saw.
Running headfirst into trouble the Marauders right after, he managed to make an acquaintance out of the weird criminals, who in return kept Essex’s supply of organs, etc. going steady. In an unprecedented move, the Marauders caused the wake of an immortal mutant En Sabah Nur. Nur met Essex and revealed to him that Essex’s theory of existing mutants was now evidenced – Nur had powers making him the mutant, Apocalypse. Being one of the world’s first of his kind, he was special and very interested in Essex’s work, which he conveyed to Essex at Hellfire Club, a mutant terrorist group. Ironically enough, the last time Essex had approached the Hellfire Group was to fund his research.
On one instance, Jean Grey a.k.a. Phoenix, and Scott Summers as Cyclops met Essex and Apocalypse as travelers from the future. This confrontation was the result of Madame Sanctity of the Clan Askani sending the Phoenix and Cyclops to stop Apocalypse from being born and growing into having the destructive powers they knew he would come to have as he rose. Mildly stated, Essex was fascinated with the time-traveling couple, but Apocalypse was a power-hungry madman and he placed the two of them under captivity.
Essex was reminded of his wife Rebecca back home, who he had left pregnant with their second child when he came on his adventures with Apocalypse. He attempted to make a return to their lives, but by then Rebecca had found out about Essex digging up the body of their dead first child, and she was disgusted to her core. Rebecca set free all of Essex’s captives before he got back home, and denied him any modicum of forgiveness. She died in front of Essex’s eyes, prematurely birthing their second child and making sure Essex knew she did not think any good of him. Rebecca’s last words to Essex were gut-wrenching but deserved by Essex, no doubt – she called him “utterly and contemptibly sinister”.
Devastated and maddened further by her words and the overall situation, Essex returned to Nur and was quite complacent as Apocalypse transformed him into his prelate. The process of Celestial Technology was painful and made Dr. Essex a pale, unfading monster. Urged by Apocalypse to embrace his new identity and leave the past where it belonged – behind him – Essex took on the last thing his otherwise loving wife called him, “Sinister”, and made that his name. As Mister Sinister, he voluntarily let whatever humanity remained in him to be chiseled out, leaving him with objective clarity but no morality.
MISTER SINISTER: The First Impactful Comic-Book Appearance
Nathaniel Essex as Mister Sinister has an origin story, revealed in and traced through a four-part mini-series ‘The Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix. The cover itself features the man in all his glory, and a bold declaration of his origin ‘beginning here’. It may be a matter of choice here on now, but we look at Issue 221 of Uncanny X-Men for his first full appearance and one of his best ones in print, at that.
The Issue opens with Mister Sinister admonishing the Marauders over their failure to kill Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean Grey. Madelyne was created by Mister Sinister himself to act as a mutant he could control to overthrow Apocalypse, but now she was now needed to be gone off all records. Madelyne had survived the Marauder’s assassination attempts, and was then recovering in the San Fransisco Memorial Hospital’.
After making his displeasure clear, Sinister put together Arclight, Harpoon, Polaris, Sabretooth, Scalphunter, Scrambler, and Vertigo in a team and sent them off another time to ensure Madelyne’s death, impliedly making it clear that another failed attempt would go down worse for them. The team seemed quite obedient – and who wouldn’t be, especially after seeing Sabretooth’s sorry attempt to attack his master Sinister; then getting thrown aside as an insect spotted in the water.
Meanwhile, in the Danger Room at the School for Gifted Youngsters headed by Professor X, Dazzler was refining her skills through training against a hologram of Rogue. Rogue did not take to that kindly, as she believed Dazzler was not seeing her beyond the ugly past she has had. As they are arguing it out, there occurred a telepathic intervention from Psylocke. Psylocke informed them of Wolverine’s call of ‘Emergency’, and that the X-Men needed to gather at Memorial Hospital immediately.
It turned out that a terrified-out-of-her-wits Madelyne Pryor had given them a call for help. She was deeply upset about the attack on her, which had probably wiped out her identity altogether and her family was nowhere to be found. Meanwhile, Wolverine had already been informed of the Marauders hanging around and about the hospital. Logan mentioned this to his team, telling them that it would not come as a surprise if the Marauders tried attacking Madelyn again, as they had the first time.
He was additionally convinced when Betsy said that two Marauders were perhaps already in the close vicinity of Madelyn. At that, the X-Men sprung into immediate action, and Rogue went in first. It CLEARLY wasn’t exactly Sabretooth’s day it seemed, because, for the second time in the course of this comic’s plot arc, the monstrous devil was taken over – this second time by Rogue.
Rogue finally reached Madelyn’s room, only to find Scalphunter’s gun pointed straight at her, about to take her out. Rogue’s arrival distracted Scalphunter though, and as soon as he turned his gun to Rogue instead, Madelyn pulled off the brave act of smashing Scalphunter’s head with a food tray kept nearby. Scalphunter only got angrier, attempting to follow her as she tried to escape but he was rendered immobile by Dazzler’s laser blast from a whole street across.
As Madelyn, supported by Psylocke and Longshot reaches the rooftop of the hospital in a final bid to escape, the trio is met with the likes of Vertigo. Having been disoriented, Longshot jumps off the roof with the other two women in a desperate attempt to save their lives. His power of luck works as they land softly on the back of a truck. Here though, tragedy strikes in the form of Harpoon, whose energy weapon strikes Psylocke.
The pain from that experience is felt by all other X-Men too, especially the ones still in the hospital building fighting against the Marauders. Havok and Wolverine are seen together here, completely disoriented by pain. Scramble took advantage of that and made Havok go all out-of-control, causing structural damage to the hospital building. Wolverine was just stunned by the force of these events but Scrambler assumed him dead as he pushed only Havok down a hole in the floor to end him too, for once and for all.
A few more thrilling panels with lots of action later, the escape story begins. Wolverine, having been put out of his stunned state, met Rogue and asked her to make an immediate escape from the area with Madelyne in tow. They obeyed immediately and, on their journey, Rogue realized she was just as clueless as Madelyne was about why the Marauders wanted to make Madelyn their victim.
Before they could have too many thoughts on the issue, they were made the subject of an attack by Polaris. Polaris managed to bind the two escapees to exposed beams made of steel, laying around on a construction site sitting on a deep foundation. Polaris ripped those beams out and with the two tied to them, propelled the whole thing into the waters of the San Francisco Bay.
Dazzler was our hero here, as she not only managed to use Longshot’s hook to grab them and save them from drowning, but she also made sure that Rogue would be safe even after Madelyn swam to her freedom. Given their previous altercations, Rogue did not believe in Dazzler’s feelings towards her being friendly in any way, let alone kind or heroic enough to risk saving her life at the risk of Dazzler herself drowning.
Right at that moment of a ‘dawn of realization’ if you will, Polaris came in on the scene and this time around, she had no plans of missing her “delightfully difficult to kill” targets’ death in her hands.
MISTER SINISTER: In ‘X-Men: The Animated Series
In Season 2 of ‘X-Men: The Animated Series’, Nathaniel Essex appeared as a recurring villain in his well-known form of Mister Sinister. His part continued for pretty much the rest of the series – an apostate scientist obsessively researching genes and genetic mutation, trying to bend nature to serve his evil ways.
His background tale is slightly altered here – he remained a believer of Darwin’s theories but his reasoning and aim of research were different. This time around, he was trying to attain God-hood for his wife Rebecca Grey, and himself by way of advanced evolution as Rebecca was terminally ill.
He managed to make a serum that empowered him with regenerative abilities. While the entire town thought he had lost his mind in the pressure of the impending loss of his life, he fled the place. His pale white but significantly more powerful self, took on the name Mister Sinister, continuing to look for colleagues who would support and embolden him as he tried to create the ideal, evolved world.
Voiced by Christopher Britton, his presence was quite remarkable and important for the plot. In his final show of the series, his ultimate aim is shown as defeating Phalanx, which he achieves. Following that, he disappears into an alley as dark as his character arc and is acceptably never seen again.
MISTER SINISTER: What Makes Him So Powerful?
Before anything else, one must know that Mister Sinister us an Alpha-Level mutant, one of the most powerful of his kind. Altered at the genome level as the human Dr. Essex, Mister Sinister largely owes his wide selection of powers to Apocalypse’s experiments on him. That aside he of course obtained – forcefully and otherwise – genetic material from other mutants and allowed himself to have more advanced powers like teleportation.
Sinister can heal from injuries as serious as gunshots or stabs quite fast, regenerating damaged tissue and muscle at a pace quicker than his opponents. Thus, his high stamina and strength come as no surprise. Being able to control every fiber of his being gives Sinister the unique ability to morph into anyone or anything since he can shape-shift at the cellular level. That means, he can be any animal, human, machine, or weapon he chooses to be. He is incredibly fast too and can fly at such high paces as well. He has his own force field and is capable of telekinesis.
Sinister has quick reflexes, allowing him to often dodge lethal attacks. He can read minds and project his own thoughts onto others as well, while he himself is resistant to it. Creating memories in people’s heads, erasing old ones, manipulating them – Sinister can do all of these and he only needs the being to be in his presence. With his hands, eyes, or even a diamond-shaped red mark on his forehead, he can fire force blasts of destructive nature.
MISTER SINISTER: Closing In
Over the years of loving and appreciating the presence of villains in the world of comics – be it in print media or the cinematic universe – Mister Sinister has come to be appreciated for his evil genius and dedication to making life hard for our superheroes. It is not an easy business to write a character arc impactful enough to not take away a superhero’s glory but to still have it be etched in the minds of people. Mister Sinister was and remains a geneticist with incredible brain-power which he is due to be given credit for. Gene-manipulation – and to study it deeply enough to achieve it successfully into your devious moves in a way it wouldn’t be frowned upon – INCREDIBLE.
His one desire was to break free of Apocalypse’s control on him. To achieve that, he met and manipulated a number of reps of the mutant race. The results – Madelyne Pryor, Nathan Summers were incredible characters on their own with downright impressive independent stories. When Krakoa was founded by Professor X, Mister Sinister was made a member of the government there, aside from of course, being given citizenship. To serve his personal interests, he had his mutant group labeled “Hellions”. The Krakoa Resurrection Protocols were a direct conclusion of Sinister’s work in the classification of all mutant genomes.
In the world of movies, Fox’s X-Men probably wanted Mister Sinister to be the next big villain out there, but before that dream could materialize into more, Disney bought Fox. A clear fan favorite, Mister Sinister is that villain you want to watch out for! A part of several historical events in the X-Men franchise when it comes to comics, fans are rightfully hungry for more of him on the silver-screen.