The Age of Apocalypse reality, which altered the Marvel Universe in the 1990s and introduced readers to Nate Grey, the mutant known as X-Man, was one of the most famous realities the X-Men encountered throughout the universe.
Nate Grey, the most powerful mutant ever created through genetic engineering, is a living divinity thanks to his abilities. He is the child of Jean Grey and Scott Summers, better known as Cyclops, in the Age of Apocalypse universe. He is significantly more powerful than his more well-known alternate form, Cable, and possesses such tremendous powers that he can instantly create or destroy whole universes.
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Backstory of one of the strong mutants explored
The genetically engineered mutant Nate Grey, better known as X-Man, was created by Mister Sinister from Cyclops and Jean Grey’s DNA. In March 1995, Nate Grey made his comic book debut in X-Man #1, which was written by Jeph Loeb and illustrated by Steve Skroce. Nate was transported to Earth-616 from his home planet of the Age of Apocalypse using a piece of the M’kraan Crystal. After the Age of Apocalypse, Nate, Blink, and Morph were meant to start their own X-Men squad, but this never materialized. The Exiles were created as a result, and the X-Man moniker was kept.
X-Man was created in Earth-295, the parallel reality known as the Age of Apocalypse, and is one of just a few to escape the end of this world. Nathan Grey was named after his creator, Mister Sinister and Jean Grey. Using DNA from his foster son Scott Summers, also known as Cyclops, and the abducted Jean Grey, Mister Sinister, an underling of the High Lord Apocalypse, genetically developed X-Man to be the ultimate telepath and telekinetic.
Nate was raised in a test tube at Sinister’s lab and was only allowed out every few years to be tested on his growth. Mister Sinister could sense Nate’s immense powers of telepathy and telekinesis even in these few instances when he was out of his test tube, making him perhaps the most powerful mutant on Earth. These incredible levels of strength persuaded Mister Sinister that X-Man should have a “fail-safe.”
Nate quickly reached his adolescence. Cyclops assisted Nate in escaping Sinister’s lair during one of his frequent subversive assaults on Sinister’s pens, with neither man understanding his relationship with the other. Nate ended up under the mentorship of Forge and many other mutant misfits who sought to aid humanity while masquerading as a theatrical group.
Nate looked up to Forge as a father figure. Forge started the long process of teaching Nate how to control his powers and the advantages of being a “good guy.” Nate was warned that utilizing his skills indiscriminately may lead to Apocalypse discovering his existence.
Forge also cautioned Nate that his abilities would eventually wear him out. Nate violated Forge’s instructions and participated when he and his Outcasts halted a train carrying people to a culling. Sonique, a little mutant girl, was saved by him. Nate persuaded Forge to let her join them.
Later, they came upon the traveling wanderer Essex, who was actually Sinister in disguise, tracking Nate’s path. Essex urged Nate to defy Forge’s instructions and use his abilities. Essex persuaded the Outcasts to look inside one of Apocalypse’s factories, which Nate had destroyed. The use of his abilities alerted Apocalypse about his whereabouts, and he dispatched his minion Domino to either recruit or kill Nate.
Domino and her squad hunted down Nate and his companions and murdered the majority of them. Nate utilized his abilities to erase Domino’s memory. He was, however, too late to prevent Essex from murdering Forge. Essex was soon confirmed to be Sinister. Nate seemingly killed Sinister after discovering his genuinely evil nature.
Nonetheless, Essex persuaded Nate to fight Apocalypse. Nate kissed Sonique farewell before setting out towards Apocalypse’s fortress in Manhattan. He met his biological parents, Scott Summers and Jean Grey, there. Nate and Jean realized right away that their telepathy had created a relationship between them. Nate planned to meet up with Scott and Jean after he had defeated Apocalypse while they were leading a break out in the slave pens.
He made his move while the X-Men were attempting to fix their imbalanced world using the M’Kraan Crystal in their final desperate attempt. Nate saved Magneto in the final confrontation, who recognized him as the kid Forge had promised to deliver him one day. Nate faced off against Apocalypse’s son Holocaust. Holocaust was pierced with a shard of crystal by Nate. The resultant collision shifted them both to the Earth-616 world.
Nate landed like a meteor in the Swiss Alps, causing a colossal psi-wave that affected telepaths including Charles Xavier, Jean Grey, and Psylocke and was also detected by Blaquesmith. In a subconscious attempt to reach out to his supposed mother, he inadvertently revived Madelyne Pryor, a clone of Jean Grey. Nate walked the world, being approached and confronted by many who wanted to be his ally, including Professor X, Rogue, Moira MacTaggart, Mr. Sinister, Bishop, Havok’s Brotherhood, and others.
Nate sought safety in New York with the assistance of Sinister’s former underling, Threnody. Threnody finally left, refusing to address questions about her history, despite Nate’s persisting worries about her link to Sinister. He assumed Threnody was dead and formed a strong connection with Spider-Man.
Nate was telepathically notified that he was the only one near enough to save the children of Jean’s sister, Sara Grey, from the Prime Sentinels when Zero Tolerance forces invaded Xavier’s house in Westchester County and downloaded Cerebro’s archives. Nate rescued them and Roust while leaving Joey and Gailyn in the hands of their grandparents while the Sentinels were still looking for the unnamed telepath.
Nate kept a subdued profile for the following few weeks. He went partying with three ladies one night: Jam, Bux, and Marita, and many people recognized him from his Central Park performances. Nate was invited to sing with the band, and although having never performed on stage before, he did rather well. However, the event was cut short by the appearance of Jackknife, who was chasing down and killing everyone Nate came into touch with.
Jackknife, who, in reality, was Jack Cole, was one of the numerous outcasts in the Abomination’s gang. During Nate’s struggle with the Abomination, he unintentionally activated Cole’s latent psychic abilities. Jack couldn’t control himself and went insane, blaming Nate for the voices in his brain. When the cops arrived, Nate defeated the mentally ill misfit. They begged him to surrender, but the onlookers intervened, proclaiming Nate to be a hero.
Jam lost an arm in a motorbike accident the next day. Something weird happened when Nate, Bux, and Marita paid her a visit in the Empire State Hospital. Dr. Marcus Arlington III discovered the capacity to heal after touching Nate and repairing Jam’s arm. The miracle increased Nate’s reputation even further, and he was now regarded as a messiah by hundreds of followers.
The Purple Man appeared soon after. He utilized his talents and a few mercenaries to discredit Nate by portraying him as a terrorist. After defeating Killgrave, Nate obliterated his memories from the minds of all New Yorkers.
This Omega Level mutant was called a Living God
Nate’s enormous strength instantly draws the attention of both friends and adversaries. He is the world’s strongest telepath and also the most adept. On one occasion, he is able to simultaneously mind control influential individuals like Omega Red, Legion, and Magneto. He is also depicted conversing with people all across the Multiverse and conveying a message to everyone on Earth.
Nate’s telekinesis, which has nearly no limit, is also much more potent than anyone else. He has the ability to shift a planet’s tectonic plates as well as deconstruct and rearrange molecular and atomic structures. Moira McTaggart previously described Nate as a psychic who challenges a Phoenix Force-imbued Jean Grey, yet they are only his most basic abilities. X-Man is a reality-altering mutant who once built his own realm, the Age of X-Man, which he shaped into a mutant utopia.
The X-Man series, which ran for 76 issues between 1995 and 2001, did an excellent job of continuously highlighting Nate’s abilities and the fact that he is the most powerful mutant ever. He’s definitely at least an Omega Level mutant. However, that’s a limiting term, and he’s been dubbed the most powerful and dangerous being in the world, the ultimate mutant, and the most powerful psychic in all of reality.
However, Norman Osborn saw Nate’s potential more than anybody else during his Dark Reign, dubbing him a living god. Unfortunately, X-Man’s confrontation with Norman Osborn resulted in Nate being beaten by the Dark X-Men and the Dark Avengers and then confined in the Omega Machine, a terrifying device used to drain his energies. Nate was rescued by the New Mutants and sent to Utopia Island, but his powers had been lowered to that of a “regular” psychic, and he was no longer at his prior level.
Nate later regained his full strength by utilizing a Celestial relic known as a Life Seed and became even stronger than before, if that was possible. He is now categorized as “above Omega Level.” His longevity, however, was predetermined from the start since Mister Sinister implanted a “time bomb” into his DNA when he created him. With his death looming, Nate sought to make the world a better place – by force – which pitted him against the X-Men. As a result, Nate Grey behaved in a genuine godlike manner, created his own universe, and is now attempting to perfect that world while leaving Earth-616 alone.
The incredible powers of Nathaniel Grey explored
Nate was designed to be the most powerful mutant on the planet, as well as the most powerful psychic possible. He was labeled an Omega Level Mutant, a first-order psi, an Alpha-Psi, and an Omega Level Threat. He was referred to as the most powerful and deadly being in the world, the ultimate mutant, the most powerful psychic in any reality, nigh omnipotent, and a living deity. As he developed in strength, he was able to destroy whole worlds if he so desired. Even a smidgeon of his abilities resulted in an almost immediate overload of Omega and Mimic.
He would often use his telepathy to read and control multiple minds at the same time, as well as read residual thought imprints left on objects touched by people, communicate with others by broadcasting his thoughts and create illusions by altering other people’s perceptions. He could also fire psionic blasts that could scramble an opponent’s thought processes, causing the victim either intense pain or rendering them unconscious, project his mind into the astral plane and even pull the astral projections of other telepaths into the physical world, and sense dimensional rifts or anomalies.
His telekinesis was so strong that he could manipulate enormous items with his thoughts, fire psychokinetic energy blasts strong enough to shatter steel, build mental barriers strong enough to halt most attacks, float his body, and fly at supersonic speeds. While sleeping in Buenos Aires, Argentina, he demolished the whole city of San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador; the towns are nearly 2600 miles distant.
His telekinesis was so incredible that he could make holograms by mentally manipulating water, molecules, and dust to refract light, bend security lasers to evade detection, and even manipulate the atoms of a wall around his shape, allowing him to pass through it like a ghost. He could also bend the Earth’s magnetic field and generate electromagnetic pulses with his telekinesis. His telekinesis reached at least a molecular level, and he could endow himself with superhuman physical abilities by directing his telekinesis inwards.
Nate demonstrated additional abilities after his brief return from his dimensional travels, including the ability to view and traverse higher planes of existence, to reconstitute his body from cosmic energy in the same way that Onslaught did, and to transform his physical body back into cosmic energy.
Though not an actual teleporter, he was able to go to different realities by breaking down the boundaries between universes and once ‘teleported’ numerous individuals into another realm from an alternate version of New York. Because he could connect any spot in one dimension to any point in the dimension he was in at the time, he could hypothetically utilize this to go back and forth over massive interplanetary distances.
Some lesser-known facts about Nate Grey
Did you know that Nate became a mutant Shaman?! He wanted to help protect and guide his mutant tribe. Nate Grey met another version of himself when he confronted the Red Queen from a parallel reality, who revealed that the Red Queen hunted out other Greys and used them as weapons in her conquest of the multiverse. That Grey chose to be a shaman for his people rather than the destroyer the Red Queen desired, and after both Greys were forced to merge their abilities, the 616 Nate Grey returned to his reality and followed in the footsteps of his deceased counterpart as a shaman.
Nate Grey also chose to sacrifice himself selflessly. It was his first sacrifice to remove the genocidal danger by plunging the M’Kraan Crystal into Holocaust. However, it eventually had a different result, and both were transferred to the 616 reality. Later, when the Earth was targeted by an extraterrestrial entity known as the Anti-Man, who planned to infect humankind in order to collect their energy, Nate sacrificed himself again as a mutant shaman to infect humanity with his own energy, rendering Earth undesirable to the alien harvesters.
When Nate returned, he had progressed to a new level in his shamanistic ambitions, despite being corrupted by a Celestial Life Seed, which he utilized to construct a new world known as the Age of X-Man. Nathaniel was the sole creator of the Age of X-Man. He mentally coerced mutants such as Magneto, Angel, Blob, and Omega Red to be his Horsemen of Salvation. He attempted to create a mutant-filled utopia, but the X-Men were able to convince Nate that he was wrong, and he restored reality before disappearing to potentially make a better world for his tribe.
Conclusion
Nathaniel Grey is a force to be reckoned with. His undefeatability is evident throughout all the X-Men movies and comics that he has appeared in, and it is clear why he is referred to as the Jesus or God of the X-Men universe. In Spite of his less-than-ideal upbringing, Nathaniel turned out so much better than he could’ve been, proving that childhood trauma is no excuse for being a terrible person.
Eventually, we must admit that he wasn’t perfect, and he was flawed in his own way, but it seems like everything he did was with the best possible intention, or at least that’s the way it appeared to him. Nathaniel seems to have somewhat retired from the X-Men universe, though we did see a brief glimpse of him in Days of the Future Past. This may be for the best, as no other mutant comes close to Nathaniel Grey, the most powerful mutant ever. On the flip side, we also believe that many of his superfans are still waiting for his return, hopefully very soon.