Professor X
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- For the Brooklyn, NY rapper Professor X, see X-Clan.
Charles Francis Xavier, also known as Professor X, is a comic book character in the Marvel Comics universe. He is the founder, mentor and sometime leader of the team of mutant superheroes the X-Men. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, he first appeared in X-Men (vol. 1) #1 (1963).
Xavier is considered one of the most powerful mutants on Earth due to his psionic powers. Xavier can read, control and influence human minds and cast illusions. He can also detect the presence of other mutants. A natural genius, he is also a leading authority on genetics, mutation, and psionic powers, has considerable expertise in other life sciences and is highly talented in creating equipment for utilizing and enhancing psionic powers.
A visionary, Xavier has devoted his life to helping mutants learn to live with their powers, and to helping mutants and normal humans coexist peacefully and without fear of one another.
Professor Xavier's character is inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr. and St. Francis Xavier, and may also be a derivative of Marie François Xavier Bichat, or Charles Xavier from Vladimir Nabokov's 1962 book Pale Fire.
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Character biography
Professor Xavier is a mutant - one of the world's most powerful telepaths. As a young man, he was rendered a paraplegic in an accident that was later revealed to have been caused by an alien called Lucifer. In addition to his mutant gifts, Xavier is a world-class scientific intellect. His undergraduate education was conducted at Harvard University; he later did graduate work at Oxford University.
Early life
Charles Xavier was born to Brian and Sharon Xavier, a couple that was wealthy partially due to Brian being a well-respected scientist. After Brian died in a hernandite accident, his science partner Kurt comforted the grieving Sharon and eventually married her. When Xavier's telepathic mutant powers emerged, he discovered Kurt really only cared about her money. Image:Profxy.PNG Kurt moved in with the Xaviers, bringing with him his son Cain. Kurt eventually showed his true colors, neglecting Sharon, driving her to alcoholism and abusing Charles and Cain. Cain took out his frustrations and insecurities on his step-brother. Charles once used his telepathic powers to read Cain's mind and see his psychological damage, which only led to Cain becoming more aggressive toward him.
Thanks to his powers, Xavier became an excellent student and athlete, though he gave up the latter after believing his powers gave him an unfair advantage. He later met a fellow student whom he fell in love with, a Scottish girl named Moira Kinross, who would later change her last name to 'McTaggart'. The two eventually agreed to get married but Xavier was drafted into the war.
World travels
After the war, Xavier travelled around the world. In Cairo, he ran into the Shadow King, who was posing as an Arabian crime lord. Xavier was able to defeat the Shadow King barely escaping with his life. This encounter led to Xavier's decision of devoting his life to protecting humanity from evil mutants and safeguarding innocent mutants from human oppression.
Xavier later visited an old friend, Daniel Shomron, who had opened a clinic for traumatized Holocaust victims in Haifa, Israel. There, he met the man who would become Magneto, a Holocaust survivor himself who worked as a volunteer in the clinic and Gabrielle Haller, a catatonic Holocaust survivor. Xavier was able to use his mental powers to break her out of her catatonia and the two later fell in love. Image:Xavmags.png Xavier also became good friends with Magneto. Neither revealed to the other the fact that he was a mutant. The two held lengthy debates hypothesizing what would happen if humanity were to be faced with a new, super-powered, race of humans. While Xavier was optimistic, Magneto's experiences in the Holocaust led him to believe that humanity would ultimately oppress the new race of humans like they did any other minority.
The two friends revealed their powers to each other when they fought Nazi Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and his HYDRA agents, who had kidnapped Gabrielle because she had known the location of their secret cache of gold. Magneto attempted to kill Strucker by dropping the cave in on him; the baron somehow managed to survive and resurfaced much later. Realizing that his and Xavier's views on mutant-human relations were incompatible, Magneto left with the gold.
Charles continued to stay in Israel for some time, but eventually he and Gabrielle separated on good terms not knowing at the time that she was pregnant with his son, who would grow up to become the autistic mutant Legion.
Xavier later encountered the alien Lucifer, foiling his plans for an invasion. The alien retaliated by dropping a large boulder on Xavier's legs, crushing them and leaving him crippled. After Lucifer had left, a young woman named Sage heard his telepathic cries for help and rescued him, bringing him to safety. Xavier told her she was a mutant and what that meant.
The X-Men
Image:Xavxmen.PNG Xavier founded a school for gifted children which had a secret purpose of providing a safe haven for mutants to master their abilities in order to function in the outside world safely. In addition, he sought to foster good mutant-human relations by providing a positive example of mutants with his superhero team, the X-Men. Among the obstacles to that goal was his old friend, Magneto, who had grown harder since the two last met and believed that the only solution to mutant persecution was domination of humanity.
Throughout most of his time with the team, Xavier used his telepathic powers to keep in constant contact with his students and provided instructions and advice when needed. In addition, he used a special machine called Cerebro, which enhanced his ability to detect mutants and to allow the team to find new students in need of the school. At one point, he seemed to have died, but that turned out to be a former villain named Changeling, who had agreed to impersonate Xavier while he went into hiding to plan a defense against an impending alien invasion.
Later, Xavier assembled a newer team of X-Men to rescue the original team when they were in trouble and managed the new members as before. He later met and fell in love with the alien Princess Lilandra from the Shi'ar Empire and took a sabbatical on her world for a time.
Rejuvenation
Image:Xavierwalk.png Later, Xavier was placed under the control of a member of the Brood while the X-Men were fighting them in outer space. During that time, he was compelled to assemble a team of younger mutants collectively called The New Mutants, which were secretly intended to be prime hosts for reproduction of the aliens. Eventually, the X-Men discovered the dire situation and returned to free Xavier, but they were too late to prevent him from being transformed into a Brood Queen. The X-Men and Starjammers were able to subdue him in this monstrous form, but the only way to restore him was to clone a new body using tissue samples he had previously donated to the Starjammers. This new body had fully-working legs, but he was so accustomed to using his mind to block the previous constant pain of his paralysis that his mind subconsciously gave him psychosomatic pain whenever he tried to walk, which kept him largely in his wheelchair. Eventually, he overcame this difficulty and sometimes joined the X-Men in the field.
Leave of absence
A bit later, Xavier became victim of a hate crime and was severely injured. Callisto and her Morlocks got him to safety. One of the Morlocks managed to partially restore Xavier's health. However, Callisto warned Xavier that he wasn't fully healed and he would need to spend more time recuperating and not exerting his full strength or powers or his health could fail again. Xavier hid his injuries from the others and tried to resume his life.
A reformed Magneto was arrested and put on trial. Xavier attended the trial to defend his friend. Andrea and Andreas Strucker, the children of Baron Von Strucker — who at the time was presumed dead — crashed the courtroom to attack Magneto and Xavier. Xavier was seriously injured. Dying, he asked a shocked Magneto to look after the X-Men for him.
Lilandra, who had a psychic bond with Xavier, felt that he was in great danger and headed to Earth. There, she took Xavier with her and the Shi'ar so their advanced technology could heal him.
Magneto was left in charge of his school and some of the X-Men were unwilling to forgive their former enemy, mainly the original five X-Men who left and formed a splinter team called X-Factor. Magneto worked with the X-Men for several years, but when a misunderstanding caused them to attack him, he felt betrayed and became an enemy again. By this time, Xavier had returned to resume his previous responsibilities. He was later injured by his old foe, the Shadow King, returning him to his former paraplegic state.
Onslaught
Professor X was for a time the unknowing host of the evil psionic entity Onslaught.
Months before, Magneto and Xavier had had a falling out. The two were angry with each other and things escalated when Colossus left the X-Men and joined Magneto and his Acolytes.
In a battle where the X-Men were fighting Magneto at his base on Avalon, Wolverine tried to kill Magneto who in turn retaliated by ripping out the adamantium bonded to Wolverine's skeleton. Furious, Xavier wiped Magneto's mind, leaving Magneto in a coma; Magneto would not regain his mind until several months later. The psionic contact brought together Magneto and Xavier's unrepressed anger at humanity, creating the entity known as Onslaught, a creature of pure psionic energy.
Onslaught wreaked havoc through the earth until he was destroyed by many of Marvel's superheroes, including the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the Incredible Hulk.
Xavier was left without his telepathy and feeling guilty about his hand in what happened. He left the X-Men for a while.
New X-Men
Cassandra Nova
Xavier's evil twin Cassandra Nova, whom Xavier had killed while they were both in their mother's womb, came back and had a group of rogue sentinels destroy Genosha. Magneto, who at the time was the leader of Genosha, presumably died along with everyone else on the island. Nova then took over Xavier's body.
Posing as Xavier, she outed him as a mutant to the world before going into space and crippling the Shi'ar empire. The X-Men managed to restore Xavier, but Lilandra believed that too much trouble had come from her and the Shi'ar's involvement with the X-Men and had her marriage with Xavier annulled.
New Worlds
During this period, a mutant named Xorn had joined the X-Men. His power was apparently to heal and he restored Xavier's use of his legs.
Now outed as a mutant, Xavier began making speeches to the public about mutant tolerance. He also founded the X-Corporation, or X-Corp (not to be confused with the X-Corps), with offices all over the world. The purpose of the X-Corps is to watch over mutant rights and help mutants in need.
As a result of being outed, the school wouldn't have to hide the fact that it was a school for mutants and it opened its doors for more mutants to come in. Things went downhill, however, when a student named Quentin Quire (Kid Omega) and his gang caused a riot on the day humans were going to take a tour of the school. As a result, Quire and two innocent students were killed.
Not sure if his dream was working, Xavier told everyone that at the end of the term he would step down as being headmaster and that Jean Grey would be replacing him.
Xorn then revealed himself to be Magneto, though it was later revealed that he was just an impostor. The impostor crippled Xavier once more before destroying New York. The X-Men managed to defeat the impostor, but not before he killed Jean by giving her an electromagnetic stroke.
Excalibur
Genosha
With Jean dead, Xavier left the school to Cyclops and Emma Frost, who had been having a psychic affair behind Jean's back for some time before her death. Xavier then went to Genosha where he met up with the real Magneto. The two resolved their differences once more and worked together to rebuild and restore order to the decimated island nation.
Back at the mansion, the Danger Room gained sentience, rechristened itself "Danger", assumed a humanoid form and attacked the X-Men before heading over to kill Xavier. With Magneto's help Xavier was able to hold off Danger until the X-Men arrived. Soon after Danger fled, but not before revealing to Colossus that Xavier had known it had been sentient ever since he upgraded it. Colossus was especially hurt, as he had been held captive and experimented on recently.
Ashamed, Xavier tried to explain to them that by the time he realized what was happening, he could see no other course. The X-Men, disgusted with him, left.
House of M
Later, Magneto's daughter the Scarlet Witch suffered a mental breakdown and killed some of the Avengers. Magneto brought her to Xavier and asked him to use his mental powers to help her. Xavier agreed to try, but was unsuccessful. Worried, he ordered a group meeting of the X-Men and the Avengers to decide Wanda's fate. Her brother, Quicksilver, believed that the two groups were planning on killing her; and indeed Wolverine and Emma Frost both believed that that was the best option. Going to Genosha where she was located, he convinced her that she could undo her wrongs by using her powers to change reality into a perfect world. Wanda used her magicks and changed the reality into the House of M, a world where mutants were the majority, humans the minority and Magneto their ruler. Here, Magneto and the others believed that Xavier died years ago helping free Genosha.
When Layla Miller, a mutant with the ability to restore people's memories, restored the minds of some of the X-Men and Avengers, they headed over to Genosha where they discovered that Magneto had erected a memorial garden for Xavier commemorating his death. They were horrified until Cloak faded into his grave and discovered there was no body.
Believing Magneto was somehow responsible, the two groups attacked Magneto and his forces. After discovering that Magneto was in fact not responsible, Layla restored his memories. When Magneto discovered what had gone on, he became enraged that Quicksilver had done all of this in his name and killed him. Wanda used her magicks to revive him and blamed Magneto for choosing the mutants over them, his children. Using her powers, she changed the reality back and caused ninety-eight percent of the mutant population to lose their powers, leaving the mutant race on the brink of extinction.
With reality restored, Xavier was still missing and the X-Men were unable to detect him with Cerebra. Xavier was found in the series Deadly Genesis. He is able to walk again, but he has been depowered.
Education
Undergraduate studies
- Charles Xavier graduated with honors at the age of 16 from Harvard University.
Graduate studies
- Ph.D.s in Genetics, Biophysics, and Psychology; two year residence at Oxford University.
Other
- Master of Education M.Ed. or above teaching qualifications.
- Appointed Professor Emeritus at Columbia University.
Romantic interests
- Gabrielle Haller: Legion's mother.
- Moira MacTaggert: Charles' ex-fiancée, Moira turns up later on as a lifetime friend who interacts with the X-Men often.
- Lilandra: A stark contrast to Xavier, Lilandra makes an intense psychic bond which leads the X-men to the Shi'ar empire for the Phoenix Saga. They also appear to have consummated their relationship in some form, though if there is any difference regarding their cross-species interaction is unknown. No child has resulted from the union.
- Jean Grey: In one instance in the start of Uncanny X-Men (issue #3), Professor X privately reflects upon his love for Jean Grey, but does not pursue it due to his feeling inadequate about being in a wheelchair, and probably also the age difference and sacredness of the teacher-student relationship. This would to be one of Xavier's darkest secrets and a decades-old plot in the Marvel Universe. The plot hook is forgotten and not explored in the comics until much later, in issue #53 of X-Men (vol. 2), in 1996 (an Onslaught issue). It also revealed in Uncanny X-Men #321, in which during a conversation with Magneto, he admitting to having difficulty accepting Jean Grey's marriage to Scott Summers (Cyclops), citing almost a hidden rage toward Summers. Whether or not, Charles' kindness and fondness toward Jean during the years was simply the teacher-student bond they shared or as a means to further get closer to Jean through affection is much to debate. It should be noted that while it is said Charles had long supressed his feelings for Jean as Onslaught revealed to her, it is important to point out that Onslaught was Charles' inner-repressed emotions brought to form, and that Onslaught asks Jean to be his partner, or consort of sort through his journey, in which Jean declines.
Ultimate Charles Xavier
In the Ultimate Marvel continuity, Charles Xavier is the world's most powerful telepath, the founder and patron of the X-Men and a world-famous lecturer for pacifism and mutant emancipation. In contrast to his mainstream version, he also has limited telekinetic abilities and most importantly, he is not as saintly and morally inscrutable. He ruthlessly left his wife Moira MacTaggert with her sick son David to pursue Magneto's dream of a mutant society, but unfortunately Magneto turned on him because of his belief that humans were the inferior race. This falling out between the two led to Magneto disabling him with a spear. Xavier has also more than once tampered with other people's minds to reach his goals, yet he has recognized his flaws. He generally believes that reading minds without permission is unacceptable.
In this timeline, his former love interests were Mystique and Emma Frost.
Appearances in other media
- Xavier appears in the two major animated television adaptations of the comic book, X-Men (voiced by Cedric Smith) and X-Men: Evolution (voiced by David Kaye). He also appeared in the X-Men pilot cartoon Pryde of the X-Men in the 1980s and was frequently a guest star on the animated series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.
- In the animated series of X-Men: Evolution, Xavier continues to teach and train mutant students. Instead of being stepbrothers, he is the half-brother of Juggernaut. He was captured by Mystique to replace him so she could exact revenge on Magneto. Xavier was placed in the same prison containment and was found by the X-Men.
- He also appeared in the three live action feature film adaptations X-Men, X2: X-Men United and the upcoming X-Men 3. He is played by Patrick Stewart. Notably, Patrick Stewart and Professor Xavier looked almost identical even before the films (causing Stewart to be a long-time fan favorite choice to play Xavier long before the movie was actually announced), making the question of changing the comic book version a moot point, with only minor changes needed to both actor and character both during the film and afterwards.
- Professor X has appeared in most of the X-Men video game spinoffs. He is almost always an NPC and advises the X-Men on various missions in the role playing games. In the case of the fighting games, he appears in some of the characters' endings. The most notable game for Professor X fans would be the X-Men: Mutant Academy 2 game for the Sony PlayStation in which he is an unlockable playable character. Also of interest is the X-Men Legends game, in which Professor X is the only character to be voiced by the same actor from the movies (Patrick Stewart). In the first Legends game, he is a playable character for one level, in X-Men Legends II, he appears as an NPC, but can be unlocked as a playable character once all the Danger Room missions are played.
See also
- Niles Caulder is the paraplegic leader of the original Doom Patrol. Like Professor X, Caulder recruited a group of reluctant outcasts to fight crime. Much has been made in the striking similarities between these two characters; however, because of their close proximity to release, there is little merit to the argument that one was a copy of the other, and can be marked up as a (admitedly strange) coincidence.
External links
- MDP: Professor X - Marvel Database Project
- ProfessorX at X-Peoples Central
- UncannyXmen.net Spotlight on Professor Xavierde:Professor X
fr:Professeur Xavier it:Professor X pt:Professor Xavier sv:Professor X
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