Professor X
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Professor X (full name Charles Francis Xavier) 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 #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.
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 St. Francis Xavier and Martin Luther King, Jr., and may also be a derivative of Marie François Xavier Bichat.
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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 wealthy couple (partially due to Brian being a well-respected scientist). After Brian died in a nuclear accident, his science partner Kurt Marko 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.
Sharon died soon after. Later, a fight erupted between Cain and Charles, causing some of Kurt's lab equipment to explode. Mortally wounded, he managed to drag the two children out before dying himself.
Thanks to his telepathy and intellect, Xavier became a brillaint student and athlete, though he gave up the latter after believing his powers gave him an unfair advantage. He later met a fellow student who 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 and while he was away Moira broke up with him.
World travels
After the war, Xavier travelled around the world. In Cairo, Egypt, 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 catonic Holocaust survivor. Xavier was able to use his mental powers to break her out of her catonia, 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 (who had known the location of their secret cache of gold). Magneto presumably killed Strucker by dropping the cave in on him, but Strucker 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, Charles not knowing at the time that Gabrielle 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.
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, a powerful mutant himself whose experience in the Holocaust left him psychologically scarred. Magneto believed that the only solution to mutant persecution was domination of humanity.
Throughout most of the 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, 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 subconciously 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, a healer, 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.
Magneto, who had reformed, 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, and 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 him to feel betrayed, he left and became an enemy again. By this time Xavier had returned to resume his previous responsibilities. He was later injured, which left him a paraplegic again.
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 killing Magneto, who 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.
Cassandra Nova
Xavier's evil twin Cassandra Nova, who 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 anulled.
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 for short, with offices all over the world. The purpose of the X-Corp 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 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 imposter. The imposter 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.
Rebuilding Genosha
With Jean dead, Xavier left the school to Cyclops and Emma Frost (who had been having a psychic affair behind Jean's back) and went to Genosha where he met up with the real Magneto. The two resolved their differences once more and are now trying to rebuild and restore order to the decimated island nation.
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
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 Kevin to pursue Magneto's dream of a mutant society, and more than once tampered with other people's minds to reach his goals.
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 which was never aired, 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 and X2: X-Men United and the upcoming X-Men 3. He is played by Patrick Stewart.
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 and in the case of the fighting games appears in some of the character's endings. The most noticeable game for Professor X fans would be the X-Men: Mutant Academy 2 game for the Sony Playstation in which he is a unlockable playable character. Also of interest in the X-Men Legends game, Professor X is the only character to be voiced by the same actor from the movies (Patrick Stewart).
External link
Categories: Brotherhood of Evil Mutants members | Defenders members | Fictional telepaths | Marvel Comics mutants | New Mutants and X-Force members | Wealthy fictional characters | X-Men members | Fictional scientists
