|
|
|
Mystique---real name Raven Darkholme?---is the metamorphic founder and leader of both the BoEM and FF. A woman with ideals and a forceful personality, she's one of the X-Men's better opponents, past and present. It was she who brought the New BoEM together, and she who approached Val Cooper with the proposal for FF, thereby ensuring the safety of her group. She is also well-known for being the loving adoptive mother of Rogue, as well as the biological mother of Nightcrawler and Graydon Creed. In addition, she had a long-time relationship with team member Destiny, for whom she clearly cared greatly. Mystique is at times brutal and ruthless in achieving her goals (certainly not averse to killing in order to make a point), but on the other hand came to be fond of her comrades and was very friendly towards them as the years passed; they for the most part have been loyal and faithful to her. In her post-FF days, she's been written as a lot more nasty and sometimes a bit mentally unbalanced---her relationship with Rogue is either very rocky or almost non-existent---and I personally find the way she was portrayed during her BoEM and FF days to be preferable. See her chronology for more information on her activities.
|
Mystique has been very busy since late FF days. In Uncanny X-Men 266 (near the end of the team's existence---though Crimson Commando carried on as leader after her 'death'), she was apparently murdered by the Shadow King-possessed Val Cooper, but in reality adopted Val's form when the other woman shot herself instead. She impersonated Val for quite some time, and used the advantage of surprise to hurt the Shadow King by killing his host. She then reunited with Rogue (whom she hadn't seen since the X-Men were thought dead in UXM 227), and went off to do her own thing; along with Wolverine and Spiral, she battled Mojo to save the universe, and stayed at the X-mansion and then with Forge for a time, seemingly insane over the loss of Destiny. She was nearly killed by Fitzroy, recovered, and later thought dead over a Mississippi waterfall ;)
She showed up again to kill Legion for the murder of Destiny, employing Blob and Avalanche as part of her scheme. She didn't succeed, and later while being pursued by X-Factor, she was attacked and nearly killed. She was then inducted into X-Factor, the successor group to Freedom Force, and forcibly kept there for quite some time until Sabretooth nearly massacred the whole team and she escaped. Since then, she's been off on various private enterprises to impersonate a politician's wife, find Sabretooth (and the boy he kidnapped, who was implied to be Destiny's grandson), and keep an eye on Dr Agee's powers-removing machine---urging Rogue to destroy it after she discovered her daughter was one of the patients.
|
More recently, Mystique teamed up with Blob's Brotherhood (doing a job for the Hellfire Club, in which she was hired to retrieve Machine Man's head), and has gotten Rogue to help her after she was attacked and framed for murder. She was also imprisoned after losing her powers at a very inopportune time due to the High Evolutionary's machinations, but managed to escape once her shapeshifting abilities returned. She formed a new Brotherhood and plotted to kill Senator Kelly again, and also had a plan to wipe out humanity using a re-engineered version of the Legacy Virus (which she released into the human population). She was imprisoned after a deadly attack on Muir Island that killed Moira MacTaggert, but eventually escaped and masterminded a plot of mutant revolution, manipulating Banshee's X-Corps team to that end. She slit Banshee's throat, but was sucked into Abyss' interdimensional void and eventually escaped by unknown means. She then starred in her own series, working as an undercover spy/agent for Charles Xavier under threat of blackmail, but managed to extricate herself from the situation and been free ever since. She currently has a plot to marry some mysterious acquaintance of hers to Rogue, and has been interfering in her daughter's relationship with Gambit. Fortunately for Mystique, she's one of the few mutants keeping their powers despite the mass depowering of mutantkind by the Scarlet Witch, so she'll be able to keep scheming. She has also joined Rogue's team of X-Men, though her daughter has made it clear that she doesn't like or trust her mother --- and with good reason, as Mystique then betrayed the team for Mr Sinister's new Marauders.
Issues which highlight her character: Uncanny X-Men 177, 178, 199, 226, 255, X-Factor 109.
First Appearance: Ms. Marvel v.1 #16
Most Recent Appearance: Uncanny X-Men #513
