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The Brotherhood of Mutants, originally known as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and briefly as simply the Brotherhood, is a Marvel Comics supervillain team devoted to mutant superiority over normal humans. They are adversaries of the X-Men. The original Brotherhood was created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby and first appeared in X-Men #4 (March 1964).
Their roster has varied and has included many powerful and dangerous mutants. They are often at odds with the more peaceful X-Men but, on rare occasions, have worked alongside them to overcome some greater threat. The Brotherhood was founded by Magneto and was his backing team in the 1960s. 1980s versions of the team were led by Mystique and most 1990s versions by Toad, who dropped much of the political message of the group in favor of petty crime and grasps for power. Various short-lived incarnations have appeared in the 2000s.
The Brotherhood of Mutants has appeared in several animated series featuring the X-Men and have been Magneto’s group in the recent X-Men film series.
Note: the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants should not be confused with the Brotherhood of Evil, foes of DC Comics's Doom Patrol. Although, this is one of many similarities between the X-Men and the Doom Patrol.
History
The original leader of the team was Magneto, a mutant with the ability to control magnetic fields. It would be later revealed that Magneto was a Holocaust survivor, explaining his distrust of humanity and its inability to accept those who are different. The other members of the original team were Quicksilver, who can run at incredible speeds, the Scarlet Witch, who has the power to affect probability fields, the Toad, a snivelling villain with incredible jumping ability and a medieval costume, and Mastermind, with the power to create illusions of sight, smell, taste, touch and sound. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch are twins, and also Magneto's children, although at the time of the original Brotherhood all three of them were unaware of it. Time and again, the Brotherhood clashed with the original X-Men team (consisting of Cyclops, the Angel, the Beast, Iceman and Marvel Girl), until Magneto was captured by an extraterrestrial being called the Stranger. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch left the team and joined the Avengers, and the other members dispersed. Later, back on Earth, Magneto reorganized the team three times, including such mutants as the Blob and Unus the Untouchable, and creating a team that was later alternately called Mutant Force and the Resistants.
The shapeshifting mutant terrorist Mystique later organized her own Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Members included Pyro, the Blob, Avalanche, Destiny and Rogue. This team (minus Rogue, who defected to the X-Men) later became the core membership of the government-sponsored team called Freedom Force. As Freedom Force, their membership briefly included Spiral and the second Spider-Woman, and later included Super Sabre, the Crimson Commando, and Stonewall. This group both fought and teamed up with several heroic groups, including the Avengers, but ultimately disbanded after Destiny, Super Sabre and Stonewall were killed in action, Mystique faked her death, the Crimson Commando was crippled and the Blob and Pyro were abandoned on a mission in Iraq.
The Toad also organized a Brotherhood of Evil Mutants of his own at one point, including the Blob and Pyro, a woman named Phantazia who could disrupt machines and superhuman powers, and the vampiric humanoid pterodactyl called Sauron, who is not an actual mutant.
Havok, while suffering from the effects of a nervous breakdown, was the leader of a short-lived Brotherhood of Mutants whose membership included himself, the Dark Beast, Fatale, and, briefly, Aurora, Ever and X-Man. This team turned out to be a setup by Havok to find out the illegal experiments the Dark Beast was performing and fell apart when Havok and the Dark Beast finally clashed. This incarnation was the first Brotherhood to omit the "Evil" from its name.
The following incarnation included new members the Mimic and Post as well as the Blob and Toad. They freed Charles Xavier from prison and helped the X-Men against the animated Cerebro. They later cooperated with Mystique in an attempt to capture the Machine Man. The team disbanded shortly afterwards.
During this time period, it was revealed that the teleporter named Astra had been a member of the original Brotherhood, but had quit before the team fought the X-Men.
Mystique organized another Brotherhood, drawing members from nearly every incarnation, and adding Sabretooth and Martinique Jason, the new Mastermind to the lineup. A training session also showed a new Super Sabre and Commando, but they were not included on the mission. This Brotherhood managed to assassinate Moira MacTaggert before they were disbanded.
Later, a short-lived Marvel series called The Brotherhood featured a large group of mutant terrorists, unrelated to any other version of the Brotherhood. The group was founded by the mutants Hoffman, Orwell and Marshal, but Marshal left the group and became a government agent. Hoffman hid his identity under the alias "X". Marshal had the orders to take down the Brotherhood, but was really planning on killing Hoffman and becoming the new "X". This series was cancelled after nine issues, at which point all members had either been killed in the power struggle between Hoffman and Marshal or by the publicity-driven X-Force (later renamed X-Statix).
The next incarnation of the Brotherhood was led by Mystique again and included the new member Fever Pitch. This Brotherhood had infiltrated the X-Corps. Later Mystique would claim that she had not been involved with this incarnation and possibly the former incarnation as well, but that an imposter had taken her place.
Another Brotherhood was formed by former X-man Xorn, who thought he was Magneto. His brotherhood were his former students Beak, Angel Salvadore, Martha Johansson, Basilisk, Ernst, Esme and old Brotherhood member Toad. Most members rebelled against Xorn after he accidentally killed Basilisk and his insanity became too obvious to ignore.
More recently, in the "Heroes and Villains" arc that concluded Chuck Austen's run on X-Men, a new version of the Brotherhood appeared. The team was led by the powerful mutant Exodus, who had once been Magneto's herald, and its other members included Avalanche, Sabretooth (who had simply been hired by Exodus), and new members Black Tom Cassidy, Mammomax, Nocturne (who was revealed to be a spying on the team), and Juggernaut (who was later revealed to be a mole). After Black Tom killed Juggernaut's friend Sammy Pare, the "Squid-Boy", Juggernaut tried to destroy the Brotherhood. After knocking Juggernaut and several other Brotherhood members unconscious, Exodus lead his team to the Xavier Institute to claim revenge for the apparent death of Magneto. The entire team was defeated by the second Xorn, who sucked them into the "black hole" within his head; Nocturne was sucked in as well, and Juggernaut followed her. They eventually landed in Mojoworld, where the others sold Nocturne and Juggernaut to Mojo.
The Brotherhood is not always so necessarily evil as they are opposed to Professor Charles Xavier's dream of peace with humans. Their use of the name "Evil" is alternately explained away as irony or as an attempt to force Xavier into an awkward moral position. Many of them have been attacked or otherwise harmed, cast out or hated by humans, which makes them resentful and misguided. At times, many of the Brotherhood mutants have shown signs of reluctance towards harming humans, to the point of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch joining the Avengers. Even Magneto cannot be defined as simply evil; he has joined the X-Men's cause many times. He was briefly the headmaster of the Xavier Institute when Xavier had to step down due to medical problems. In several alternate realities he also led the X-Men. In the alternate timeline, the Age of Apocalypse, he led the X-Men instead of Xavier after Xavier died saving his life. In the Days of Future Past timeline, when his prophecies of history repeating itself (this time with humans trying to wipe out mutants) came true, he led the X-Men and sacrificed himself to let them escape from the concentration camps.
Known members
Other Marvel continuities
In Ultimate X-Men, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is called the Brotherhood of Mutant Supremacy.
In the Evolution animated television series and the X-Men movie, the group is simply called the Brotherhood of Mutants.
In the animated series, the group consists mainly of teenagers brought together by Mystique (secretly working for Magneto), and consisted of teenage versions of Avalanche, Blob, Toad, and Quicksilver. Due to the shifting loyalties of Mystique and long periods of absence from Magneto, these four teens were often left without any guidance and as the series progressed, they went from super-villains to standard criminals until the point where they simply stopped caring and just stayed home most of the time. Towards the end of the series, they became a wild card team that could be swayed to any cause, and often teamed up with the X-Men, who remained their rivals, but no longer necessarily enemies. The Scarlet Witch was eventually added to the team.
In the first issue of X-Men: Fairy Tales limited series, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants appear as a group of demons who have captured the Emperor's daughter (Jean Grey). Hitome/Cyclops subdues them. The team members used for this issue were Magneto, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch, and Toad.
Other media
The Brotherhood has also appeared in all incarnations of X-Men media including video games, the X-Men animated series and the three films.
The Brotherhood made their first ever appearance in other media on Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. In the episode entitled The Prison Plot, the Spider-Friends are called into action when Magneto appears, demanding the release of his ‘Brotherhood of Evil Mutants’ (here, represented by Toad, Blob, and Mastermind) from jail.
Their next appearance would be in the 1989 animated television pilot Pryde of the X-Men. there referred to as "The Brotherhood of Mutant Terrorists." This Brotherhood was comprised of Magneto, Toad, Blob, Pyro, Juggernaut, and White Queen.
For the first animated series the Brotherhood were led by and comprised of *" target="_blank" >and [Avalanche. They appeared together in 3 episodes.
In 2000's X-Men movie the Brotherhood included Sir Ian McKellen as Magneto, Tyler Mane as Sabretooth, Rebecca Romijn as Mystique and Ray Park as Toad. In the sequel X2 the line up was greatly reduced to Magneto and Mystique. However at the end of the film they were joined by Pyro (Aaron Stanford). The third installment of the series, X-Men 3, gave fans a glimpse of a much larger brotherhood including, Juggernaut (Vinnie Jones), Callisto (Dania Ramirez), Arclight (Omahyra Mota), Multiple Man (Eric Dane), Quill (Ken Leung), Psylocke (Meiling Melançon), Spike (Lance Gibson), and Phoenix (Famke Janssen).
External links
- www.brotherhoodofevil.tripod.com/--Site contains a list of Brotherhoods and a brief history of each one
- BROTHERHOOD OF EVIL MUTANTS I - An in-depth profile of the entire first lineup, at UXN.
- BROTHERHOOD OF EVIL MUTANTS II / MUTANT FORCE / RESISTANTS - Another in-depth profile of the second lineup at UXN.
- BROTHERHOOD OF EVIL MUTANTS III / FREEDOM FORCE - Another in-depth profile of the third team, at UXN.
- BROTHERHOOD OF EVIL MUTANTS IV - A look at the fourth group, at UXN.
- BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS I - A look at Havok's Brotherhood, at UXN.
- BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS II - A look at Xavier's Brotherhood at UXN.
- BROTHERHOOD OF MUTANTS III - An in-depth profile of this team.
Avengers villains | Brotherhood of Evil Mutants members | Fictional mutants | Marvel Comics supervillain teams | X-Men villains
"Brotherhood of Mutants"