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Make My Marvel! – Stryfe
Ah, Stryfe. Another product of the :shudder: 1990’s. There were many great things that came out of comics during decade of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bill Clinton’s cigars and the interweb (it’s a series of tubes). Unfortunately, Stryfe’s backstory was not one of those wonderful things.
During the period wherein Cyclops had left his wife Madeline Pryor for the recently-resurrected Jean Grey and took their infant son with thim, a period X-fans love to gloss over known as Cyclops’ Bastard period (well, known as that by me and now by you), Apocalypse had infected Cyclops’ son Nathan with a technomabblical virus that was slowly killing the child. In order to save his son, Scott Summers continued his run at father-of-the-year by allowing a strange woman from a fanatical cult to take his son to (supposedly) the far future, where he was told that he would never see him again. Before you judge too harshly, this did provide Cyclops with several rare opportunities to brood and be extra deep in front of several attractive women, which netted him some sympathy action on several occasions. So, it wasn’t all bad.
Meanwhile in the far far far future, Nathan was treated for the virus and immediately cloned by the Askani cult in case the treatment failed. Almost immediately after the clone was created, Apocalypse’s forces struck and took the clone. While the surviving Askani raised the original Nathan in secret, Apocalypse raised the clone, whom he named Stryfe, fostering the more negative and brutal aspects of humanity in him. Neither Apocalypse nor Stryfe were aware that he was a clone or that the original Nathan had survived. Apocalypse intended for Stryfe to eventually become his new nost body once his own most recent vessel had deteriorated. Before that could happen, Cable and the Askani killed Apocalypse.
Stryfe and the remainder of Apocalypse’s forces filled the power vacuum by forming the new Canaanites. As young men, Stryfe and Cable faught many times, during which Stryfe misidentified Cable as being his flawed clone. Both eventually returned to the current day in order to alter the timeline, each to their own ends. Stryfe created the MLF, Mutant Liberation I’d Like to Front, while Cable reformed the New Mutants into the paramilitary X-Force.
Despite Stryfe’s origin of soap opera-proportions, the villain did manage to go on to seriously ruin the X-Men’s "stuff" on an epic scale. Stryfe framed Cable by attempting to publicly assassinate Professor X. And just in case the two gunshots to the chest with one Cable’s steroid-injected guns weren’t enough, the bullets contained the same virus that had nearly killed Cable as an infant. While all of the X-teams scrambled looking for a cure and hunting Cable, Stryfe took down current-era Apocalypse, humiliating him and taking over the Dark Riders, kidnapped Scott Summers and Jean Grey in order to mentally torture them by (perhaps justly) showing them what negligent parents they were, and capped it all off by releasing the Legacy Virus that would go on to infect and kill many of Marvel’s less marketable mutant characters.
The final showdown between Cable and Stryfe took place on the surface of the moon. The truth of Stryfe’s origin as a clone was revealed to him and both men were thrown into the time/space vortex with a bomb of Stryfe’s creation. Stryfe was killed, but not before he managed to install his essence in the surviving Cable’s mind. That was only slightly less homoerotic than it sounds. Cable briefly faught with Stryfe for control of his mind before casting him out. Stryfe’s spirit has attempted unsuccessfully several times to return in the bodies of others.
Which version of Stryfe do you most want made for Marvel Legends?
**Images blatently abducted from Comicvine.com**
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