Okay, so the lackluster Dark
Phoenix made me realize something, that it’s been a LONG time since we’ve
seen a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants. Sure, Mystique and Quicksilver were
in the newer movies, but they were only briefly allied with Magneto in Mystiques
case and not at all in Quicksilver’s. And there was that Toad cameo in Days
of Future Past, but again, he really didn’t do anything. You could
say any Mutant that serves Magneto is a Brotherhood Mutant, but I disagree. There
are several iconic members of Magneto’s crew that were either never allowed to
grace the silver screen or didn’t get the screen time they deserve. I think it’s
fitting to explore a few of the more important members that I haven’t covered
before. We’ll start with someone that I thought would have been useful as far
back as Days of Future Past, Dominikos Ioannis Petrakis aka Avalanche.
Let’s get to it.
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| Okay, I kind of love this design. You don't see a lot of characters wearing functional helmets. |
Dominikos Petrakis, shortened to
Dominic Petros after he finished the naturalized process, is a man without much
of a past. The only info that has been revealed about him before joining the Brotherhood
is that he is a Greek immigrant from island of Crete. I feel like his name is a
bit of a giveaway to his Greek roots, no? He was recruited by Mystique to join the
second generation of the Brotherhood of Mutants. His powers, to create powerful
seismic waves from his hands to create localized earthquakes and shatter pretty
much any inorganic material made him a natural and powerful choice for Mystiques
team. The new Brotherhood’s first mission was to kill Senator Robert Kelly. Senator
Kelly was the one spearheading the original Mutant Registration Act. They
attacked Kelly at a rally, but were swiftly stopped by the X-Men.
While he continued to work with the
Brotherhood for several years, he did have one solo scheme. Basically, he tried
to blackmail the state of California. If they didn’t pay him an few hundred
million, he’d use his powers to trigger a massive earthquake and dump the
entire state into the Pacific Ocean. Think like the movies San Andreas or
2012, he was threatening to do that. He was stopped, and had both his arms broken,
by the Hulk. Props to Dr. Banner for having a little restraint with a man that
had the power to kill millions with a wave of his hand.
After several years of being
villainous muscle, Petros was still part of the Brotherhood when Mystique tried
to take their group in another direction. They became mercenary contractors for
the US Government under the new codename Freedom Force. The reorganized group
was moderately successful in their missions. Some were snatch and grabs of
criminal mutants like Magneto, that must have been a little weird, and hostage
recovery, like when they had to save Senator Kelly from a drug cartel that had
kidnapped him. I wonder if anyone pointed out the irony of that situation? The team,
after several dangerous and deadly missions, disbanded after a failed mission during
the Gulf War. He remained on the government’s payroll as a free agent for a
while, until his friend and former Teammate Pyro told him that he’d contracted
the Legacy Virus.
The
Legacy Virus was a nasty plague engineered in the far future by the son of
Apocalypse, Stryfe and released on the Mutant population in the early 90s. The
virus caused Mutants to develop traditional plague symptoms; coughing, lesions,
fever and fatigue, but with the added nastiness of causing their powers to
flare out of control as the disease progressed. It only targeted Mutants, as it
was designed to attack their “X-Gene.” It was engineered by Stryfe to ensure
continued conflict between Humans and Mutants, which only benefitted Stryfe’s
long term goals. Wanting to try and save his friend, Petros worked alongside
Pyro and other infected Mutants as they raced around to create or steal a cure for
their affliction. Interestingly, nothing I’ve read ever mentioned Petros
contracting the virus himself. Must have had to walk around in his bubble
helmet at all times to pull off that miracle. Unfortunately, they weren’t able
to find a cure for him in time.
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| Think Alvin of the Chipmunks knows Avalanche stole his shirt design? |
A short time later, Petros popped
up as part of a new European-centric X team called X-Corps run by former X-Man and
regular ally Banshee. They were called in for handling Mutant related riots and
the like across Europe. The X-Men tried to warn Banshee to disband the group,
as Petros was one of several former villains in the group. He seemed confident
his team could last. This was ultimately revealed to not be bravado, nor
confidence in guy’s like Petros reforming their ways. Turns out, Banshee had imprisoned
and coerced a powerful telepath named Martinique Wyndarde aka Mastermind,
daughter of the original Mastermind Jason Wyndarde, and was using her powers to
dull the X-Corps Ex-Con’s more violent urges. It worked until Mystique broke
in, freed Mastermind and told the team what had happened. The villains rampaged
across Paris, culminating in Petros causing a quake that toppled the Eiffel
Tower. The X-Men arrived shortly later and took care of them. Petros quickly escaped,
ran with another short-lived incarnation of the Brotherhood, but disappeared
after the group disbanded.
Around this time, M-Day occurred. Quick
summary, an emotionally unbalanced and damn near schizophrenic Scarlet Witch used
her reality warping powers to completely rewrite history. In her new timeline,
Mutants rule the world, her father Magneto is basically king of the Mutants
and, more importantly for Wanda, she got her recently deceased twins back.
Things fall apart rather quickly, with Wolverine remembering the original world
and gathering a team of heroes to try and restore it. The fighting gets pretty
intense, Petro is killed and Wanda seems to lose what shreds of sanity she had
left. She utters the words “No more Mutants,” and returns the world to normal.
With the added unpleasantness of 99% of Mutants losing their powers, and no new
Mutants being born or having their powers manifest. Tough luck.
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| Modern Avalanche could use a nap. |
Petros did not, in fact, lose his
powers but seemed to have lost his willingness to fight. With Mutants being
functionally extinct, he figured fighting for his and their rights was kind of
a moot point. He changed his name to Nick and opened a bar. He would go on to
work with the surviving Mutants on their Island home of Utopia, but never
officially joined. He even kept up working his bar when Mutants began to regain
their powers. It might have been a peaceful life for Petros, if the Red Skull
hadn’t popped up again.
Using a team of super-powered Mutant
Haters called the S-Men, Red Skull began trying to wipe out the resurging
Mutant Race. The S-Men kidnapped Petros, lobotomized him and used him as a sort
of Mutant weapon in New York. Obviously, his Earthshaking powers would be
pretty useful there. He was confronted by and fought Captain America. During
the fighting, Petros was tricked into jumping off a cliff, seemingly to his
death. But we all know that for any comic book character, Death is more a
vacation then a move. You want to know what was really screwed up about that
whole thing, other then the forced brain surgery? It’s been since revealed that
one of the S-Men, a water manipulator called Dancing Water was in fact Dominic
Petros’ illegitimate daughter. I guess there was no love loss between those two,
huh?
Avalanche’s power is referred to as
Seismokinesis. He can generate powerful vibrations directed by his hands. The
vibrations he created were powerful enough to crack the earth or topple
buildings, but could be used with enough finesse to move sturdy objects across
the ground. He could create massive crevices and craters with minimal effort.
And his main mode of transportation was to basically create and ride a mudslide
across the ground. Neat! The trade off is his vibrations have only a little
effect on organic material like… people. And, while Petros is immune to the
vibrations he fires off, once they shift into natural shaking, he’s as susceptible
as anyone. Those broken arms I mentioned him getting while fighting the Hulk? Feedback
from trying to shake the Hulk into oblivion. Shattered both his arms with that
stunt.
Like I mentioned above, Avalanche
hasn’t received much attention outside the comics. Sure, he mostly falls under
the “lackey” umbrella, but a man that generates earthquakes really should have
more chances to shine. His appearances to date have only been in animated form,
and they were rather minor at that.
He was a background character in X-Men:
The Animated Series. He mostly worked alongside long time teammates Pyro
and Blob under Mystique’s leadership.
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| Think the helmet is to protect his eyes from debris? I can think of no other reason why he'd wear something so silly. |
His biggest role was in X-Men:
Evolution, but he’s heavily modified for the series. In this version,
Avalanche isn’t Dominic Nikos, but Lance Alvers a teenage bad boy. Not sure why
he couldn’t have kept his name, but what are ya gonna do? He’s introduced in
the second episode “The X-Impluse” opposite Kitty Pryde. Lance took a shine to
Kitty, and her ability to phase through solid objects. He tried to convince her
to help him steal test answers for the ACTs or something similar. Kitty ultimately
rejects his offer and is recruited by Jean Grey to be part of the X-Men. Lance,
whom had caused a major quake in the episode’s climax, is recruited by Mystique
and given the codename Avalanche. Lance serves as the de facto field commander
of Mystique’s Brotherhood, seen giving orders to Quicksilver, Toad, and Blob on
most missions and butting heads with Cyclops on the rare occasions when the two
groups are forced to work together. His major story arc involves him trying to
win Kitty’s affection while still trying to pull off the bad boy thing, with
limited results. He goes so far as to try and join the X-Men in ‘Joyride’ to
try to get closer to her, but leaves after taking the blame one too many times
for Joyrides and wrecked vehicles. The perpetrators being the second gen X-Men.
He continues to clash with the X-Men on several occasions, but Kitty always
seems to be outside his quake range when he fights. Despite his group initially
saying “No,” he does arrive late with the rest of the Brotherhood to battle a
brainwashed Magneto and stop Apocalypse in the series finale. The combined
power of the Brotherhood mutants is enough to defeat the master of magnetism,
and stop Apocalypse’s plan. Magneto is safely recovered and returns with his young
Mutant team to the X-Mansion. It’s revealed in an epilogue ‘vision’ that Charles’
received from Apocalypse that Avalanche, the rest of the Brotherhood and a few other
baddies would go on to work for SHIELD, a nice nod to the Freedom Force.
He’s a background character in Wolverine
and the X-Men. This version, interestingly, is the only version of
Avalanche to date with a Greek accent. How odd. He works with Blob, Toad, Domino,
and Rogue under Quicksilver. The son of Magneto had been banished from Genosha,
Magneto’s Mutant Kingdom, due to several never expanded upon blunders. Their main
goal seemed to be trying to get ol’ Pietro back in Daddy’s good graces and get
back home. Well, everyone except Rogue who was playing mole the whole time.
Avalanche is a lot like Scorpion,
in that their fictional biographies are way lighter on details then I’d have thought.
Granted, both are more ‘goony’ in terms of their status in the villain
hierarchy, but somehow, I assumed that they’d both contributed more then just a
few ‘villain of the week’ escapades. Maybe I thought this because I grew up
with shows like the Animated Spider-Man and X-Men series, where both guys appeared
several times, and later X-Men Evolution where a version of Petros was a main
character. Nevertheless, he’s a powerful mutant that has been loyal to the
Mutant Supremacy cause since his introduction, so I’d like to see more of him.
He’d have been super useful in the future half of Days Of Future Past,
lobbing rocks at the Sentinels or dropping a mountain on them, but I guess
Quicksilver was enough in some peoples minds. With Disney’s acquisition of Fox
and the Marvel properties they owned, maybe he’ll get a chance to shine now
that the X-Men should be freed from their isolation. Seriously, it’s been over
a decade since we got an X-Men focused show, and I think we’re long overdue to
see this Greek cause some collateral damage.
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Twitter: @BasicsSuperhero
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