My absolute favorite animated television series as a kid growing up in the ‘90s was X-Men. I’m sure you’re all very shocked by this admission. Anyone who grew up watching that show knows that there was kind of a “Big Three” group of villains who frequently showed up as the primary antagonist for a given episode or arc: Magneto, Apocalypse, and Mister Sinister. I gravitated to Mister Sinister for two reasons: I thought he looked cool, and I thought he had a cool voice.
Did you here that voice? So creepy and intimidating. Kudos to voice actor Chris Britton.
Because of that cool factor, Sinister’s first appearance in Uncanny X-Men #221 (by Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri published way back in 1987) became one of the first X-Men back issues I tracked down once I got heavy into comic books. I continued grabbing any issues I could find with Sinister appearing in them for years to the point that I now have physical copies of every issue he popped up in written by Claremont and drawn by Silvestri. The more I read of Sinister, the more it became clear that he was not a super great person.
The basic lowdown on Sinister is this: he’s a narcissist who is super into eugenics. Yikes. Not a good look. Sinister (real name Nathaniel Essex) was a brilliant biologist in 19th century London who lost his son due to genetic conditions he was born with. Obsessed with trying to “perfect” human beings, Essex becomes one of the first scientists to discover mutants and believes this new subspecies of humanity may hold the key to his quest to create a perfect biological human. Through a chance encounter with Apocalypse and his Celestial technology, Essex is turned into the immortal super powered being with chalk-white skin and forehead diamond we now know as Mister Sinister.
That background history is all you really need to know leading up to the fully formed Sinister who pops up in the comics in the ‘80s and ‘90s. He’s a brilliant and immortal geneticist with powers granted to him via technology belonging to nigh omnipotent space gods with severe narcissism and singular all encompassing focus on creating a perfect biological human that he can eventually use to eliminate who he perceives as his chief rival (Apocalypse). What a guy!
Some of Sinister’s activities while working towards that goal include cloning Jean Grey when she’s believed dead so Cyclops can impregnate said clone (named Madelyne Pryor) so she can give birth to his perfect mutant (who would grow up to become Cable), putting together a team of mutants called the Marauders that he sends to exterminate a society of mutants called the Morlocks, kind of starting an invasion of demons into New York because of his horrible treatment of Maddie Pryor, and accidentally releasing the deadly Legacy Virus that is essentially a stand in for mutant HIV. He does all of this in the comics from about 1986-1993. Busy guy.
It wasn’t until the ‘10s that Sinister reestablished himself as an A-list X-Men villain again. We can thank writer Kieron Gillen for that! During his Uncanny X-Men run, Gillen reintroduced Sinister in a four-part story where Essex attempts to take control of a catatonic Celestial in order to revert the world into a Victorian London style society run by his own perfect race of Sinisters. Once again, these are very normal goals for a person to have. The story is important because it made a couple of key changes to Sinister’s character that future writers have latched onto. One is the idea that Sinister makes endless clones of himself which makes it nearly impossible to truly be rid of him or even know which one is actually in charge. He’s less a singular person than a system now. The second big change was to his personality. Gillen really leaned into the idea that Sinister is an English aristocrat with a flamboyant personality and a love of garishness exceeded only by his love of himself. Sinister as a character had evolved into a character that fully embraced camp.
If Gillen is the man responsible for the reinvention of Mister Sinister’s character, then Jonathan Hickman is the man responsible for dialing up those traits to eleven.
This is the part of the essay where I say 🚨SPOILER ALERT🚨 for the current line of X-Men comics. Mister Sinister is a pivotal character at the time of this writing, and huge plot points for the entire line revolve around him.
Hickman first used Sinister in his acclaimed Secret Wars series in 2015. Sinister rules over a kingdom in Battleworld called Bar Sinister. Bar Sinister is the fully formed realization of Sinister as a system that Gillen had introduced. It’s an island kingdom ruled over by Baron Sinister, and the entire population is composed of Sinister clones. This Sinister also fully embraces camp. He’s a diva striving to live a fabulous lifestyle while simultaneously doing some light crimes against God and nature.
While this Sinister was a multiversal variant existing outside of traditional continuity, it would become clear a few years later that Hickman envisioned this version of the character as the definitive version.
In Powers of X #4 from Hickman and R.B. Silva, it is revealed that Bar Sinister actually exists in the main continuity and Xavier and Magneto have been aware of Sinister long before he first revealed himself to the X-Men. They have come to him because they know he has the ability to compile a massive database of mutant genetic codes that they wish to use for resurrecting dead mutants in the future. The Sinister in charge doesn’t find this to be a worthwhile venture, but he is quickly executed by a different Sinister that has given himself the mutant gene through tinkering with his own genetic code. This mutant Sinister agrees to compile this database. Xavier wipes Sinister’s mind so he is unaware of why he is compiling this database, but it’s implied that Sinister has retained this knowledge.
In present day, Sinister has been brought to the mutant island nation-state of Krakoa to serve as a member of the Quiet Council (the governmental body of Krakoa). This seems to be a strategy of keeping Sinister placated so that they can continue using his genetic database, but I’d say there is a 100% chance that this will blow up in their faces in spectacular fashion. A major reason for that belief is that Moira has revealed that in her past lives Sinister ultimately betrays mutantkind and causes their downfall. One of the harbingers of this betrayal is the emergence of Chimeras. Chimeras are mutants who have been genetically engineered by Sinister to have the mutant abilities of multiple mutants. It’s the obvious outcome if you pursue Sinister’s eugenicist worldview to its logical conclusion. With this knowledge in hand, the emergence of Chimeras in our timeline is something readers are primed to look for as a key moment signaling a coming catastrophe.
While Sinister has been popping up in multiple books in the X-Men line during this current era, it was Hellions from Zeb Wells and Stephen Segovia where he took center stage. The basic premise for the book is that Sinister is given leadership over a group of troubled mutants that are having difficulty integrating into the new Krakoan society. Wells really pushes this version of Sinister to his absurdist extreme. He routinely makes catty comments to his perceived rivals, he delivers unenthusiastic motivational speeches, and he is constantly making comedic asides that come close to breaking the fourth wall. His ultimate motivation in the series seems to be his goal of creating Chimeras (uh oh), and everything he does while leading the Hellions is done with this goal in mind.
Though Hellions has concluded, Sinister’s time in the spotlight hasn’t. I know I already gave a spoiler warning earlier in this piece, but I’m gonna go ahead and give one more.
🚨MASSIVE HUGE UNFATHOMABLY LARGE SPOILER ALERT FOR COMICS PUBLISHED WITHIN THE LAST COUPLE MONTHS🚨
That ought to cover it. Sinister plays a huge role in Immortal X-Men which is written by Kieron Gillen, the man most responsible for Sinister’s current status quo and characterization, with art by Lucas Werneck. The first issue of the series is told entirely from the point of view of Sinister himself, and it repositions the character as the biggest potential threat to mutantkind. The first page establishes that he’s known Destiny since at least 1919. This version seems to die when given info by Destiny that was too much for him to process. That can’t be good. In present day, we learn that Sinister seems to have some clairvoyant knowledge about how various events will play out. You’d think this would be because of his past connection to Destiny, but the true reason revealed at the end of the issue is that he has what is essentially a farm of Moira clones. Sinister ages them up so that they have her mutant ability to reset the universe when they die, and Sinister basically uses them as a save point in a video game where he can go back to a point where things didn’t go his way and make a different move to ensure he never loses. This definitely seems like a problem!
In the second issue of Immortal X-Men, Sinister reveals that he has had some success with Chimera research. He uses this within the issue to turn himself into a giant monster so he can fight a kaiju because of course he does. That might not be as problematic as resetting the entire universe when he doesn’t get his way, but it is certainly an ominous sign for the future.
Meanwhile, Gerry Duggan and Pepe Larraz’s X-Men series has recently provided some new details on Sinister. In the very first issue of their run, a new villain is introduced named Dr. Stasis. He’s a scientist working with the mutant-hating terrorist organization Orchis, and he is obsessed with figuring out how mutantkind has somehow conquered death so that humankind can do the same. The other quirk that we quickly learned about him is that he demands people refer to him as Doctor and not Mister.
Eventually he comes face to face with Cyclops in X-Men #11. While fighting each other, Cyclops nails him directly in the face with his optic blast. This shatters Dr. Stasis’s helmet, revealing his face. Turns out he’s a Sinister! Instead of the diamond that adorns every forehead of every Sinister we’ve met, this one has a clubs insignia (like the playing card). Does that mean there is an entirely different Sinister system out there? Does it mean there’s a Sinister system for every suit in a deck of cards? I don’t know! We’ll be learning more about this in the near future, but it’s nice to know that regardless of suit or system that every Sinister is a dick.