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Synopsis:
Charles Xavier and Erik Magnus Lensherr met as young men in the 1960s at Oxford University. Xavier received doctorates in theology and philosophy with post-graduate work in International Development Studies at the U.N. Xavier was a wealthy son of English gentry and had studied at Eton, excelling in physics, calculus, and chemistry as well as captaining the school's la crosse team. Lensherr was the son of a Jewish physician in Germany pre-WWII. His parents and nearly all extended family were gassed by Nazi death squads at Auschwitz. Lensherr's mutant ability to control metal via magnetic manipulation allowed him to break out of a cattle stock car and escape to France where he served briefly in the guerrilla resistance. After the Allies stormed the beaches at Normandy, Lensherr volunteered to act as an interpreter for British Intelligence (he spoke French, German, English, and Hebrew) as liberated Jews were re-located to the fledgling country, Trans-Jordan (now Israel). Impressed by his linguistics, Lensherr was awarded a scholarship to study at Oxford, where he met a charismatic young Xavier. The two students became fast friends, based on respect for each other's intellects, while maintaining a rivalry on politics, ethics, and religion. In 1965, Xavier revealed his psychic powers by manipulating student uprisings via peaceful means. Lensherr was intrigued by the possibilities of controlling other people's minds, while Xavier asserted a universal Right to Free Will. Through a clandestine operation funded by Britain's MI5 and the CIA, Xavier & Lensherr opened the first School of Mutant Resources to study the new phenomena of "homo superior"--humans with a mutant "X" gene, which enabled preternatural powers. Among the first students to enroll were Scott Summers (Cyclops,) Hank McCoy (Beast,) Jean Grey (Phoenix,) Ororo Munroe (Storm,) Raven Darkholme (Mystique,) Mortimer Toynbee (Toad) and Emma Frost (White Queen). Rival factions surfaced as half of the students empathized with Xavier's dream of peaceful co-existence with humans vs Lensherr's belief that humans were inferior and deserved slavery. These ideals started to solidify as more human civilians became aware of mutant-kind and generally reacted with fear and hatred. Meanwhile, the U.S. military began its own black-ops program titled "Weapon X" capturing and brainwashing powerful mutants to serve as alternatives to nuclear or chemical programs. Xavier and Lensherr designed and built Cerebro in a secret, underground facility in Westchester, New York in order to track "wild mutants" i.e. mutants who did not know they had powers or how to control them. Again, Xavier hoped these new mutants could be trained for (and would choose) peace, while Lensherr maintained a more aggressive stance. After an angry xenophobic mob killed a young mutant boy (Banshee), who had developed gills and webbed fingers, Lensherr struck back against the perpetrators, "outing" himself by causing metal garden tools to fly through the air and impale 4 people. He then began calling himself MAGNETO and urged his students/followers to take on a code name reflecting their individual powers. Chasing Magneto and his Brotherhood of Mutants to a secret base in the middle of Antarctica, Xavier and his followers (now calling themselves X-Men) sought to extradite Magneto to the United States', Guantanamo prison, but in the battle Magneto used a shard of metal to sever Xavier's spinal cord, leaving him paralyzed. Using the combined powers of Cerebro, Jean Grey, Emma Frost, and himself, Xavier wiped the collective memory of mutant-kind from 99% of humans on Earth. However, Colonel William Stryker used an adamantium shield to preserve his own memories and secretly took over Weapon X's training facilities (located underneath Alkali Lake in British Colombia) and wild mutants for his own purposes. *Note: Magneto also created a helmet to shield his brain from Xavier's control. |
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