Art by Chris Bachalo and Tim Townsend
- Name: Jean-Phillipe
- Code Names: Fantomex, Weapon XIII, Charlie Cluster-7
- First Appearance: New X-Men #128 (Aug 2002)
- Powers: Misdirection, External Nervous System/Flying Saucer, Nanoactive Blood, 3 Brains
- Teams Affiliation: Weapon Plus, X-Force
About
When I was young, my friends and I used to play Power Rangers. Each of us would chose a character and make believe we were going on an adventure fighting the monsters that Lord Zedd had sent down and every time it started with a race. A race to see who could call being the Green Ranger first. He was unquestionably the coolest, he had a shield, his own megazord, and a 90’s bad attitude to boot. Everyone wanted to be him and it wasn’t had to see why, there aren’t a lot of boxes you need to check to get the attention of kids. It doesn’t have to be original, in fact it can be largely derivative, it doesn’t have to be smart, and it doesn’t have to be deep. It just has to be cool. I’m guessing a young Grant Morrison had similar experiences because when he got a hold of the X-Men he decided to make the most generically cool character out there and introduced the world to Fantomex.
Now because he was a Grant Morrison creation, Fantomex is a little confusing to just describe. He first appeared in New X-Men as Jean Grey and Charles Xavier were on a world press tour staying in France. There was a train wreck in the Chunnel and a team of X-Corps had been sent to assist. Jean and Charles stayed behind at X-Corp headquarters when a man clad in white demanded sanctuary. He called himself Fantomex, said he was the most notorious thief in all of Europe, and claimed he was a mutant he wanted protection from the army of law enforcement outside. He gave the X-Men information about what had gotten lose in the train wreck, something he called Weapon XII, and he feared that the X-Corps team was already dead. When the building was assaulted by the agents below, Fantomex used his powers of misdirection to allow Jean, the Professor, and himself to escape inside his partner, the flying saucer/external nervous system called E.V.A.
Art by Igor Kordey
They traveled to his home in the French hillside where Fantomex lived with his mother, a kindly old woman. There he explained what Weapon XII really was, the latest in a series of living weapons developed to hunt and kill mutants, and provided the realization that Wolverine’s designation as Weapon X just meant he was the tenth generation of these weapons. He was adamant that Weapon XII must be destroyed and he wanted Jean and Charles to help him do it. He explained that XII possessed those around it and used their bodies to wreak havoc and anyone touch by it, like X-Corps member Darkstar, were lost. Fantomex made it to the Chunnel and was able to kill Weapon XII and save the day. Jean noticed that there were two containment units laying in the wreckage, one labeled Weapon XII and one Weapon XIII. She scanned Fantomex’s mind to learn the truth, there was no kindly lady in the French hillside, there was no master thief, there was no Fantomex, only misdirection. He was Weapon XIII, but he wasn’t willing to be anyone’s soldier. Jean sympathized with Fantomex and allowed him to escape.
Art by Igor Kordey
Fantomex resurfaced when he agreed to help Wolverine find more about his past and attack the Weapon Plus facility known as The World. The World was an artificial universe, time moved at the speed Weapon Plus wanted it to, evolution was artificial, culture was fake. This was where Fantomex was created, where his blood was filled with nano-sentinels, where he was bred to be an ultimate weapon, and where he gained his fake French accent. In their assault they ran across Weapon XV and Fantomex was determined to follow it as is escaped the World and headed for a Weapon Plus satellite. On the satellite Fantomex revealed why he was truly designed, he and the other Weapons were designed to be a team of mutant hunting superheroes made to be appealing by meticulous market research. Fantomex was designed from the ground up to be the one every kid wanted to be.
Art by Chris Bachalo, Tim Townsend, and Chris Chuckry
They escaped the facility and, for a short time, Fantomex stayed with the X-Men as he assisted them topple Xorneto’s takeover of Manhattan. Afterwards he traveled the globe, living up to his misdirection of being a super cool spy. He shrunk down The World and became its protector, and used its technology to build that French home with the kindly old woman, life was grand for him. He eventually ran into the X-Men in the sewers of New York and decided to join them as they fought John Sublime. He followed them to Utopia where he participated in the defense against Bastion. When Wolverine decided to reform X-Force in secret after the Second Coming, he enlisted Fantomex and his greatest story began to unfold.
Art by Terry Dodson, Rachel Dodson, and Justin Ponsor
Fantomex began to grate on his teammates, flirting with Psylocke to get under Archangel’s skin, and generally being condescending to everyone. This came to a head when the team went on a mission to assassinate a reborn Apocalypse. They attacked Clan Akkaba’s moon base but they were taken aback when they discovered it was a child, reborn and being indoctrinated. X-Force decided they couldn’t bring themselves to kill a child for what he might do, but Fantomex wasn’t willing to take that risk and shot the child in the head.
Art by Jerome Opeña and Dean White
The team was horrified and the act only caused them to withdraw from Fantomex even more. Fantomex used this distance to further his own agenda, in The World he began an experiment, he took DNA from the murdered child and created a clone of him. He raised the child in a virtual reality Kansas, his fake parents were saints and taught him the difference between right and wrong. The boy’s favorite moments were being visited by his Uncle Cluster, actually Fantomex in a poor disguise. Jean-Phillipe wanted to give the boy the best, most Superman like, upbringing he could.
Art by Esad Ribic, John Lucas, and Matthew Wilson
When Archangel became the new Apocalypse, distance was put between himself and Psylocke, and Fantomex was eager to take advantage of the situation and began a relationship with Betsy. She was conflicted and wanted to save Warren, but Jean- Phillipe believed it was too late. X-Force attacked Archangel in his base and the team was dealt a blow when Fantomex left in the middle of the assault, assuming the fake Frenchmen had run out on them. In reality he recruited the Age of Apocalypse X-Men to lead the charge while his clone of Apocalypse, Evan Sabah Nur, became the hero Fantomex knew he could be and took Archangel down.
While X-Force was celebrating, Fantomex was captured by the Captain Britain Corps and made to stand trial in Otherworld. Fantomex had no love for the pomp and circumstance of the trial and freely admitting to shooting the child Apocalypse. He believed in the pragmatism of his action but the court did not see it this way and sentenced him to be erased in all realities. Betsy raced to save him but the poison had already begun to take effect. They were stopped by another veteran of the Weapon Plus program, Weapon III, the Skinless Man. Years ago Fantomex left Weapon III in Otherworld to die, and the Captain Britain Corps had him skinned, a skin Fantomex later stole and made into sentient bullets. The Skinless Man began his revenge by peeling off Fantomex’s face before Betsy was able to step in and complete her rescue.
Art by Greg Tocchini and Dean White
Fantomex soon left the team but was soon caught up in a plot involving a new band of the Brotherhood, who the Skinless Man had joined. They were working to bring Evan up to his full destructive potential and to do that, they ripped Fantomex’s heart from his chest. E.V.A. would take human form and work with X-Force but Fantomex was dead. After X-Force defeated the Brotherhood, Deadpool and Betsy took Fantomex’s genetic material and cloned him but the results went south and three clones were created, the roguish Fantomex, the villainous Jean-Phillipe, and heroic female Cluster. With a clone for each of his three brains Fantomex and Betsy set out on a new life together.
Art by Phil Noto and Frank Martin Jr.
He next showed up in Sam Humphries Uncanny X-Force but beyond some beautiful Adrian Alphona art, and a really bizarre sexual encounter between the Fantomexes (Fantomi?) there isn’t anything great about this run. All you need to know is that the clones alternating between sleeping with and trying to kill each other, and Betsy decided this was not a relationship she wanted. He joined Cable’s new version of X-Force and became increasingly unhinged, obsessed with becoming the best at everything. He takes out his frustration on Cable, who for plot reasons was getting cloned daily, and Fantomex found new and innovative ways to kill these clones. He eventually turned on the team and gained more and more world threatening powers to prove that he was the best. After causing massive destruction, X-Force was able to take him down, and strip him of his massive ego. Fantomex is currently working for Magneto in Uncanny X-Men to infiltrate the Hellfire Club but his true mission has yet to surface.
Art by Jorge Molina
Must Read
Fantomex has an easy must read, and I am surprised it has taken me 30 entries to get to officially recommending it. Rick Remender’s Uncanny X-Force is the best X-Men comic in the last decade and Fantomex is arguably the star of a huge chunk of it. It is a skewering of the idea of the pragmatic ideas of a black ops team but with just enough understanding that you are never unsure they made the wrong choice. I can’t say anything about this run that hasn’t already been said, go to Amazon or Marvel Unlimited and read this thing.
Art by Esad Ribic
Ranking
I like Fantomex way more than most people. I think he is just the perfect skewering of the cool character and his best writers, Morrison, Remender, and Spurrier, keep that at the forefront. At his worst he is just Diabloik with a French accent and there have been just as many writers who have bought into the character’s misdirection as a super cool spy. I still get excited when he shows up because, hey, the Green Ranger was my favorite Power Ranger, I like cool stuff. As far as the list goes, he easily beats Pete Wisdom, the other superspy on this list but he is less enjoyable than Dr. Nemesis. I am looking at controversial section of my top ten and I think I know where he fits, one step higher than Boom Boom and one slot lower than Maggott. I would pick up a book more for him than Tabby but Japath speaks to my interests in a way that is hard to describe. Since intentionally super uncool is ranking higher than intentionally super cool on this list, Fantomex is the new number 8 in the Xavier Files.
Fantomex was requested by /u/kralben, /u/throwaway_350, and /u/JeremyBiff from reddit. Thanks for the request guys, it was the most challenging one yet. If YOU have a character you want me to do, leave a comment and I’ll get it added to the list. If you want to cut to the front of the line we just started a Patreon if you want to support it and get a line cutting reward. Our first goal is only $15 and it gets rid of those ads and makes the hosting for Xavier Files entirely reader supported.
Last week we launched the official Xavier Files webcomic and you can view them here.
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Zachary Jenkins co-hosts the podcast Battle of the Atom and is the former editor-in-chief of ComicsXF. Shocking everyone, he has a full and vibrant life outside all this.
