If you’re a comic book fan of at least the past year, then you’ve heard of Messiah Complex. The story of the first mutant baby born since M-Day, and the multi-sided war for possession of it. It had the X-Men, the Purifiers, Sinister and the Marauders. It had Cable being attacked by everyone, Bishop being a bad guy, Wolverine leading a team of killer X-Men, Cylcops making the tough calls, and Xavier taking a bullet to the head. Some people loved it, some people hated it, and it helped set a new status quo for the X-Men.
But does anybody remember the first Messiah Complex?
It was a story featuring the big X, but had no appearances by Cyclops, Wolverine, Professor X….hell, it didn’t feature a single one of the X-Men.
It did, however, feature the X-Man.
Messiah Complex was a story arc about Nate Grey in his solo book. It was about his rise in the public eye as a miracle worker in Central Park. How he went from fortune teller to healer, and how everyone loved him. His celebrity rose instantly after he gave a girl back her amputated arm. This boy from another dimension, not quite a child, yet not quite a man, a stranger in a strange land, was now famous. He was welcomed, beloved, he was perfectly at home.
And the walls came crumbling down around him. A single set up turned him from huge celebrity, loved by all those who had come in contact to him, to public pariah. Just as quickly as he finally found a vestige of happiness, it was all stripped away from him and he was left with nothing. All due to the machinations of a man that most people attribute to Brian Bendis.
Zebediah Killgrave. The Purple Man.
Right now I bet you’re either wondering about how this might have slipped under your radar, or maybe why Marvel didn’t mention it once during their build to Messiah Complex, or in the many places Purple Man’s shown up in the last few years. Maybe you’re even at the X-Man wiki page trying to gather more info on it. I don’t blame you, it was an amazing story. It was also a story that modern audiences will most likely never read as it has never, and most likely will never be put into a trade. The late nineties weren’t the best time for the X-books as most writers seemed to be just treading waters, and the creative teams were starting to cycle more and more. Yet, we had this book, about a boy from another world, and for those of us who read it and loved the character, it was the most consistent book bearing an X.
Who was Nate Grey?
I bet some of you are asking yourselves that right now. As you ask yourself why I would spend my time writing this piece about him.
Nate was from the Age of Apocalypse, one of the four people to travel across the dimensional gap and find himself in 616 Marvel. It was Nate, the Dark Beast, the Sugar Man, and Holocaust. He was created by that world’s Mr. Sinister as a weapon against Apocalypse. The genetic offspring of Scott Summers and Jean Grey, born in a test tube and aged to near adult hood. He was Cable without the techno virus, the manifestation of pure power in mutant form. The ultimate weapon, the ultimate mutant, and one created with a flaw.
All this power fueling him, empowering him, the potential to be the most powerful being on any world. Sinister designed him to burn himself out before his body physically hit the age of twenty-one. All the power in the world, and he was born to die before he could achieve his full potential. The perfect weapon, one designed with a shelf life to insure that he would never grow beyond his creator’s control. So I guess it was only fitting that one of the last things Nate did in the AoA was kill Sinister (yes, I know the anniversary mini showed him alive, but as far as I’m concerned Nate killed him).
Nate was a telepath and telekinetic of the highest order, at one point early in his 616 days he went as far as to rip Xavier out of the Astral Plane and beat him to the point where Charles had to fake his own demise just to escape. When Onslaught came on to the scene and reached out to capture the two most powerful mutants on Earth in an effort to use their powers for his own, he chose Franklin Richards….and Nate.
Let us also not forget Nate’s first act on Earth 616, bringing Madelyne Pryor back from the dead. He wanted his mother back, the one he never knew, Jean Grey, just so he could feel loved and not be quite so alone. He raised the dead with his mind alone, and not even the recently deceased. Maddie had to have been dead at close to ten years of real time. She didn’t look like a zombie, she looked gorgeous. That was his power.
He could do anything he wanted, fuck, the man fought the Hulk! He fought two different Apocalypses! Not bad for a little genetic clone with a time bomb built inside of him.
You never forget your first lobotomy.
Warren Ellis brought him to the next stage of his evolution alongside co-writer Steven Grant. They wrapped up the Madelyne Pryor plot points with the use of “Queen Jean”, and developed him into a mutant shaman. He later died saving the world, dispersing himself across humanity.
I’ll be honest and admit that I’ve never really read the later issues of the book, just read up on them, so I can’t really say a whole lot about it. Which is why that segment is getting cut short.
Shaman Nate
MESSIAH COMPLEX
It’s kind of funny to look back to when you were younger, especially as a comic fan. I look back and I see all the things I read as a kid, my old habits, and it makes me laugh. I read Superman, all of his books, for close to three years without ever having a clue what was going on. I read the issue where Coast City got blown up by Mongul and the Cyborg probably seven times before I realized what happened. Think about that, I didn’t comprehend a city getting blown to bits. My first taste of X-Men was Fatal Attractions….I’d rather not get into how much I missed there.
It’s a lucky thing that I’ve always been big into collecting, as in my near seventeen years of reading comics, I have approximately four comics that have been lost to the destruction that my Nintendo Powers have suffered. That’s four out of thousands over nearly two decades, to which I’m patting myself on the back. The point of that is that I’ve been able to read back over my issues years after the fact, which has enabled me to gain more perspective as my own changes. I can read a book now that I first got ten years ago and see things that completely eluded me.
Messiah Complex is one of those stories. When it first came out I was just like “Sweet! X-Man! Spider-Man team up!” and now I can look into it and see the deeper meanings. I could appreciate Nate’s rise and actually understand just how alone he felt in the world. My own naiveté faded away, and I was able to read through his story as it was meant to be told, able to put myself into his shoes. It was a pretty cool feeling, and one I’ve never forgotten as I still manage to find old books of mine from time to time that I’ve gone without reading for years.
Nate fell from grace after a group of terrorists he defeated blew up while in custody. The fact that he didn’t know they were living bombs (nor did they, which is why he couldn’t tell) was used against him, and the city that had come to love him grew to hate him. Nate became the most wanting man in New York, and everyone wanted his head on a pike.
When Killgrave revealed himself, Nate was able to defeat him. It wasn’t an incredibly hard fought battle physically, but kicking the crap out of a man that just ruined your life isn’t always enough. Nate stood atop the George Washington Bridge, stared out over the city of New York, and he debated with himself what to do. It was within his power to reach into the minds of everyone in the city and wipe the memories of his existence from everyone, make everyone forget he ever existed. His close friend and ally, Peter Parker, arrived in full Spider gear to try and talk him out of it.
Killgrave had built Nate to his full confidence and potential through his machinations, Nate had gone from high powered telekinetic to reality warper. He’d gone from lost boy to messiah. And when it was all said and done, Nate was just Nate again. He was a boy that was not quite a man, and who had nothing in his life to hold on to. He was alone again, feared, hated. The idea of erasing his name and starting from scratch….it wasn’t a bad one.
Spider-Man talked him out of it with his usual power and responsibility spiel, but the pair was soon attacked by a group that has assembled to hunt and defeat Nate. During the encounter, Nate had reached into Peter’s mind and somehow managed to bring the Age of Apocalypse Gwen Stacy to life, and she of course….was thrown off the bridge. Peter saved her this time only to watch her fade back away into the nothingness from which she had been created.
Nate gave his best friend on the planet the opportunity to make right on one of his biggest milestone losses. He let Peter Parker save Gwen Stacy from the fall.
The bottom line is that when you think of Messiah Complex, try and find yourself copies of the original. You won’t be disappointed. X-Man issues #32-38.
Kinda makes me wish that someone else read this book. Maybe we’d still have Nate around, or that the events of his book and the things that he did would get more than a brief mention in a backup story seven years after he died.
Nate was the son of Sinister, made to kill Apocalypse.
He was the boy who fell to Earth, one of the last survivors of a world that should never have existed.
He forged his own path, independent of the X-Men.
He was the Shaman of the Earth Tribe.
He was the Mutant Messiah.
The Gold Standard.
Now to break off from the topic, I’m going to try something new.
What I read last week:
- Booster Gold
- Final Crisis Revelations
- Gen13
- Green Lantern Corps
- Invincible
- Spider-Girl
- Deadpool
- NYX
- Secret Invasion
- Ultimate Origins
My pick of the week? Invincible
What I’m watching this week?
- WWE Raw
- Weeds
- Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
- Entourage
What am I reading now? The Bendis/Maleev Daredevil Omnibus. A must buy.
