Professor X
Professor X (full name Charles Francis Xavier) is a comic book character in the Marvel Comics universe. He is the founder, mentor and sometime leader of the team of mutant superheroes the X-Men. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, he first appeared in X-Men #1 (1963).
Xavier is considered one of the most powerful mutants on Earth due to his psionic powers. Xavier can read, control, and influence human minds, and cast illusions. He can also detect the presence of other mutants. He is also a leading authority on genetics, mutation, and psionic powers, has considerable expertise in other life sciences, and is highly talented in creating equipment for utilizing and enhancing psionic powers.
Xavier has devoted his life to helping mutants learn to live with their powers, and to helping mutants and normal humans coexist peacefully and without fear of one another.
Character biography
Professor Xavier is a mutant - one of the world's most powerful telepaths. As a young man, he was rendered a paraplegic in an accident that was later revealed to have been caused by an alien called Lucifer. In addition to his mutant gifts, Xavier is a world-class scientific intellect.
Xavier founded a school for gifted children which had a secret purpose of providing a safe haven for mutants to master their abilities in order to function in the outside world safely. In addition, he sought to foster good mutant-human relations by providing a positive example of mutants with his superhero team, the X-Men. Among the obstacles to that goal was his old friend, Magneto, a powerful mutant himself whose solution to mutant persecution was domination of humanity.
Throughout most of the time with the team, Xavier used his telepathic powers to keep in constant contact with his students and provided instructions and advice when needed. In addition, he used a special machine called Cerebro, which enhanced his ability to detect mutants, to allow the team to find new students in need of the school. At one point, he seemed to have died, but that turned out to be a former villain named Changeling, who had agreed to impersonate Xavier while he went into hiding to plan a defense against an impending alien invasion.
Later, Xavier assembled a newer team of X-Men to rescue the original team when they were in trouble and managed the new members as before. He later met and fell in love with the alien Princess Lilandra from the Shi'ar Empire and took a sabbatical on her world for a time.
Later, he was placed under the control of a member of the Brood while the X-Men were fighting them outer space. During that time, he was compelled to assemble a team of younger mutants, collectively called The New Mutants, which were secretly intended to be prime hosts for reproduction of the aliens. Eventually, the X-Men discovered the dire situation and returned to free Xavier, but they were too late to prevent him from being transformed into a Brood Queen. The X-Men and Starjammers were able to subdue him in this monstrous form, but the only way to restore him was to clone a new body using tissue samples he had previously donated to the Starjammers. This new body had fully-working legs, but he was so accustomed to using his mind to block the previous constant pain of his paralysis that his mind subconciously gave him psychosomatic pain whenever he tried to walk, which kept him largely in his wheelchair. Eventually, he overcame this difficulty and sometimes joined the X-Men in the field.
Eventually, he took another medical sabbatical with Lilandra and left Magneto in charge of his school, a turn of events that his students found difficult to accept. Eventually, Magneto became an enemy again and Xavier returned to resume his previous responsibilities. In addition, he was later severely injured, which left him a paraplegic again. Much later, Xavier gained the use of his legs again with no apparent problems.
Professor X was for a time the unknowing host of the evil psionic entity Onslaught, which had its genesis in an occasion when Professor X, foregoing his usual principles, unleashed a violent mental attack on Magneto; the attack brought the dark sides of the two mutant leaders' minds into contact, and it was from this meeting that Onslaught came into being.
Xavier's evil twin Cassandra Nova, who Xavier had killed while they were both in their mother's womb, came back and had a group of rogue sentinels destroy Genosha. Magneto, who at the time was the leader of Genosha, presumably died along with everyone else on the island. Nova then took over Xavier's body.
Posing as Xavier, she outed him as a mutant to the world before going into space and crippling the Shi'ar empire. The X-Men managed to restore Xavier, but Lilandra believed that too much trouble had come from her and the Shi'ar's involvement with the X-Men, and had her marriage with Xavier anulled.
During this period, a mutant named Xorn had joined the X-men. His power was apparently to heal, and thus once again the use of Xavier's legs had been restored.
Now outed as a mutant, Xavier began making speeches to the public about mutant tolerance. He also founded the X-Corporation, or X-Corp for short. Its offices are all over the world. The purpose of the X-Corp is to watch over mutant rights and help mutants in need.
As a result of being outed, the school wouldn't have to hide the fact that it was a school for mutants, and more mutants were able to come in. Things went downhill, however, when a student named Quentin Quire and his gang caused a riot on the day humans were going to take a tour of the school. As a result, Quire and two innocent students were killed.
Not sure if his dream was working, Xavier told everyone that at the end of the term he would drop down as being headmaster, and that Jean Grey would be replacing him.
Xorn then revealed himself to be Magneto, though it was later revealed that he was just an imposter. The imposter crippled Xavier once more, before destroying New York. The X-Men managed to defeat the impostor, but not before he killed Jean by giving her an electromagnetic stroke.
With Jean dead, Xavier left the school to Cyclops and Emma Frost (who had been having a psychic affair behind Jean's back) and went to Genosha where he met up with the real Magneto. The two resolved their differences once more and are now trying to rebuild and restore order to the decimated island nation.
Character Appearances in Movies and Television
Xavier appears in the two major animated television adaptations of the comic book, X-Men (voiced by Cedric Smith) and X-Men: Evolution (voiced by David Kaye). He also appeared in the X-Men pilot cartoon Pryde of the X-Men in the 1980s which was never aired, and was frequently a guest star on the animated series Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends.
He also appeared in the two live action feature film adaptations X-Men and X2: X-Men United, played by Patrick Stewart.
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