Characters / X-Men: Mojoverse

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The Mojoverse

One of the more (if not the most) bizarre corners of the X-Men’s world. Created by Ann Nocenti and Arthur Adams, Mojoverse is an alternate dimension within the Marvel Multiverse and home universe of Longshot. Ruled by Mojo its whole society is centered around entertainment, usually in a brutal violent fashion. Longshot was once its top entertainer and debuted escaping from the realm, running into the X-Men and unintentionally pulling them into Mojo’s purview forever.

Tropes pertaining to The Mojoverse in general:

• Alternate Self: Notably Averted. When he meets the Exiles, he tells them that there's only one Mojoverse in the multiverse implying that the comic book and various video game and cartoon versions are one and the same meaning Mojo regularly messes with different versions of the X-Men. There is a Mojo in the Ultimate Universe who is an Albino human but he is a resident of that universe.
• Egopolis: Turned up to its highest possible level as Mojo named both the planet and the Universe after himself.
• Horrible Hollywood: It’s violent entertainment based society run by a sleazy Fat Bastard.

Residents

Mojo

Mojo

Notable Aliases: Mojo the First, Mojo Lifebringer

Species: Spineless One

First Appearance: Longshot #3 (1985)

When people hear Mojo... they think fun! Good, clean, extravagantly violent fun!

A repulsive alien entity from "Mojoworld", which can only be described as resembling a grotesquely-bloated, green-skinned human upper torso, with cybernetic cables coming out of the back of his head and mechanical struts holding his eyes and mouth. Gets around by sitting in a spider-legged mechanical platform with a tail-like blaster on its back. An incredibly powerful sorcerer-creature, Mojo is part of an alien race absolutely obsessed with television; by becoming the greatest producer of television shows in his dimension, Mojo has become their lord by dominating the airwaves. His recurring obsession is with the heroes of the Marvel Universe, primarily the X-Men, as he sees them as being the "next big hit" and so he is forever either trying to force them to perform for his shows or else simply attacking them in the name of entertainment. Of course, he sees the potential popularity of other heroes and has gone after the likes of Spider-Man, Human Torch, and even Rocket Raccoon.

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• Actually a Doombot: After Rocket Raccoon blows his head off, Mojo is quickly revealed to be a robotic copy built by Major Domo while the real Mojo was on vacation.
• Aliens Steal Cable: Inadvertently. The reason why the Spineless Ones are obsessed with TV (and why their genetically-engineered Servant Race are Human Aliens) is that they receive TV transmissions from Earth in their dreams.
• Bad Boss: Oh, yes. Assuming Mojo doesn't kill or mutilate or torture or goodness-knows-what-else whenever it suits him, he also just generally treats everyone under him like crap. They don't even get dental. Gingivitis is a serious problem on Mojoworld.
• Bad Future: The Citadel at the End of Time, which appeared in a two-part story in the pages of the first Wolverine run. As the name implies, it's a planetoid controlled by Mojo in the far, far future - an hour before the end of time itself, to be precise. Mojo warped himself there using his Reality Warper powers and planned to remake all reality in his image, but the very unlikely trio consisting of Wolverine, Mystique and Spiral were able to stop him.
• Big Damn Heroes: Twice in Mojo: Black; first when he saves a little girl from being hit by a car, and then again when he rescues Ann from the Half-Sentient when Major Domo mistakenly gives the girl to the mindless monster, thinking Mojo has an evil plan in mind when in fact he didn't.
• Beware My Stinger Tail: Mojo's primary weapon is the scorpion-like tail on his Spider Tank walking-platform, which is equipped with an energy blaster.
• Cloudcuckoolander: If a particularly Ax-Crazy one. Later appearances after his first tended to emphasize his craziness over his cloudcuckoolandry.
• Commonality Connection: In Mojo: Black, Mojo and Glob Herman bond over not being conventionally (or unconventionally) attractive.
• Cool Airship: Used one of these to get around in his first appearance.
• Corrupt Corporate Executive: Perhaps the most bizarre example ever. On Mojoworld, TV is life, and Mojo has the remote. So if you don't amuse him, you're cancelled. Also, he gets money selling merchandising of his captives, telling Morph of the Exiles that his stuff sells so well Mojo could buy a whole continent... if he didn't own them all already.
• Deadly Game: Basically the whole premise of his character.
• Dimension Lord: Mojo has acquired such power thanks to his skill at appealing to the residents of Mojoworld that he has taken over the entire dimension, even renaming it after himself. At the end of the Mojoworld mini-event, in X-Men: Blue #15, he is permanently stranded on Earth. His issue of X-Men: Black takes place several weeks afterwards.
• Even Evil Has Standards: In Mojo: Black, he is outraged when a racist old man insults Glob as the two are strolling around the block together, just because Glob is a mutant. He also saves a girl from being hit by a careless driver, and scolds him on texting whilst driving.
• Fat Bastard: Mojo is a horrifically swollen, bloated-looking creature.
• Flanderization: In the original Longshot mini-series, he made movies with his slaves, but it was not the all-consuming obsession for him it would later become in X-Men.
• Gods Need Prayer Badly: As do villainous Starfish Aliens, apparently. Not only are the strength of his magic powers tied directly to the ratings of his shows, he grows weaker if cut off from his followers. This is why he so rarely ventures outside of his realm and instead favors kidnapping heroes into Mojoworld instead.
• Good Feels Good: In Mojo: Black, after he impulsively saves a little girl from being run-over, Mojo is visibly touched when she thanks him by kissing him on the cheek and complimenting him on his spider-legged walker. At the issue's end, he also puts his plan on hold so he can go and hang out with Glob and Ann instead.
• Handicapped Badass: Not due to injury, it being a part of his race's biology, but Mojo has no legs and has to get around on a Spider Tank platform. You'd expect him to get knocked out of it all the time, but as of 2015 he never has.
• The Hedonist: Not to the level of Hellfire Club alumni, but all one has to do is look at him to know Mojo doesn't miss too many meals.
  • Dialogue in one issue of Rocket Rackoon & Groot remarks that Mojo has entered rehab for some sort of addiction(s), implying that gluttony may not the only thing Mojo finds pleasure in.
• Hypnotic Creature: One of the perks of his Reality Warper powers. Upon arriving in our dimension, one of the first things he did was hypnotize a group of churchgoers to convert their church into a tower glorifying him.
• Interspecies Romance: In Mojo: Black, he develops a crush on a human woman named Ann, and scores a date with her after saving her from the Half-Sentient and asking her out. She accepts because, as a New Yorker, he's not even the weirdest guy to ask her out that month.
• Ironic Nickname: In his first appearance he liked calling himself 'Mojo Lifebringer', which couldn't be further from the truth.
• It Amused Me: Sometimes he'll do things just because he's bored, bored, bored. He lets Arize and his rebellion run around for this reason, and because it occasionally gives him cool things to steal and play with, like Longshot.
• Large Ham: As one of the most comical of the X-villains, this is pretty much inevitable.
• Laughably Evil: Because his goals are basically to make TV shows out of the X-Men, and the fact he's essentially a mad TV producer, Mojo can come off as quite amusing. He is, however, an utter psychopath, and willingly engages in the vilest of behavior — like killing off his actors for real just to make their death scenes in his shows seem more realistic.
• Love at First Punch: A variant; in Mojo: Black, he reveals he fell for Ann when she bumped into him and immediately chewed him out as a "mewling, simpering dolt" before storming off.
• Love Redeems: His attraction to Ann in Mojo: Black. Though, in Rogue's opinion, falling in love hasn't actually made Mojo that much of a better person, as he's still forcing people to act in horrible shows (all of which are now twisted love stories) for the entertainment of Mojoworld.
• Odd Friendship: With Glob in Mojo: Black after Glob sees him trying and failing to ask out Ann.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Heavily implied in the Longshot mini where he was first introduced:
  Spiral: You act completely psychotic but I know you're really thirty moves ahead of everyone.
  Mojo: Smile when you talk like that, darling.
• Pet the Dog:
  • He let Spider-Man and the Jean Grey School's Special Class go after they reluctantly saved him from falling to his death. This also resulted in some rare positive Laser-Guided Karma for a villain, as it was all caught on camera and the sight of Mojo being nice was such a huge shock to the viewing audience that it caused a big ratings spike and a surge in his popularity as the other Spineless Ones now saw him in a whole new, sympathetic light (which Mojo took full advantage of, even allowing himself to be arrested and jailed for his crimes as a Ratings Stunt).
  • In Mojo: Black, when Mojo spots a little girl chase her cat into traffic and a driver about to hit her because he's distracted by texting as he drives, Mojo leaps in and forcibly stops the car before it can hit the girl and her cat. He has no reason to do this, nobody asks him to do it, he just impulsively leaps to her rescue, and is visibly shocked when he comes down from scolding the driver and realizes what he did.
• Poisonous Person: His very presence wilts plants and sickens humans. His touch is enough to kill small animals instantly.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Mojo was upset about the events of M-Day, because mutants going extinct would hurt his ratings.
• Progressively Prettier: Mojo's face is much less hideous-looking than usual in his appearances in X-Men: Blue and Xmen Black; his eyes aren't forcibly held open into their traditional bulging, lunatic stare, and his lips similarly aren't permanently pulled back in a rictus grin (although he does still make some rather hideous gaping-cheeked snarled at some points). His features visibly soften and get more handsome in X-Men: Black after he thwarts his own evil scheme to save Ann and Glob.
• Reality Warper: Mojo has extreme magical powers that allow him to do just about anything he wants... so long as he has the energy from his ratings to do so.
• Refuge in Audacity: Probably the reason Mojo's managed to stick around as long as he has. How many other villains can you think of that pick their nose hairs and wave them around◊ in front of the heroes as a taunt?
• Rogues' Gallery Transplant: The first Longshot mini actually seemed to be setting him up as a villain for Doctor Strange, who he never fought again.
  • Averted when Rocket & Groot were hijacked to Mojoworld in their book. His majordomo was the responsible party, while Mojo himself was in rehab. Though it was later confirmed that the real Mojo did order recording equipment be attached to Rocket before he left, showing that he does have an interest in the raccoon
• Send in the Clones: He briefly had a clone in The '90s, the imaginatively-named Mojo II: The Sequel. Strangely, Mojo II looks almost nothing like the original; he's a handsome, long-haired, muscular figure with elegant cybernetic limbs fused into his body, giving him the appearance of a biped.
• Shoulder Cannon: During the Mojoworld mini-event in X-Men: Blue, he upgrades his arsenal with a pair of psy-cannons cybernetically mounted onto his shoulders.
• Starfish Aliens: The Spineless Ones are basically pseudo-anthropomorphic slugs.
• Status Quo Is God: Is overthrown on a near-regular basis, only to inevitably return to power in the next story. Being a Dimension Lord makes it at least somewhat plausible.
• Take That!: As originally written, Mojo and the Mojoverse existed to paint the fourth wall and lampshade Chris Claremont's disagreements with his higher-ups. A particularly telling example is in an Excalibur annual, where the X-Babies have to take refuge in "The House of Stan and Jack"... a tiny shack buried deep under a mountain of buildings with the names of DC and Marvel's latest (at the time) Crisis Crossovers. He later lost this element and became just another ranting, goofy C-List villain, presumably when the higher-ups caught on to what Claremont was doing.
• Uniqueness Value: Boasts at one point that both he himself and his dimension are unique in the multiverse and that no Alternate Universe versions of either exist. The veracity of this boast is up for debate, as Ultimate X Men has a counterpart of him named Mojo Adams, but that version is an ordinary human and may not count by the metric Mojo uses.
• Villainous Glutton: Mojo is disgusting in many, many ways, not the least of which being how grossly fat he is.
• Walking Wasteland: An extreme example. Not only do plants wither and animals die wherever he goes, his mere presence on Earth causes natural disasters to start forming. Downplayed in later appearances; he can still drain life with a touch, but he no longer involuntarily damages the world around him.

Major Domo

Major Domo

Nationality: Mojoworlder

Species: Android

First Appearance: Longshot #4 (1985)

Mojo’s robotic right- hand man

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• Punny Name: Major Domo is as blatant as it gets.

Spiral

Rita Wayword / Spiral

Nationality: American

Species: Human mutate

First Appearance: Longshot #1 (1985)

Hers is a name that men whisper as she kills them.

One of the most loyal warrior-slaves of Mojo, Spiral is his Dragon and an essential part of his operations. In her first appearance, she was sent to retrieve Longshot. She later had a stint as a member of Freedom Force, the US government's version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. In the Shattershot storyline, it turned out she was Rita Ricochet (Longshot's former friend and lover) all along, brainwashed into becoming Spiral by Mojo and her future self.

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• Ascended Extra: Art Adams designed her as just another of Mojo's lackeys pursuing Longshot, but Ann Nocenti liked the look of her and decided to give her a more prominent role.
• Ax-Crazy: She hides it well behind her snark, but Spiral is completely off the deep end.
• The Baroness: Tends to take this role in storyline where she strikes out on her own.
• Berserk Button: Has a major grudge against the Mojoworld scientist Arize, who invented the technology that empowered the Spineless Ones. She can also get this way at times regarding Longshot, but when it comes to Arize, well◊...
• Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: Subverted, surprisingly enough. Yes, she was roboticized by Mojo, and probably unwillingly too. But it was only a small part of how Mojo was able to turn her so completely insane.
• Cyborg: Three of her arms are at least partially robotic.
• Dark Action Girl: She was one of the first prominent female X-villains.
• Deadpan Snarker: She and Major Domo are the only Mojo minions who dare mouth off to their boss.
• The Dragon: Mojo may be strong, but he's also nearly immobile, counting on the acrobatics and swordplay of Spiral to keep his enemies at bay.
• Driven to Madness: A major case of Break the Cutie — when Mojo captures Ricochet Rita, the first thing he does is tie her to the prow of the interdimensional airship he was using to get around at the time. Then he forces her eyes open so that she has to watch the Wildways. Predictably, this causes her to Go Mad from the Revelation.
• Dual Wielding: Three times over!
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Spiral recently became the caretaker of a young mutant girl named Ginny. She seems to be one of the few people Spiral genuinely cares about at this point.
• Evil Sorcerer: To the point where when Doctor Strange stepped down as Sorcerer Supreme of the entire Marvel Universe, she was mentioned as a contender for the job.
• Extradimensional Power Source: She uses the energy of the dimensional crossroads known as "the Wildways" to power her spells.
• Fatal Flaw: Spiral has powers and combat ability on a level that allow her to give Phoenix Force hosts a challenge in battle, but her Smug Super attitude often leads to her being beaten by heroes less powerful than herself, either because she toys with them too long or because she lets herself get distracted at a critical moment.
• Four-Fingered Hands: Like Longshot, Spiral only has three fingers and a thumb on each of her six hands... but sometimes she has four.
• Green-Eyed Monster: The original Longshot mini showed her as being very jealous and resentful of ordinary humans, seeing herself as a freak compared to them. Mojo states outright this is why he gave Spiral her extra arms.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: After being stranded by Mojo one too many times, she decided to settle down and stay out of superhero conflicts.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Frequently aids the heroes, especially after her Wolverine Publicity became known to the writers. Amusingly enough, she's more than once lent her six hands to the Trope Namer himself.
• Hollywood Cyborg: Aside from being one of these herself, she has a side hobby of turning other people into them via her Body Shoppe.
• Immune to Mind Control: Or rather possession, as Rogue and Nocturne were both unable to wrest control of Spiral's body. In Rogue's case, she was the one possessed instead, much as Mr. Sinister did to her, while in Nocturne's case Spiral was actually able to fool her into thinking she had been possessed. It's unknown if a straight up mind control attempt would work.
• It Amused Me: Her motivation for joining the government team Freedom Force, led by Mystique and consisting mostly of boxed crooks, was never really clear- but it seems to have been mainly "bored and had nothing better to do".
• Kick the Dog: Shortly after arriving in our reality she rips the shawl off an elderly woman and walks on the poor woman's head while making cracks about her 'pathetic face'.
• Mad Scientist: In the Mojoverse, she runs the Body Shoppe, where villains (including Lady Deathstrike) get cybernetic makeovers.
• Made of Iron: Her profiles mention that the transformation Mojo put her through also gave her "hardened skin" which lets her absorb way more punishment than she should be able to take.
• Magic Dance: She dances to cast her more complicated spells.
• Magic Knight: A sorceress and technological genius as well as an expert hand-to-hand (-to-hand-to-hand) combatant.
• Meaningful Name: After being brainwashed by Mojo, Ricochet Rita spiraled completely down the rabbit hole of madness.
• Morality Pet: Shatterstar serves as this to her from time to time.
• Most Common Super Power: She has huge breasts.
• Multi-Armed and Dangerous: She has six arms, three of which are cybernetic replacements. And can wield six swords at the same time.
• Mystical White Hair: Not originally one, but became one after her transformation into Spiral.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Well, more like Swordswoman Sorceress Mutate Cyborg in her particular case.
• Psycho Ex-Girlfriend: To Longshot. Not by choice, since Mojo messed with her mind.
• Psycho Supporter: She's Mojo's most effective minion and is totally nuts.
• Psychotic Smirk: Noticing a theme to these tropes yet?
• Punch-Clock Villain: She doesn't have any particular grudge against the X-Men, instead just going after them because it's her Mojo-mandated job.
• Retcon: Neither Ann Nocenti (who created her) nor Chris Claremont (who popularized her by making her an X-Men antagonist and established that her hate boner for Longshot went well beyond "enemy of my master" and kept making cryptic comments about Longshot that implied there being a separate reason for her vendetta against him) intended Spiral to be an evil version of Ricochet Rita. Fabian Nicieza, in the X-Factor installment of the Shattershot 1992 X-Men crossover, established this backstory for Spiral complete with plot point that Spiral was sent back in time to serve Mojo by Mojo himself, to explain away Claremont's usage of Rita in Uncanny X-Men Annual #12 and the Excalibur Mojo Mayhem special, where she was established as the legal guardian and protector of the X-Babies. Fabian's reasons for the decision to make Rita be Spiral, hinged on a nightmare sequence from Uncanny X-Men #248, where Longshot has a nightmare where Rita morphed into Spiral and accused Longshot of being a callous lover who harms the women that he loved through his "callous neglect and knowledge that his looks and charm will help him avoid consequences", with Rita/Spiral then morphing into both Rogue (who had just died the previous issue and who had an unrequited crush on Longshot) and Dazzler (who was in love with Longshot).
• Reforged into a Minion: She was once one of Longshot's friends, and his lover. Then Mojo drove her insane and turned her into his servant.
• Refugee from TV Land: Like everyone from Mojoworld, she has a lot of off sayings. She doesn't kill people, she cancels them.
• Servile Snarker: She's not afraid to snark off at Mojo.
• Sixth Ranger: For Freedom Force. In keeping with the trope's spirit, she is by far the team's most powerful member.
• The Soulless: In Mr. and Mrs. X it was revealed that Mojo removed Spiral's soul from her body as part of the procedure that reforged her into his minion. With the aid of the titular Mr. and Mrs. X (Gambit and Rogue), she was able to reclaim her soul from Mojo and break away from his control seemingly once and for all.
• Speak of the Devil: Through unknown (but likely mystical) means, she is always aware (or is alerted of it) whenever someone speaks her name. Predictably, Wolverine is dismissive when warned of this ability by Mystique — her name is, after all, a common word, spoken hundreds if not thousands of times per day, so how would Spiral know? Cue her instantly appearing and telling him it's all about context and tone of voice to indicate to her whether someone is referring to her or not.
• Stable Time Loop: Ultimately, how she came into Mojo's service involved this, as one of the people who helped Rita become Spiral was Spiral herself.
• Statuesque Stunner: She's 5'10"/178cm tall and certainly attractive.
• The Starscream: During her time in Freedom Force, Spiral considered harnessing the power of Rachel Summers to liberate herself from Mojo. This was dropped and forgotten when story writer Chris Claremont left the X-books.
• Status Quo Is God: She hates her boss and frequently works to undermine him but always goes back to working for him again in the next Mojoworld story.
• Teleportation: This is her primary utility to Mojo — the bloat can defend himself fairly well, but he is completely reliant on Spiral's spellcasting to traverse between dimensions.
• Tragic Villain: She never asked to get driven insane and re-purposed into a deadly enforcer for an evil cosmic entertainment mogul. But she is insane, and dangerous as hell.
• Unwilling Roboticisation: She does this from time to time to guests of the Body Shoppe and may have been a victim of it herself.
• Vain Sorceress: Subverted; she uses magic but isn't particularly vain and has no problems at all with getting her many hands dirty.
• Villainous Friendship: Subverted with Freedom Force; Spiral has nothing but disdain for her teammates, once abandoning them in battle against X-Factor so she could instead stalk a wounded Rachel Summers, then vowing to (and making good on that vow) to try and kill Mystique when Mystique kept her from killing Firestar. Her hate for her teammates was such that Destiny purposely withheld knowledge in one battle with the New Mutants that led to Spiral being knocked out because she found her to be unbearable to be around.
  • During his brief mid-90s run on the X-Men, Mark Waid pitched the idea of revamping Spiral and Viper; recasting them as a duo and having them written as evil supervillain version of Patsy and Edwina from Absolutely Fabulous. The plan never took off, but the establishment of their villainous friendship played out in a Beast mini-series that was published around this time.
• Would Hurt a Child: In her very first appearance, where she's just one of several nameless Mojoworld Mooks who've kidnapped a woman's baby. Her distinctive appearance led to her returning two issues later as a proper villain.
• The Woman Behind the Man: For anyone who gets a makeover in her Body Shoppe. 'Satisfied clients' include the Hellfire Club mercenaries Cole, Macon and Reese, Lady Deathstrike, and Psylocke (who admittedly wasn't wasn't nearly as satisfied as the others).

Madame Mondo

Mondo

Species: Spineless One

• Amazing Technicolor Population: Like Mojo she has sick yellow skin.
• Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: She's a female Spineless One, and looks pretty human, besides having yellow skin. She also has legs even if she still needs a mechanism to move around.
• Femme Fatalons: Her nails are long and sharp like claws.
• The Smurfette Principle: She's the first known female Spineless One. She's also the first Spineless One to have legs.

X-Babies

In General

• Spin-Off Babies: Mojo’s whole purpose for them. Since he could never keep the real X-men for long, he cloned them and used the clones as entertainment.

Rebels

Arize

Arize

Nationality: Mojoworlder

Species: Spineless One, Cyborg

First Appearance: Longshot #5 (1986)

Longshot’s creator

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• My Species Doth Protest Too Much: Contrary to the other Spineless Ones, Arize was somehow immune to the absorption of signals from Earth, and consequently wasn't driven insane by them.

Longshot

Longshot

Some guys have all the luck. Longshot's that guy.

Notable Aliases: The Lost Messiah, The Lucky One, Jumping Jack, Ziggy Stardust, Leather Boy Leather-Queen

Nationality: Mojoworlder

Species: Mojoverse slave race (Freemen)

First Appearance: Longshot #1 (September, 1985)

An artificial human bred for slavery in the media-obsessed Mojoverse, Longshot's deal is improbable luck, able to emerge from any scenario victorious; his abilities are similar to that of the Scarlet Witch.

After rebelling against the Mojoverse's Spineless Ones and freeing his fellow slaves, Longshot found himself transplanted in the mainstream Marvel Universe, soon joining the X-Men as a member of their field team. It's there he met Dazzler, with whom he's been (invariably) romantically linked. He later served as a member of the X-Factor Investigations team.

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• '80s Hair: His original look was modelled on the singer Limahl. For his X-Factor tenure he had a more generic look, but for Longshot Saves The Marvel Universe, Christopher decided to honour the spirit of this trope - a similarly bleeding-edge modern haircut - and gave him a new look designed by a barber he knew.
• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Longshot claims that his knives can cut through anything. In X-Factor Issue #201, he used them to cut open a casket that had been soldered shut.
• Artificial Human: Well, artificial other-dimensional "human". Longshot and others like him were created by the Spineless Ones to serve as performers in their TV-like entertainments.
  • To wit, in addition to the Four-Fingered Hands mentioned below, Longshot has hollow bones, skin as tough as leather, a back-up heart, and has the dexterity and reflexes to dodge blows from Spider-Man. Then you get into the Luck powers..
• Boldly Coming: He's been romancing "alien" (human and human-mutants) women since first setting foot on Earth. Since his marriage to Dazzler ended, he's been making plenty of human women very, very happy. Sometimes repeatedly.
• Born into Slavery: Longshot was a clone created by scientists working for Mojo, with the express purpose of working as a stuntman in movies; however, the inventor of the technology had planted a seed that would grow into the desire for freedom in his creations, and Longshot's first words were to tell Mojo, "No-one owns me." Eventually, he would indeed lead a slave rebellion and escape to Earth, beginning Mojo's long enmity with the X-Men and other heroes.
• Born Lucky: Longshot's powers is the ability to affect probability fields through psionic means in order to give himself "good luck" in his activities, allowing incredibly unlikely events to happen in his favor.
• Brainwashed and Crazy:
  • Spiral is his former Love Interest that he met on Earth, kidnapped and brainwashed by Mojo into despising him.
  • Happens to Longshot himself in Chris Claremont's first issue on Exiles (because of course it does). Fortunately, Longshot's powers mean it quickly wears off.
• Break the Badass: Early on in Exiles, the team finds him locked up in his own special prison in Mojoworld, and when they try to bust him out, he refuses, due to multiple repeated failures against Mojo. The team just drag his ass out of prison anyway, and in the meantime manage to rekindle his fighting spirit.
• Charm Person: Longshot's power makes him irresistible to anyone that finds him attractive, be it male or female. However, he notes that after a while, they realize this and start to become repulsed in just as equal magnitude.
• Chick Magnet: Ladies love him. And sometimes, dudes too.
• Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Comes from being from Mojo world. He's a very odd guy that is very Literal-Minded.
• Even the Guys Want Him: In X-Factor, when he first showed up Detective Lieutenant Weiss is immediately smitten (which does wonders to move the investigation process along).
• Four-Fingered Hands: Has only three fingers and a thumb on each hand.
• Glowing Eyes: His left eye glows when he uses his luck or psychometry powers.
• Hourglass Plot: In his debut solo the bounty hunter sent by Mojo who hates his guts at first develops a deep respect for him while his son who assisted him at first is corrupted by absorbing the ambient magic on Earth and grows to hate him.
• Improbable Aiming Skills: What with his luck powers, his knives always hit their target, eventually.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Explicitly a part of how his luck powers work in the earlier parts of his continuity. So long as his motives are pure rather than selfish, everything that can possibly go in his favor will do so, frequently in drastic fashion. If he attempts to use his luck for his own profit, however - such as his attempt in his introductory LS to work as a stuntman - his luck turns against him and reality quite painfully ensues.
• Informed Attractiveness: Almost every female character he comes into contact with comments on his handsomeness. Kitty Pryde was so entranced by him she stole a kiss from him while he was asleep.
• Laser-Guided Amnesia:
  • Mojo did this to him before his reappearance in Exiles.
  • Longshot has no recollection of Dazzler's pregnancy because his son, Shatterstar, erased his memories of this in order to preserve the Stable Time Loop of his own history.
• LEGO Genetics: Was created by the Spineless One scientist Arize, partly using DNA taken from Shatterstar, who is also Longshot's biological son with Dazzler.
• Loophole Abuse: In X-Factor, Layla, and then Jamie, encourage Longshot to break the bank at a Vegas casino to attract the attention of the goddess Hela. This works because he's winning money for them, not himself.
• Mistaken for an Imposter:A crossover between X-Factor and She-Hulk dealt with a Skrull named Nogor who impersonated Longshot. When the real Longshot comes to X-Factor's new headquarters, Guido attacks him thinking he was Nogor. Longshot points out that if he were Nogor, he wouldn't use the same disguise twice on the same people.
• Mix-and-Match Critters: Gog n'Magog (or "Pup" as Longshot calls him) from the original miniseries starts the story as something best described as a clawed monkey/bear hybrid with a beard and a mohawk. He keeps absorbing Earth's magic during the story, thus mutating from issue to issue. He ends up with a reptilian tail and stegosaurus plates on his back.
• My Own Grampa: He is technically speaking a clone of his son.
• No-Sell: He was rented out to the Exiles because his luck powers cancelled out Proteus' reality warping.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: He has a real name, but doesn't remember it.
• Outdated Outfit: The leather jumpsuit. In his debut, he also had a mullet-style haircut modeled after the musician Limahl. For the Longshot Saves The Marvel Universe miniseries, he got a more modern look.
• Parental Incest: Comes with the territory of being My Own Grampa.
• Psychometry: He can read "psychic imprints" that people leave on objects that they have handled and sometimes can even look into the future of the person or object he touches. On occasion, if the person he's reading is sufficiently strong enough, it can backfire. Like when he tried reading an alternate version of Galactus, which catapulted him across the room.
• Refugee from TV Land: He's from Mojoworld, where TV is life, and life is controlled by Mojo.
• Running Gag: During X-Factor (2006), Once Shatterstar shows up, it becomes a running thing that there is clearly some connection between him and Longshot, but which the audience doesn't get to hear as it's always interrupted just as Shatterstar is about to explain it.
• Sex God: He's very good in bed. according to his On Again Off Again lover Alison.
• Stable Time Loop: Due to Time Travel and the non-multiversal nature of Mojoworld, Longshot was created using genes collected from his own son Shatterstar after the latter had been blasted into Mojoworld's past.
• Took a Level in Dumbass: For his reappearance in X-Factor, somewhere after X-Men: Die by the Sword, he's suddenly become a hell of a lot ditzier.
• Trope Codifier: For a whole host of visual tropes from the Dark Age of comics. Art Adams' scratchy style in the original Longshot miniseries was a major influence on his inker, Whilce Portacio, and Jim Lee, and Adams actually gave Longshot pouches because of his dislike of the hyperspace arsenal trope.

Shatterstar

Gaveedra-Seven / Shatterstar

Nationality: Mojoworlder

Species: Genetically engineered human mutant

First Appearance: New Mutants #99 (March, 1991)

Shatterstar (born Gaveedra-Seven, sometimes known as Benjamin Russell) is one of those comic book characters who have a weirdly overcomplicated origin. On the surface, he's just a mutant alien gladiator from the planet Mojoworld, and a frequent member of X-Force. In actually, Shatterstar is both the son and father of occasional X-Man Longshot.

Let's explain. Due to a Temporal Paradox, Shatterstar's DNA was taken from him during a time-traveling trip, and was subsequently used to create Longshot. Years later, he and Dazzler would conceive a child, who would grow up (in a possible future) to be... you get the picture.

After time-traveling to his past, Shatterstar became a founding member of X-Force, where he met his on-off love interest Rictor. After years of ship teasing, they shared their first on-panel kiss in X-Factor #45, making them the first same-sex (male) pairing to do so in Marvel Comics history. His exact orientation was a common discussion among fans, but according to Peter David —who wrote the aforementioned scene— Shatterstar is canonically bisexual.^note Creator Rob Liefeld had originally intended Shatterstar to be asexual, though.

Likely because of his convoluted origin, Shatterstar is fairly obscure, but a vastly simplified version of the character appears in Deadpool 2, portrayed there by Lewis Tan.

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• '90s Anti-Hero: Originally a standard bearer for the genre, complete with impractically long hair, lots of pouches and padded headgear, and lots and lots of swords. Although when he reappeared in X-Factor he had abandoned the long braids and taken to wearing what could be seen as very hip, but plausible street clothes and his weapons were usually concealed.
• Anchored Teleportation: In X-Factor (2006), Shatterstar gains the power to create X-shaped portals to any place where someone he has a special connection with is located. This power draws from Shatterstar's own energy and requires him to rest for four hours after use. His 2018 miniseries shows that he can open a portal to a place he has already been to as long he uses memory of sight and smell.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: Shatterstar has hollow bones, making him lighter and faster than a regular human. Despite this, he's strong enough to send a person of Strong Guy's size and strength flying through a wall.
• Blood Knight: Star likes to fight.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Inbetween his return to Mojoworld and his reappearance in X-Factor, he wound up under the control of Cortex, a time-travelling cyborg out to eradicate mutantkind.
• Cannot Spit It Out: Throughout X-Factor, he sometimes starts to tell the truth about his apparent connection to Longshot, but usually stops himself or gets interrupted.
• Charm Person: Between his good looks and bombastic personality, he gets a lot of attention. Even his lack of human social clues seems to be no hinderance. It's a family thing, apparently.
• Comically Missing the Point: Thanks to some Ambiguous Syntax, when Wolfsbane stumbled on him and Rictor kissing and declared "you did this!" She means "turned Rictor gay", Star thinks that because Rahne is pregnant that she means he got her pregnant, until she clarifies. And hurls him through the wall.
• Continuity Snarl: The whole "Benjamin Russell" thing, whether he was connected to an asylum inmate with that name. Not surprising that Peter David just junked it and went with a more straightforward explanation. (well, "straightforward"...)
• Dark Age of Supernames: Lampshaded by The Thing.
  Seriously? What, are they comin' up with names by just slappin' words together now? Why not Sassyspam? Or Dizzyduck? Or Helmethair? Okay, that one works, but still...
• Demoted to Satellite Love Interest: Played for Laughs in the Dead Souls mini-series. While Rictor is a member of the latest version of the New Mutants, Shatterstar is simply his boyfriend and friends with the team. He doesn't seem particularly bothered to be left out of missions.
• Disproportionate Retribution: In X-Factor issue #209, Shatterstar beats up a guy for making fun of his star tattoo.
• Does Not Like Guns: Shatterstar does not consider guns to be fit for a warrior. That doesn't mean he doesn't know how to use one.
• Drives Like Crazy: He hasn't gotten the hang of cars. He also thinks that brakes are pointless.
• Dual Wielding: He very often uses multiple swords.
• Facial Markings: He has a starburst-shaped marking on his right eye
• Gladiator Revolt: Was involved in the Cadre Alliance back on Mojoworld, which was fighting to overthrow Mojo V.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Let's just say that his love of combat, and willingness to accept injury as a part of it, make this essential.
• Half-Human Hybrid: He is the biological son of Dazzler, a human mutant, and Longshot, an Artificial Human who also happens to be genetically based on Shatterstar himself, due to a Stable Time Loop.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Rictor for years, to the point where it eventually became Ho Yay. Then they were given a Relationship Upgrade and the "heterosexual" part got tossed out the window.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice He's been known to run himself through with his swords in order to get an opponent coming at him behind.
• Impossibly Cool Weapon: Shatterstar's main weapons of choice are two single-edged swords with spiked hand-guards.
• Improvised Weapon: Shatterstar once beat up The Thing with a barbell.
• Innocently Insensitive: Early in their relationship, Star could be a bit flirty with anyone who passed by, which caused Rictor no small amount of insecurity, until they had a talk about it.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Because otherwise there's no real reason for him to have one.
• Kid from the Future: Comes from the future of Mojoworld, but is in fact the son of Dazzler and Longshot, neither of whom remembers his birth because he wiped their memories of it.
• Light Is Good: He often wears white mostly white clothing.
• Lightning Bruiser: Shatterstar is strong enough to beat up Strong Guy and the Thing ad fast enough to dodge point blank automatic weapon fire.
• My Own Grampa: Now officially gives the Summers family a run for their money when it comes to Time Travel tangled origin stories.
• Manly Gay: Almost to the point of Testosterone Poisoning.
• Naked Apron: In the Dead Souls mini-series, Karma complains about him doing this while she's talking with Rictor.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Was raised specifically to be a gladiator.
• Refugee from TV Land: Comes from Mojoworld, where television is life; tends to say things like "May you have many spinoffs." Also offended by the fact that actors on Earth that perform fighting roles often lack genuine combat skills since on Mojoworld all the "shows" are real.
• Revenge: He's out to get Kid Cable for killing the older Cable. He eventually comes around to him when they rescue Rachel Summers.
• Smug Super: He's a badass and he knows it.
• Strong and Skilled: Shatterstar has a superhuman physiology and is a trained combatant.
• Take That!: His bisexuality, and Marvel's insistence on its remaining canon, seems to be an open dig on creator Liefeld's own aversion to gay characters.
• Thinking Up Portals: Shatterstar can create X-shaped portals through space, time and into other dimensions by focusing energy through his swords. He also needs an "anchor" to help him do this, which is a person with whom he has a special relationship. Shatterstar also has to be outside when he opens up his portals because the energies released could destroy whatever structure he is inside of. Thus far he has been able to use Rictor and Layla Miller (both of whom he has slept with), as well as Longshot (who is both a partial clone of him, as well as being his biological father).
• Vibroweapon: His seldom-used mutant power is to generate vibrations from his body, turning his swords into these. At one point it was revealed that the oddest of his swords, which has two side-by-side blades, was designed to somehow convert this power into a Sword Beam. The number of times he has actually used this power on-panel, however, can be counted on both hands.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: He was brought up to be a killing machine, to have no sense of emotional connections with people. Most of his character growth since his first appearance has been about learning all about human emotions.

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