Marvel Revives the X-Men’s Weirdest Villain in Major Reveal

Marvel’s X-Men reboot event “From the Ashes” is now fully underway, and the latest issue (X-Men #4) throws a major curveball at fans by revealing that the first “big bad” of the new X-Men comic’s arc will be one of the weirdest villains from the X-Men rogues gallery that you could get! Of course, given the larger context of X-Men #4, perhaps we shouldn’t have been so shocked to see this villain is making a comeback! 

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW! 

The story of X-Men #4 sees Cyclops’s X-Men strike team take on a new target: Trevor Fitzroy and his team the Upstarts. The ongoing mystery of who is creating new mutants gives Fitzroy an opening for a very public campaign against the X-Men and other mutant factions, by announcing to the world that he and the Upstarts are willing to kill them off. Naturally, Cyclops and co. take that personally, and send a team to confront the Upstarts directly, before they can locate and terminate a new mutant who has popped up on the radar. 

Magik leads the Beast, Juggernaut, and Temper squad to Detriot, where the Upstarts have the young new mutant cornered. The battle is fought, and the X-Men claim the victory of getting the young mutant, Jennifer Starkey, back to their Alaskan base where she can get help. Fitzroy slinks back to his hideaway, thinking that he won the PR victory of spinning the battle into an Upstarts victory on social media; however, his boss disagrees – and that boss is none other than The Sugar Man!

 X-Men #4 makes it seem like Sugar Man is mad that someone else is turning humans into mutants – and wanted Fitzroy to get him a living sample to experiment on. Since his lackey failed, we can only presume Sugar Man will get it himself. 

Marvel’s Sugar Man Explained

Sugar Man was a villain character that Marvel first introduced in 1995 as part of the “Age of Apocalypse” crossover event. That storyline saw the reality of the Marvel 616 Universe diverge into a splinter timeline, where Charles Xavier died before ever forming the X-Men, leaving the militant mutant ruler Apocalypse unchecked in his “survival of the fittest” campaign against the world. Magneto and Rogue formed their own X-Men army, including a squad of younger mutants – led by Shadowcat and Colossus – called “Generation Next.” That squad was given a veritable suicide mission by Magneto: breaking into the Seattle Core slave camp to save Colossus’ sister Illyana from the Core and its demonic overseer, the Sugar Man. Colossus sacrifices nearly everyone on his squad during the mission, to save his sister; Sugar Man fakes his own death in the showdown, using his mutant ability for size/mass change to shrink down and hide inside Colossus’s costume. When the Age of Apocalypse came to an end, Sugar Man was one of the characters who made it into the main Marvel 616 Universe. 

Since then, Sugar Man has been one of the most vile villains the X-Men have in their orbit, helping to enslave and experiment on the mutates of Genosha; returning to his original Age of Apocalypse timeline to serve the Hier of Apocalypse, Weapon Omega (the AoA Wolverine); and conducting mad scientist experiments on mutants, including trying to create his own next generation of mutants. 

Last seen, Sugar Man had seemingly been killed – but then again he popped up later in a random issue of Amazing Spider-Man in 2020. With his regenerative powers and track record for side-stepping death, it was only a matter of time before Sugar Man returned.