Marvel Brings Back The Original SPOILER in X-Men’s Marauders

Marvel’s “Dawn of X” relaunch continues this week with Marauders, the new comic series that follows a branch of the X-Men team as they embark on a new mission: sailing around the world and liberate oppressed mutants from the countries that oppose the new mutant sovereignty of Krakoa. That mission has brought together an unlikely ensemble of mutants, which include Kitty Pryde, Storm, Iceman, Emma Frost, and one character making a major return form the dead! As we learn to our shared delight in the pages of Marauders, Marvel has brought the original Pyro back from the dead!

Warning: SPOILERS for Marvel’s Marauders Follow!

The main storyline of Marauders reveals that Kitty Pryde is the sole X-Man who is unable to use the various warp gates leading to Krakoa. That restriction forces Kitty to use other means to reach the mutant homeland – so she steals a boat and sets sail for the island. Kitty’s time on Krakoa proves to be just as fruitless, as the island’s natural resources (like flowers that grow into biome homes) are similarly prohibited to Kitty. Emma Frost comes asking Kitty to take up a special mission: taking a bigger boat out to serve as pirate captain on the X-Men’s mission to liberate mutants trapped in oppressive countries that don’t recognize mutant sovereignty.

Kitty recruits Storm and Iceman to be her shipmates, and when the group sets sale, the find they have an unexpected stowaway from Krakoa on their boat: Pyro! As Iceman quickly discerns, this isn’t just any Pyro – it’s the original Pyro from X-Men comics, complete with his signature thick Australian brogue.

If you don’t know the history, the original Pyro was St. John Allerdyce, who had the power to control flames in terms of both shape and intensity. Pyro was a longtime member of the government-sanctioned mutant hit squad Freedom Force, as well as the early version of the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, forging relationships with the likes of Mystique and her partner, Destiny. Allerdyce contracted the deadly Legacy Virus created by the mutant Stryfe, and ultimately died from the virus, while heroically saving the life of anti-mutant politician Senator Robert Kelly, and helping to change the direction of the senator’s policies. Allerdyce was brought back by Selene during the “Necrosha” resurrections, and remained in that undead state afterward. Simon Lasker took up the mantle of Pyro, and even joined the X-Men.

As John Allerdyce reveals in Marauders #1, he was actually one of the first mutants that Charles Xavier used his mutant resurrection process to bring back. As Pyro tells it:

Yeah mate. Ben gone a while, I was. I don’t remember a damn thing, and then bam! I’m suddenly awake on this magic island. Turns out I was one of the first mutants to be resurrected. I felt so special — until I realized they used me as a lab rat. I was gonna steal this boat and get into trouble, but that bunk was so nice I just took a nap instead.

When Pyro learns what the Maruaders are up to, it seems like the perfect kind of trouble to get into, and he joins the team.

Watch Pyro’s adventures in X-Men’s Marauders, which is now on sale.