Professor X
Professor X is a character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby, the character first appeared in The X-Men #1. The character is depicted as the founder and occasional leader of the X-Men.
Xavier is a member of a subspecies of humans known as mutants, who are born with superhuman abilities. He is an exceptionally powerful telepath, who can read and control the minds of others. To both shelter and train mutants from around the world, he runs a private school in the X-Mansion in Salem Center, located in Westchester County, New York. Xavier also strives to serve the greater good by promoting peaceful coexistence and equality between humans and mutants in a world where zealous anti-mutant bigotry is widespread. However, he later abandons his dream in favor of establishing a mutant nation in Krakoa.
Throughout much of the character's history, Xavier has been depicted with paraplegia and uses a wheelchair. One of the world's most powerful mutant telepaths, Xavier is a scientific genius and a leading authority in genetics. He has devised Cerebro and other equipment to enhance psionic powers and detect and track people with the mutant gene.
Xavier's pacifist and assimilationist ideology and actions have often been contrasted with that of Magneto, a mutant leader with whom Xavier has a complicated relationship. Fans and commentators often compare Xavier and Magneto to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X respectively, though the amount of authorial intent supporting this comparison is disputed. Writer Chris Claremont, who originated Magneto's backstory, compared the politics of Xavier to David Ben-Gurion and that of Magneto to Menachem Begin. Later writers have additionally emphasized secretive, ruthless, and manipulative aspects of Xavier, while the later "Krakoan Age" storyline sees him align with Magneto to establish a sovereign mutant nation.
Patrick Stewart portrayed the character in the first three films in the 20th Century Fox X-Men film series and in various video games, and James McAvoy portrayed a younger version of the character in the 2011 prequel X-Men: First Class. Both actors reprised the role in the film X-Men: Days of Future Past. Stewart would reprise the role in the film Logan, while McAvoy would further appear as his younger iteration of the character in X-Men: Apocalypse, Deadpool 2, and Dark Phoenix. Harry Lloyd portrayed the character in the third season of the television series Legion. Stewart returned to the role again, portraying an alternate version of the character in the 2022 Marvel Cinematic Universe film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Publication history
Created by writer Stan Lee and artist/co-writer Jack Kirby, Professor X first appeared in X-Men #1.Creation and influences
Stan Lee has stated that the physical inspiration of Professor Xavier was from Academy Award-winning actor Yul Brynner.Writer Scott Lobdell established Xavier's middle name to be "Francis" in Uncanny X-Men #309.
Character
Xavier's goals are to promote the peaceful affirmation of mutant rights, to mediate the co-existence of mutants and humans, to protect mutants from violent humans, and to protect society from antagonistic mutants, including his old friend, Magneto. To achieve these aims, he founded Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters to teach mutants to explore and control their powers. Its first group of students was the original X-Men. Xavier's students consider him a visionary and often refer to their mission as "Xavier's dream". He is highly regarded by others in the Marvel Universe, respected by various governments, and trusted by several other superhero teams, including the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. However, he also has a manipulative streak which has resulted in several significant fallings-out with allies and students.He often acts as a public advocate for mutant rights and is the authority most of the Marvel superhero community turns to for advice on mutants. Despite this, his status as a mutant himself and originator of the X-Men only became public during the 2001 story "E Is for Extinction". He also appears in almost all of the X-Men animated series and in many video games, although usually as a non-playable character. Patrick Stewart plays him in the 2000s X-Men film series, as well as providing his voice in some of the X-Men video games.
According to BusinessWeek, Charles Xavier is listed as one of the top ten most intelligent fictional characters in American comics.
In a number of comics, Xavier is shown to have a dark side, a part of himself that he struggles to suppress. Perhaps the most notable appearance of this character element is in the Onslaught storyline, in which the crossover event's antagonist is a physical manifestation of that dark side. Also, Onslaught is created in the most violent act Xavier claims to have done: erasing the mind of Magneto. In X-Men #106, the new X-Men fight images of the original team, which have been created by what Xavier says is his "evil self... who would use his powers for personal gain and conquest", which he says he is normally able to keep in check. In the 1984 four-part series titled The X-Men and the Micronauts, Xavier's dark desires manifest themselves as the Entity and threaten to destroy the Micronauts' universe.
In other instances, Xavier is shown to be secretive and manipulative. During the Onslaught storyline, the X-Men find Xavier's files, the "Xavier Protocols", which detail how to kill many of the characters, including Xavier himself, should the need ever arise, such as if they went rogue. Astonishing X-Men vol. 3, #12 reveals that when Xavier realizes that the Danger Room has become sentient, he keeps it trapped and experiments on it for years, an act that Cyclops calls "the oppression of a new life" and equates to humanity's treatment of mutants.
Fictional character biography
Charles Francis Xavier was born in New York City to the wealthy Dr. Brian Xavier, a well-respected nuclear scientist, and Sharon Xavier. The family lives in a grand mansion estate in Westchester County because of the wealth his father's nuclear research has brought. Crucially, as he enters late adolescence, Xavier inherits the mansion he was raised in, enabling him to turn it in to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which he begins together with the first of the X-Men.Brian, his father, dies in an accident when Xavier is very young, and Brian's science partner Kurt Marko comforts and marries the grieving Sharon. When Xavier's telepathic mutant powers emerge, he discovers Marko cares only about his mother's money. Kurt moves in with the Xaviers, with his son Cain. Kurt becomes neglectful of Sharon, driving her to alcoholism, and abuses Charles and Cain. Cain takes out his frustrations and insecurities on his stepbrother. Charles' telepathic powers sense Cain's mind and psychological damage, which only leads to Cain becoming more aggressive and the young Xavier feeling Cain's pain firsthand. Sharon dies, and a fight erupts between Cain and Charles that causes some of Kurt's lab equipment to explode. Mortally wounded, Kurt drags the children out before dying, and admits he was partly responsible for Brian's death.
With help from his superhuman powers and natural genius, Xavier becomes an excellent student and athlete, though he gives up the latter, believing his powers give him an unfair advantage. Due to his powers, by the time he graduates from high school, Charles loses all his hair. He enters Bard College aged 16 and graduates with his bachelor's degree in biology in only two years. In graduate studies, he receives Ph.D.s in Genetics, Biophysics, Psychology, and Anthropology with a two-year residence at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. He receives an M.D. in Psychiatry while spending several years in London. He is appointed adjunct professor at Columbia University. Origins of Marvel Comics: X-Men #1 presents a different version of events, suggesting a scholarship to Oxford rescued him from his abusive home, after which he "never looked back", suggesting he began his academic career as a very young man at Oxford.
At graduate school, he meets a Scottish girl named Moira Kinross, a fellow genetics student with whom he falls in love. They agree to get married, but soon, Xavier is drafted into the Korean War. He carves himself a niche as a soldier in search and rescue missions alongside Shadowcat's father, Carmen Pryde, and witnesses Cain's transformation into Juggernaut when he touches a ruby with an inscription on it. Xavier receives a letter from Moira breaking up with him. He later discovers that Moira married her old boyfriend Joseph MacTaggert, who abuses her.
Depressed when Moira broke off their engagement without explanation, Xavier began traveling around the world as an adventurer after leaving the army. In Cairo, he meets a young girl named Ororo Munroe, a pickpocket, and the Shadow King, a powerful mutant who is posing as Egyptian crime lord Amahl Farouk. Xavier defeats the Shadow King. This encounter leads to Xavier's decision to devote his life to protecting humanity from evil mutants and safeguarding innocent mutants from human oppression.
Xavier visits his friend Daniel Shomron, who runs a clinic for traumatized Holocaust victims in Haifa, Israel. There, he meets a man going by the name of Magnus, a Holocaust survivor who works as a volunteer, and Gabrielle Haller, a woman driven into a catatonic coma by the trauma she experienced. Xavier uses his mental powers to break her out of her catatonia and they fall in love. Xavier and Magneto become friends, though neither immediately reveals to the other that he is a mutant. They have debates hypothesizing what will happen if humanity is faced with a new super-powered race of humans. While Xavier is optimistic, Magneto's experiences in the Holocaust lead him to believe humanity will ultimately oppress the new race as they have done with other minorities. The two friends reveal their powers to each other when they fight Nazi Baron Wolfgang von Strucker and his Hydra agents, who kidnap Gabrielle because she knows the location of their secret cache of gold. Magneto attempts to kill Strucker but Xavier stops him. Realizing his and Xavier's views on mutant-human relations are incompatible, Magneto leaves with the gold. Charles stays in Israel for some time, but he and Gabrielle separate on good terms, neither knowing that she is pregnant with his son, who grows up to become the mutant Legion.
In a strange town near the Himalayas, Xavier encounters an alien called Lucifer, the advance scout for an invasion by his race, and foils his plans. In retaliation, Lucifer drops a stone block on Xavier, paralyzing his legs. After Lucifer leaves, a woman named Sage hears Xavier's telepathic cries for help and rescues him, beginning a long alliance between them.
In a hospital in India, he is brought to a nurse, Amelia Voght, who looks after him and they fall in love. They move into an apartment in Bombay. Amelia is troubled to find Charles studying mutation, as she is a mutant and unsettled by it, though she feels better when he reveals himself to be a mutant. They move to the United States, living on Xavier's family estate. The night Scott Summers moves into Xavier's mansion, Amelia leaves him, believing Charles would have changed his view and that mutants should lie low. Yet he is recruiting them to what she believes is a lost cause. Charles tries to force her to stay with his mental powers, but immediately ashamed by this, lets her go. She later becomes a disciple of Magneto.
Over the years, Charles makes a name for himself as geneticist and psychologist, apparently renowned enough that the Greys were referred to him when no other expert could help their catatonic daughter, Jean. Xavier trains her in the use of her telekinesis, while inhibiting her telepathic abilities until she matures. Around this time, he also starts working with fellow mutation expert Karl Lykos as well as Moira MacTaggert again, who built a mutant research station on Muir Island. Apparently, Charles had gotten over Moira in his travels to the Greek island of Kirinos. Xavier discusses his candidates for recruitment to his personal strike force, the X-Men, with Moira, including those he passes over, which are Kurt Wagner, Piotr Rasputin, Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, and Ororo Munroe. Xavier also trains Tessa to spy on Sebastian Shaw.
Xavier founded Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, which provides a safe haven for mutants and teaches them to master their abilities. In addition, he seeks to foster mutant-human relations by providing his superhero team, the X-Men, as an example of mutants acting in good faith, as he told FBI agent Fred Duncan. With his inherited fortune, he uses his ancestral mansion at 1407 Graymalkin Lane in Salem Center, Westchester County, New York as a base of operations with technologically advanced facilities, including the Danger Room – later, Fantomex mentions that Xavier is a billionaire with a net worth of $3.5 billion. Presenting the image of a stern teacher, Xavier makes his students endure a rigorous training regime.
Xavier's first five students are Cyclops, Iceman, Angel, Beast, and Marvel Girl who become the original X-Men. After he completes recruiting the original team of X-Men, he sends them into battle with Magneto.
Throughout most of his time with the team, Xavier uses his telepathic powers to keep in constant contact with his students and provides instructions and advice when needed. In addition, he uses a special machine called Cerebro, which enhances his ability to detect mutants and to allow the team to find new students in need of the school.
Among the obstacles Xavier faces is his old friend, Magneto, who has grown into an advocate of mutant superiority since their last encounter and who believes the only solution to mutant persecution is domination over humanity.
When anthropologist Bolivar Trask resurfaces the "mutant problem", Xavier counters him in a televised debate, however, he appears arrogant and Trask sends his mutant-hunting robot Sentinels to terrorize mutants. The X-Men dispatch them, but Trask sees the error in his ways too late as he is killed by his creations.
At one point, Xavier seemingly dies during the X-Men's battle with the sub-human Grotesk. It is later revealed that Xavier arranged for a reformed former villain named Changeling to impersonate him while he went into hiding to plan a defense against an invasion by the extraterrestrial Z'Nox, imparting a portion of his telepathic abilities to Changeling to complete the disguise.
When the X-Men are captured by the sentient island Krakoa, Xavier assembles a new team to rescue them, including Cyclops' and Havok's long-lost brother Vulcan, along with Darwin, Petra, and Sway. This new team, composed of students of Moira MacTaggert, was sent to rescue the original X-Men from Krakoa. However, after rescuing Cyclops, McTaggert's former students were seemingly killed. Upon Cyclops' return, Xavier removed Cyclops' memories of the death of Vulcan and his teammates; and began assembling yet another team of X-Men.
Xavier's subsequent rescue team consists of Banshee, Colossus, Sunfire, Nightcrawler, Storm, Wolverine, and Thunderbird. After the mission, the older team of X-Men, except for Cyclops, leave the school, believing they no longer belong there, and Xavier mentors the new X-Men.
Xavier forms a psychic bond across galaxies with Princess Lilandra Neramani of the Shi'ar empire. When they finally meet, it is love at first sight. She implores the professor to stop her mad brother, Shi'ar emperor D'Ken, and he instantly aids her by deploying his X-Men. When Jean Grey returns from the Savage Land to tell him that all the X-Men are dead, he shuts down the school and travels with Lilandra to her kingdom, where she is crowned Empress and he is treated like a child or a trophy husband.
Xavier senses the changes taking place in Jean Grey, and returns to Earth to help and resume leadership of the X-Men. Shortly thereafter he battles his pupil after she becomes Dark Phoenix and destroys a populated planet in the Shi'ar empire. It hurts Xavier to be on the opposite side of Lilandra, but he has no other choice but to challenge the Shi'ar Imperial Guard to a duel over the fate of the Phoenix. Xavier would have lost against the greater power of the Dark Phoenix, but thanks to the help Jean Grey gives him, Xavier emerges victorious; she later commits suicide to prevent herself from endangering more innocent lives.
When the X-Men fight members of the extraterrestrial race known as the Brood, Xavier is captured by them, and implanted with a Brood egg, which places Xavier under the Brood's control. During this time, Xavier assembles a team of younger mutants called the New Mutants, secretly intended to be prime hosts for reproduction of the aliens. The X-Men discover this and return to free Xavier, but they are too late to prevent his body from being destroyed with a Brood Queen in its place; however, his soul remains intact. The X-Men and Starjammers subdue this monstrous creature containing Xavier's essence, but the only way to restore him is to clone a new body using tissue samples he donated to the Starjammers and transfer his consciousness into the clone body. This new body possesses functional legs, though the psychosomatic pain Xavier experienced after living so long as a paraplegic takes some time to subside. Subsequently, he even joins the X-Men in the field, but later decides not to continue this practice after realizing that his place is at the school, as the teacher of the New Mutants.
After taking a teaching position at Columbia University in Uncanny X-Men #192, Xavier is severely injured and left for dead as the victim of a hate crime. Callisto and her Morlocks, a group of underground-dwelling mutants, get him to safety. One of the Morlocks partially restores Xavier's health, but Callisto warns Xavier that he is not fully healed and that he must spend more time recuperating and restrain himself from exerting his full strength or powers, or his health might fail again. Xavier hides his injuries from the others and resumes his life.
Charles meets with former lover Gabrielle Haller on Muir Island and discovers that they had a child. The boy, David, has autism and dissociative identity disorder. Furthermore, he has vast psionic powers like his father. After helping him and his team to escape from David's mind, Xavier promises he will always be there for him.
A reformed Magneto is arrested and put on trial. Xavier attends the trial to defend his friend. Andrea and Andreas Strucker, the children of presumed dead Baron von Strucker, crash the courtroom to attack Magneto and Xavier. Xavier is seriously injured. Dying, he asks a shocked Magneto to look after the X-Men for him. Lilandra, who has a psychic bond with Xavier, feels that he is in great danger and heads to Earth. There, she and Corsair take Xavier with them so Shi'ar advanced technology can heal him.
Xavier leaves Magneto in charge of the school, but some of the X-Men are unwilling to forgive their former enemy. Cyclops loses a duel for the leadership of the X-Men against Storm, then leaves them and joins the other four original X-Men to form a new team called X-Factor.
In the meantime, Charles becomes stranded in space with the Starjammers, but he is reunited with his lover Lilandra and relishes his carefree lifestyle. He serves as a member of the Starjammers aboard the starship Starjammer, mobile in the Shi'ar Galaxy. He becomes consort to the Princess-Majestrix Lilandra while in exile, and when she later resumes her throne he takes up residence with her in the Imperial palace on the Shi'ar homeworld. Xavier joins Lilandra in her cause to overthrow her sister Deathbird, taking on the powers of Phoenix temporarily wherein he is named Bald Phoenix by Corsair, but sees that he must return to help the X-Men.
Xavier eventually becomes imprisoned by the Skrulls during their attempted invasion of the Shi'ar empire. Xavier breaks free from imprisonment by Warskrull Prime, and is reunited with the X-Men. A healthy Xavier returns from the Shi'ar empire and is reunited with both the current and original X-Men teams, and resumes his leadership responsibilities of the united teams. In a battle with his old foe, the Shadow King, in the "Muir Island Saga", Xavier's spine is shattered, returning him to his former paraplegic state, while his son David is seemingly killed. In the following months, Xavier rebuilds the mansion, which previously was rebuilt with Shi'ar technology, and restructures the X-Men into two teams.
While holding a mutant rights speech, Xavier is nearly assassinated by Stryfe in the guise of Cable, being infected with a fatal techno-organic virus. For reasons of his own, the villain Apocalypse saves him. As a temporary side-effect, he gains full use of his legs and devotes his precious time to the youngest recruit on his team, Jubilee.
In the "Age of Apocalypse" series, an alternate reality is described in which Charles Xavier was killed when he sacrificed himself to save Erik Lensherr from his own future son, David Haller, who had gone back in time to eliminate Magneto in the belief that his father would thus be there for him and succeed in his dream without Magneto to 'hinder' his efforts. As a result, Magneto founded the X-Men and sought human/mutant co-existence in Xavier's name- even naming his new son with Rogue 'Charles' after his friend- but Haller's rampage also prompted Apocalypse to awaken decades before the world was ready for him, resulting in Apocalypse conquering North America and most of the world, eventually forcing Magneto's X-Men to attempt a daring mission to gain the power necessary to go back in time and save Xavier from Haller as they recognised how vital Xavier was to the future.
With all his students now highly trained adults, Professor Xavier renames his school the Xavier Institute For Higher Learning. Also, he assumes control of a private institution, the Massachusetts Academy, making it a new School for Gifted Youngsters. Another group of young mutants is trained here, Generation X, with Banshee and Emma Frost as headmaster and headmistress, respectively.
Professor X is for a time the unknowing host of the evil psionic entity Onslaught, the result of a previous battle with Magneto. In that battle, Magneto uses his powers to rip out the adamantium bonded to Wolverine's skeleton, and a furious Xavier wipes Magneto's mind, leaving him in a coma. From the psychic trauma of Xavier using his powers so violently and the mixing of Magneto's and Xavier's repressed anger, Onslaught is born. Onslaught wreaks havoc, destroying much of Manhattan, until many of Marvel's superheroes—including the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and the Hulk—destroy him. Xavier is left without his telepathy and, overcome with guilt, leaves the X-Men and is incarcerated for his actions. He later returns to the X-Men after Operation: Zero Tolerance, in which he is shocked by the cruel act of being turned over to the mutant-hating Bastion, following a clash with the sentient Cerebro and a team of impostor X-Men.
Xavier questions his dream again and Magneto shortly thereafter is confronted by the X-Men. After the battle, the UN concedes Genosha to Magnus, and Wolverine is angered by Xavier stopping him from getting his revenge on Magneto. Charles and Logan are later trapped in a dimension with different laws of physics, wherein they have to coordinate their moves together and, in the process, gain a better understanding of the other's views.
Apocalypse kidnaps the fabled "Twelve" special mutants whose combined energies would grant him omnipotence. After Apocalypse's defeat with the help of Skrull mutants, Xavier goes with the young Skrulls known as Cadre K to train them and free them from their oppressors, and eventually returns to aid in Legacy Virus research.
Mystique and her Brotherhood start a deadly assault on Muir Island by releasing an altered form of the Legacy Virus, all in retaliation against the election campaign of Robert Kelly, a seeming mutant-hater. Mystique blows up Moira MacTaggert's laboratory complex, fatally wounding her. Charles goes to the astral plane to meet with her and retrieve information on the cure to the Legacy Virus, but after gathering the information does not want to leave her alone. If not for Jean and Cable talking him down and pulling him back, the professor would have died with his first love, who states she has no regrets.
As Beast cures the Legacy Virus, many infected Genoshan mutants recover overnight, providing Magneto, the current ruler of Genosha, with an army to start the third World War. He demands Earth's governments accept him as their leader, and abducts and crucifies Xavier in Magda Square for all to see. A loyal member of Magneto's Acolytes, Amelia Voght, cannot stand to see her former lover punished in such a manner and sets him free. Jean Grey and rather untrained newcomers, as most of the team are elsewhere, distract Magneto and Wolverine guts him. Xavier is too late to intervene.
Xavier's evil twin Cassandra Nova, whom Xavier attempted to kill while they were both in their mother's womb, orders a group of rogue Sentinels to destroy the independent mutant nation of Genosha. Magneto, who is Genosha's leader, appears to die along with the vast majority of the nation's inhabitants. Nova then takes over Xavier's body. Posing as Xavier, she reveals his mutation to the world, something he needed to do but did not want to sully his reputation over, before going into space and crippling the Shi'ar empire. The X-Men restore Xavier, but Lilandra, believing that too much disaster has come from the Shi'ar's involvement with the X-Men, annuls her marriage to Xavier. Lilandra previously had gone insane and tried to assassinate Charles on a trip to Mumbai. During this period, a mutant named Xorn joins the X-Men. Xorn uses his healing power to restore Xavier's use of his legs.
When the X-Men receive a distress call from a Scottish island, they are surprised to find Juggernaut with nowhere to go, as the island was destroyed by his further-mutated partner in crime, Black Tom Cassidy, who died. Xavier reaches out to his stepbrother and offers him a place in his mansion, with Cain reluctantly accepting. The Juggernaut redeems himself over the next few weeks and joins the X-Men. Xavier finds out that Cain's father preferred him to his own flesh and blood and that they both thought they deserved the abuse they incurred by Kurt; Cain believed this because his father loved someone else's child more than him, and Charles felt guilty about getting in the way. That it is why neither of them stopped Kurt Marko with their powers.
Now outed as a mutant, Xavier makes speeches to the public about mutant tolerance. He also founds the X-Corporation, or X-Corp, with offices 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 out, the school no longer hides the fact that it is a school for mutants and it opens its doors for more mutant students to come in. A student named Quentin Quire and members of his gang start a riot at the Xavier Institute during an open house at the school. As a result, Quire and two other students are killed. Uncertain about his dream's validity, Xavier announces that he will step down as headmaster and be succeeded by Jean Grey. Afterwards, Xorn reveals himself to be Magneto, having apparently not died in the Sentinel raid on Genosha. Magneto undoes the restoration of Xavier's ability to walk, kidnaps him, and destroys the X-Mansion. Then Xorn/Magneto assaults New York, where Cyclops, Fantomex and a few students confront him. After the rest of the X-Men arrive, Xorn/Magneto kills Jean Grey with an electromagnetically induced stroke, and Wolverine decapitates him. With Jean dead, Xavier leaves the school to Cyclops and Emma Frost, to bury Xorn/Magneto in Genosha. In a retcon of Grant Morrison's storyline, there Xavier meets the "real" Magneto, who mysteriously survived Cassandra Nova's assault. The two resolve their differences and attempt to restore their friendship, leading a team of mutants, the Genoshan Excalibur, to rebuild and restore order to the destroyed island nation.
At the mansion, the Danger Room gains sentience, christens itself "Danger", assumes a humanoid form, and attacks the X-Men before leaving to kill Xavier. With Magneto's help, Xavier holds off Danger until the X-Men arrive. Danger flees, but not before revealing to Colossus that Xavier has known it to be sentient ever since he upgraded it. Colossus is especially offended by this because he had been held captive and experimented upon by Danger's ally Ord. Ashamed, Xavier tries to explain to them that by the time he realized what was happening, he could see no other course. The disgusted X-Men leave.