Reignfire is a
fictional
character and
villain created by
Marvel
Comics for their series
X-Force. His original creators were
Fabian Nicieza and Matt Broome, who had
completely different plans for the villain than what evolved.
Fictional character biography
After the events of the
X-Cutioner's Song crossover event,
the
Mutant Liberation Front
(MLF) was
incarcerate and left leaderless. To
fill this void came a maniacal being named Reignfire. He liberated
four members of the original MLF:
Forearm,
Reaper,
Wildside, and
Tempo, and added two more to their ranks:
Moonstar and
Locus. He charged his team with the mission
of killing
Henry Peter Gyrich--a
man who had always been a thorn in side of the mutant agenda.
However, their attempt was foiled by X-Force and, during the
battle, the powers of Locus and
Sunspot reacted together in an odd way,
teleporting the pair to parts unknown.
Before doing so, Reignfire says Cable's real name, a big
foreshadowing technique in Nicieza's original
plan.
When Reignfire made his presence known, it was noticed how
remarkably similar he was to Sunspot, not only in appearance but in
powers as well. Since, at this time, Sunspot was
missing in action (MIA), that possibility
was not ruled out by
Cable. His
suspicions were revealed when, in the middle of a battle, Reignfire
removes his mask to show that he is indeed Roberto.
Cable uses his
telepathic powers to
forcefully remove/suppress the Reignfire
persona in Sunspot, and supposedly succeeds. As an
unexpected
side effect,
Sunspot gathered some knowledge from Cable's mind, including
information about
Askani--Cable's religion
and language. There were occasional moments when Sunspot would have
a mental struggle to suppress evil urges, but for the most part all
seems well.
Later,
Sunspot goes to visit his friend and former New Mutants teammate Skids in Colorado
when the
pair is attacked by none other than Locus and Reignfire.
Although things once more go awry with Locus' powers when they come
in contact with Skids'
force field, the
mission is generally a success as Sunspot is captured. Once
shackled to the wall, Reignfire begins to tell the story of his
"real" origin: he was not an evil Sunspot, which many had believed,
but a
clone of him created from
his cellular material. He was once a
protoplasmic entity possessed by the
Celestials with no real form until
Gideon injected a sample of
Sunspot's blood into his container. With a set of genetic material
to duplicate, the protoplasmic goo began to pattern itself on the
DNA sample given to it and thus shared Sunspot's
appearance and powers. Another added bonus was the fact that, when
he was within close proximity, he could activate a telepathic link
with his host and psychically imprint himself onto
Sunspot--explaining why Sunspot would sometimes seem to be evil.
Reignfire wanted to kill Sunspot, but fails when several of his
teammates came to his rescue.
When he next appeared, it was back with the Celestials' ship.
X-Force found the ship and the protoplasmic figure inside and,
after a battle, Reignfire was crushed to death by a Celestial
golem inside of the ship.
Powers and abilities
Since Reignfire was the genetic clone of Sunspot, he shared all of
his abilities: absorption rechanneling of solar energy, either
within his own body or externally, to create multiple abilities
including, super strength,
thermal
updrafts for flight, projection of heat and light as
concussive blasts or in a stream of fiery rain,
and the ability to forge a
telepathic link
with his genetic host and psychically imprint himself onto his
brain.
Controversy
Originally, Fabian Nicieza had meant for Reignfire to be a
time traveling, slightly older, more mentally
disturbed version of Sunspot. However, when a later writer John
Francis Moore took over the title he
retcon the original plan and
concocted the explanation about the protoplasmic, amorphous origin.
This left many fans unhappy (and gave a
continuity headache) given the previous
hints and the nature of the characters.
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