Cerebra's Files

Real Name: Amanda Mueller
Affiliation: Black Womb Project
Relatives: Daniel (husband, deceased), son (unnamed, possibly deceased), Gloria Dayne (Fontanelle, daughter)
Alternate-X Versions: None
Codename Etymology: Pronounced blăk wōōmb [From Middle English, blak] & [Middle English, from Old English, wamb]; An organ within female mammals where the fertilized egg develops.
Powers & History: Amanda was a human woman who lived in New York around the turn of the last century. She had a series of horrible miscarriages and came to the attention of Dr. Nathaniel Essex (Sinister), who had recently emigrated from London and was a practicing obstetrician under the name of Nathan Milbury. She was accused of murdering her fetuses, but Milbury's testimony helped exonerate her. It seems clear that Mueller possessed a mutant gene that was passed on in active state to her children, and Sinister was paying her to conceive so he could dissect and study the fetuses. Whether Mueller knew of Milbury's ultimate goal is unknown - she seemed to think that he was just a good doctor with benign motivations.

Following her trial, Mueller was contacted by the time-traveling Gambit, who was looking for Milbury. Though reticent at first, Mueller revealed Sinister's location after Gambit paid her a lot of money.

Little else is known about Ms. Mueller, up until she had her daughter Gloria in the early 1950's. Gloria remembers her mother always looking the same age, until she disappeared when Gloria was in her teens. In the 60's, Amanda ran a top secret genetics lab where hundreds of mutant babies were examined and catalogued, including Toad. The project retained the services of Alexander Ryking and Irene Adler, and almost hired Kurt Marko. The goals of the project were ostensibly benign, though Mystique and Juggernaut discovered that rather than repair the genomes of defective mutants like Toad, the Black Womb project opted to leave them alone and see what became of them. In addition, it is clear that the project was funded by and run for Sinister, who was using Amanda as a puppet. At this point in time Amanda looked old and shriveled, with spiky hair and black crusty skin. It appears that this was the result of Sinister's experiments and a side effect of her longevity.
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