Real Name: Unknown Years ago, on a mission in Vietnam, Forge's entire troop was killed, and in a fit of rage, grief and desperation, he called on his shaman's magic, using the spirits of his nine dead buddies to open a dimensional portal, allowing demons to come to Earth and slaughter the Viet Cong. Then, realizing what he had unleashed, Forge ordered the "arclight" bombing run that cost him his hand and his leg to destroy the demons as well.
Forge first came into contact with the X-Men when Tony Stark (Iron Man) stopped making weapons for the U.S. Government and the Dire Wraiths were about to attack Earth. The government needed a weapon with which to fight the Wraiths, shape-stealing creatures with magical abilities, so they turned to Forge. Forge had created a detector to locate any superhuman powers and the Neutralizer, a gun that would them wipe out, both based on the technology of the space knight Rom, nemesis of the Wraiths. Although only meant to be used against the Wraiths, the Neutralizer was appropriated by Special Agent Henry Peter Gyrich, who tracked down the X-Man Rogue and tried to shoot her with it. Unfortunately, Rogue's fellow X-Man, Storm, shoved her out of the way, taking the blast and losing her ability to control the weather. Forge, who had arrived to try and stop Gyrich, felt terrible and took Storm back to his penthouse, "Aerie," in Dallas to care for her.
The two were intensely attracted to each other, but when Storm found out that Forge had created the weapon that had crippled her, she was furious, and left. However, on her way out she saw Dire Wraiths coming to attack Forge, hoping to stop the development of the Neutralizer, which still was unable to harm them. Not wishing Forge to die at the hands of the Wraiths, Storm returned, and met Naze on her way up. Between the three of them, and with the additional help of Amanda Sefton, Magik, Rogue, and Colossus, they defeated the Wraiths. Continuing the battle with the Dire Wraiths, Forge made an orbital platform that was a giant version of the Neutralizer. Gyrich again tried to turn it on the superpowered beings of Earth, but was stopped, and the platform was used to destroy the Wraith homeworld instead. Forge then confiscated and/or destroyed all the prototypes and blueprints for the Neutralizer, ensuring that it could never be used against innocents.
Forge next appeared when Storm came back to the Aerie in the hopes of forcing him to restore her powers. She again met Naze, also searching for Forge. This time, however, Naze was possessed by the Adversary, and by the time they found Forge, had convinced Storm that Forge was trying to open a dimensional portal to allow demons to take over the world. Storm confronted Forge at the portal, which in reality, he was trying to close, and stabbed him in the chest. Only a last second look into his eyes kept her from killing him. The Adversary then shunted the two of them onto a duplicate Earth, but one with no humans on it, giving them the option of being the parents of a new race. Storm and Forge split up for a year, and by the time Storm returned, Forge had gone from a simple hut to solar power, and had created an anti-Neutralizer. Forge gave Storm her powers back, and they both returned to Earth to fight the Adversary alongside the X-Men.
During the battle the X-Men learned Forge's terrible secret from Vietnam. Forge explained that it was this very portal that Forge had been attempting to close when Storm stabbed him. To truly defeat the Adversary, Forge realized that he must recreate the original spell using life-force freely given, not stolen. The X-Men and Madelyne Pryor offered their lives, and on national television, the X-Men died, and the Adversary was contained, seemingly forever. Both relieved and distraught, Forge returned to his work until he saw Storm in a vision, as a captive of Amahl Farouk (Shadow King). Forge escaped Farouk on the astral plane and realized that the X-Men must not be dead (in truth, the Omniversal Guardian Roma had returned them to life just after Forge had left the scene). Forge set out for Muir Island with Freedom Force, just in time to defend the Island against the Reavers. He was able to assemble a weapon to blast Skullbuster, but was unable to save Destiny, whom Mystique had placed under his protection. However, Destiny had sent him away so that he could help the others. In a very cryptic moment (even for a precog), Destiny had hinted at a future intertwining of Forge and Mystique's lives. This statement was pretty much ingored, because Mystique now blamed Forge for the loss of her foster-daughter Rogue and for her best friend's death, and vowed vengeance. At Muir, Forge, who had seen Storm in a vision, convinced Banshee that the X-Men were alive, and the two set off to find them. Arriving in NYC, they came into conflict with the Morlocks and then the Genoshan Press Gang, and teamed up with the original X-Factor and Charlotte Jones, the cop who would become Archangel's girlfriend.
When Storm and Gambit and the New Mutants returned to the X-Mansion, whose basement layers were intact despite the fact that the house itself had been destroyed during "Inferno," Forge and Banshee moved there until they were all captured by the Genoshan Army and brought to Genosha for "trial." After the X-Men and Co. escaped Genosha, Forge joined the X-Men, traveling with them to the Shi'ar Galaxy to stop a Skrull coup and rescue Professor X, and returning with them to Earth to finally defeat the Shadow King. After that battle, Forge returned to Westchester, where he helped redesign the Danger Room, and completely revamped the Blackbird, using stealth technology and a cloaking device. Forge finally proposed to Storm, but when she would not leave the X-Men for him, he retracted his offer. He left with Mystique, who had been possessed by the Shadow King and who appeared to be suffering some psychological after-effects. Feeling partially responsible because of his failure with Destiny, Forge took it upon himself to treat Mystique.
In Dallas, they were attacked by Fitzroy, but the X-Men arrived to save them. After gleaning a tremendous amount of sensitive information from Forge's computer systems, Mystique left/escaped, and Forge soon went on to become the government liason to the new version of X-Factor. Forge also became an active member of the team, especially after Mystique and Sabretooth were added to the roster. Forge created the cerebral implant for Mystique which prevented her from shapeshifting to any member of the X-Men or X-Factor for more than thirty seconds, and also fixed the holographic module that contained Shard, somehow granting her independence from it in the process. When Havok was abducted by Dark Beast, Forge effectively became team leader, and confronted the Adversary once again, this time using the "spirit spell" to bring his team back from the dead, and defeating the Adversary using both his technological and his magical abilities. After Mystique and Sabretooth escaped, and the team was nearly destroyed by the raging Creed, Forge turned the "team" over to Havok and dropped out of sight. He reappeared on another mission to Genosha, and more recently was back at the Mansion working for the X-Men again.
Forge then served as a secret armorer to Professor X, outfitting his clandestine operatives with all sorts of technology. Most of his work went to Mystique, for whom Forge's inventions also provided cover from the authorities who wanted to arrest her. Forge refusesd to trust Mystique at all, but when her handler Shortpack went AWOL, he accompanied her on a few missions. After Xavier terminated Mystique's protection, Forge encountered Mystique again in his lab, where she managed to steal the cloaking controller from him.
Recent Activities: Forge created more streamlined control gauntlets for Surge II, and following M-Day was working on an anti-Sentinel unit that he planned to give to the X-Men to combat the O*N*E. When Storm got engaged to T'Challa of Wakanda (Black Panther (II)) Forge refused to go to the wedding, and remained in the Aerie. Unfortunately, Nimrod found Forge and forced him to provide technical assistance, under threat of Nimrod's killing Storm. Surge's gauntlets picked up a distress signal sent by Forge to all his inventions, and the New X-Men raced to his rescue. Hoping to outsmart Nimrod, who was by then also attacking the New X-Men, Forge tricked Nimrod into transferring his program into the anti-Sentinel unit. Forge then used his command overrides to lock the Nimrod program into inactive memory and sent the unit to help the kids, who were under attack from other prototypes Nimrod had co-opted. The kids' subsequent attack caused a conflict in the unit, though, and Forge was trapped with them as Nimrod blew up most of the building. Severely wounded, Forge realized that the time-travel device could be attacked, and the New X-Men were able to overload it and cause Nimrod to disappear from this space-time reference point.
Note: It seems that Forge (under the name Genesis) is going to be one of the founders
of the X.S.E., eighty years in the future. He may
also be the mystery man who assembled the X.U.E..
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