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Bullen, David. "On the Origin of a Supervillain: The Neo-Victorian Reinvention of Mister Sinister." Neo-Victorian Villains. Adaptations and Transformations in Popular Culture. Ed. Benjamin Poore. Neo-Victorian Series. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 180–96. Added by: joachim (9/9/19, 6:36 PM) Last edited by: joachim (9/9/19, 6:49 PM) |
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| Resource type: Book Chapter Language: en: English DOI: 10.1163/9789004322257_010 BibTeX citation key: Bullen2017 Email resource to friend View all bibliographic details  |
Categories: General Keywords: "X-Men", Intertextuality, Metaisierung, Superhero, USA Creators: Bullen, Poore Publisher: Brill (Leiden) Collection: Neo-Victorian Villains. Adaptations and Transformations in Popular Culture |
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First introduced in Uncanny X-Men #221 (1987), Chris Claremont and Marc Silvestri’s supervillain Mister Sinister quickly became a prominent foe in the comic-book series. It was not until 1996, however, that his origins were first ‘revealed’: Mister Sinister was in fact Nathaniel Essex, a Victorian scientist obsessed with Darwinian evolutionary theory, transformed by an ancient Egyptian power into an immortal. Sinister’s brand of amoral villainy has always espoused a certain element of social Darwinism, but in recreating him as a neo-Victorian, this ideology was explicitly linked back to the historical Darwin. In this chapter I aim to trace the development of Sinister from the 1980s to the present day, charting his transition from generic megalomaniac to postmodernist device for the X-men comics to meta-fictionally reflect back on their own real and imagined origins.
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