Quentin Quire

Kid Omega
Art by Frank Quitely
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	New X-Men #122
Created by	Grant Morrison Frank Quitely
In-story information
Alter ego	Quentin Quire
Species	Human Mutant
Team affiliations	The Phoenix Corps Omega Gang Xavier Institute
Notable aliases	Kid Omega
Abilities	Omega level psionic powers including telepathy and telekinesis Superhuman intellect

Quentin Quire, also known as Kid Omega, is a fictional character in the Marvel Comics universe. He first appeared in New X-Men #122 (March 2002), although he went unnamed until New X-Men #134 (Jan. 2003). He was created by writer Grant Morrison and artist Frank Quitely.

Fictional character biography

Xavier Institute

Quentin Quire joined the student body of the Xavier Institute after Professor X's return from averting a war with Genosha and the rebuilding of the X-Mansion. He immediately stood out as a brilliant intellect and quickly became Xavier's prize pupil. Xavier taught Quire to control his powers when they first appeared. The extent and type of his mutant abilities were never clearly defined. Quire appeared to be a very powerful telepath, and the Stepford Cuckoos described him as having a 'see-through mind', but he was not necessarily limited to that.

Quentin often hung out with Glob Herman and had a crush on Sophie, one of the Stepford Cuckoos. However, something about Quire disturbed the Cuckoos, though Emma Frost dismissed it as academic rivalry.^[1]

Omega Gang: New X-Men

While a student at Xavier's, Quire invented the anti-gravity floats for Martha Johansson's brain canister, and exposed the charisma-powered Slick's true, ugly body to the other students. On his birthday, Quentin received a call from his parents, who told him he was adopted. This seemed to destabilize him and he went to town, getting a haircut reminiscent of Bolivar Trask's depiction of a mutant overlord, from a newspaper that was published the day Quire was born. Quire also seemed to hop on the bandwagon calling for vengeance for the recently murdered mutant designer Jumbo Carnation, and took to wearing clothing based on the Trask mutant overlord illustration, which happened to be one of Jumbo's creations. He also debated with Professor X about the merits of the school's policies, wondering if Xavier would allow any dream other than his own to exist.^[2]

Shortly afterward, Quire and a group of like-minded students visit town wearing the Trask-overlord clothes, and Quire convinces them to take the mutant drug Kick. They accost a gang of humans in an alley and kill or maim them all. When Herman asks what had happened to a human Quentin himself had murdered, Quire replies he had carved his name across the man's mind. Back at school, Xavier confronts the students, but Quire is not implicated. Quire and his gang later go to a mutant tattooist and have their arms marked with an Omega symbol over an X, then attack U-Men Central. Returning to school, the "Omega Gang" ambushes Professor X with a baseball bat and clamps his head in a thought-proof helmet. The next day, the school's "Open Day" to parents and the media, Quire publicly proclaims it is "open season on humans" and starts a riot.^[3]

Riot at Xavier's

Main article: Riot at Xavier's

Some of the students joined Quire in protesting Xaviers' policies, but most of the damage was done by the Omegas themselves, until they were subdued by Cyclops, Beast, Emma Frost, and Xorn. However, with Quire still guarding Professor X, the situation threatened to continue, Quire even mentally subduing Wolverine with a memory of his past life. Xavier eventually freed himself of the helmet and confronted Quentin, calling his thought-proof helmet and his plans of revolution "flimsy." However, the altercation was not officially ended until the Stepford Cuckoos, led by Sophie, used Cerebra and a dose of Kick to boost their shared powers. They blasted through to the grounds and confronted Quire, who confessed that his motivation for the ordeal was to impress Sophie, to whom he was attracted. This uniformly disgusted the Cuckoos, who mocked his motivations and defeated him with a massive telepathic shockwave. Disoriented, Quentin apologized, stating that he started everything because of his desire to impress Sophie and his own disrupted sense of identity upon discovering he was adopted. Emma Frost chastises him for his recklessness, as she reveals the now deceased Sophie in her arms.^[4]

Quire was taken to the Infirmary, where Henry McCoy tried to stabilize him, but his body was being burnt out by his own psionic energy. This was apparently the result of his overdoses of Kick, which caused a secondary mutation that changed his brain into faster-than-light energy, apparently putting him in telepathic contact with everyone on the planet simultaneously and across time. Seeing that Quire was terminal, Professor X called for Xorn, who opened his helmet to expose Quire to the mini star in his head, and Quire "left the mortal plane." Quire's final words when Xorn "healed" him were vaguely prophetic of many of the coming events in Morrison's final run of New X-Men, such as Xorn later being revealed to be Magneto, Xorn's eventual destruction of Manhattan, and the actions of Sublime, a bacterial entity that claimed to be the cause of some of the human/mutant hatred and aggression then occurring.^[5]

"A Higher Plane of Existence"

However, Quire was not truly dead, and Xavier announced to the student body that they literally believed him to have ascended to a higher plane of existence. Quentin remained in a dormant, semi-alive, energy form in a containment unit on Beast's lab table. The potential future shown in the New X-Men story "Here Comes Tomorrow" indicated that Quentin was destined to become an avatar for the Phoenix Force. A young boy, wearing a Phoenix costume and Quentin's distinct pink haircut, is seen telling Jean Grey, who vaguely recognizes him, that she doesn't have long to set the events in the timeline right.^[6]

A few months later in X-Men: Phoenix – Endsong, when a fragment of the shattered Phoenix Force returned to Earth, it sensed Quire and investigated him, thinking he might be Jean Grey. Though the Phoenix passed up Quire, it shocked him back to consciousness and he reconstituted his body. Furthermore, he sought out and reanimated Sophie's corpse, but was unable to complete the process, so he set off to find the Phoenix Force so he could be with his love. Quire found the Phoenix, which had resurrected Jean Grey to attract Cyclops' attention, engaged in battle with the X-Men. Just prior to his arrival on the scene, the X-Men got the Phoenix to inhabit Emma Frost, Cyclops's current lover, and imprisoned both her and Scott inside a containment vessel. Quire arrived and broke the containment chamber open, releasing the Phoenix fragment. Quentin then asked the Phoenix to resurrect Sophie, which she did. Sophie was still disgusted by him (and/or his actions) and chose to return to death. Quire broke down in anguish, and the Phoenix left him to his "sickness". Having spent too much of his energy, Quire apologized to the X-Men for his rash behavior and returned to his non-corporeal state in the container in Beast's lab.^[7]

Nation X

Beast brought Quentin's container to his lab on Utopia after the X-Mansion is abandoned. Finding life on a higher plane to be "boring," Quentin revived himself and decided to become a villain and secretly destroy Utopia, claiming that the X-Men stole his idea to create a mutant nation. He elected to make his endeavor a game, and selected Martha to be his arch-nemesis, giving her seven and a half minutes to stop him. Martha attempted to alert the X-Men and locate Quentin, but he intercepted and taunted her at each attempt, ultimately smashing her container and leaving her to die. Martha realized that Quentin had infiltrated Cerebra to destroy the island and take revenge on the Cuckoos by putting them in a mental loop. Martha broke the Cuckoos free, and they quickly defeat Quire.^[8]

Schism

Quire returned in the X-Men arc Schism,^[9][10] after being secretly broken out of the X-Men's prison by Kade Kilgore, the new Black King of the Hellfire Club. Thinking his containment just malfunctioned, Quire decided to celebrate his new freedom by infiltrating an international arms conference in Switzerland (where Scott Summers was to be giving a talk) and forcing the top leaders of the world to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets on camera.^[11] After this stunt, he became the most hunted mutant on Earth, and sought refuge on Utopia. Instead of handing him to Captain Steve Rogers like Wolverine suggested, Cyclops ordered that Quire be put back into containment so he can be tried by a jury of his peers after the trouble Quire caused is resolved.^[12]

After the events of Schism, Quire his taken against his will by Wolverine to Westchester, NY.

Wolverine and the X-Men

Quire is shown in promotional art for Wolverine and the X-Men #1 as a member of Wolverine's post-Schism team.^[13]

Quire will face off against Wolverine in a limited series titled Wolverine and The X-men: Alpha and Omega written by DMZ writer Brian Wood. It's supposed to tie in to the Wolverine & The X-Men comic when it's finished.

Powers and abilities

In New X-Men, Quire is depicted as an Omega level mutant possessing advanced cognitive and telepathic abilities that enable him to organize and construct his thoughts at accelerated rates, overtly or covertly manipulate the minds of others, resist mind probes, and disable other forms of psychic manipulation^[14]. His level of psychic influence on others depends on the number of individuals he wishes to affect—his influence is strongest among fewer individuals and subtler in large numbers of people.^[8] Xavier explains that Quentin's psychic powers are "deep, subtle and he's able to influence minds around him."^[15] Emma Frost also states that his mind processes several thousand "brilliant" thoughts a second.^[15] Given that Quire was under the influence of the drug 'Kick' for much of his time at the academy, it is unknown how much his power was being boosted by its effects.

In the miniseries X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong, Quire generated massive amounts of telekinetic energy which manifests in the form of tentacles, allowing him to break free of his containment chamber, blast through the Xavier School's foundation, pull Sophie's body out of the ground, restructure it a bit, instantly heal wounds on his body inflicted through Wolverine's claws, and fly at supersonic speed.

Quentin Quire was also depicted as being a future host of the Phoenix Force in the White Hot Room, suggesting that he can potentially ascend to the level of an avatar and gain access to the level of power granted by the Phoenix.^[16]

Omega Gang

Omega Gang
The Omega Gang in New X-Men #135: (l-r) Redneck, Radian, Kid Omega, Glob Herman, Tattoo Art by Frank Quitely
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	New X-Men" #135
Created by	Grant Morrison Frank Quitely
In-story information
Base(s)	Xavier Institute
Member(s)	Kid Omega Glob Herman Tattoo Radian Redneck

The Omega Gang is a group of teenage mutants and enemies of the X-Men. Created by comics writer Grant Morrison, the gang first appeared in New X-Men #135, but was not named until New X-Men #140, when Lucas Bishop asks to interview them.

The Omega Gang was formed by Quentin Quire, a young telepath and one of the top students of the Xavier Institute. Quire had become depressed because of an unrequited crush on Sophie of the Stepford Cuckoos, his unpopular status among the Institute students and, specially, the revelation that he was an adopted child, which shattered his already fragile self esteem. The death of mutant fashion designer Jumbo Carnation prompted Quire to gather a small group of students to exact revenge on Carnation's murderers.

The Omega Gang symbol

At Quire's request, all members tattooed themselves with a symbol formed by an Omega with an X below and dressed up with red-and-black striped shirts, jeans and whips, an outfit designed by Carnation himself and based on an illustration from an anti-mutant article written by Bolivar Trask many years ago, which portrayed mutants enslaving the human race. The Omega Gang members also consumed the drug Kick in order to boost their powers. Unbeknownst to them, the drug was actually the aerosol form of the sentient bacteria Sublime, which sought to increase the violence between mutants and baseline humans.

The gang was responsible for the attack on a teenage anti-mutant gang and later for the Open Day Riots. During the riots, Professor Xavier was injured and Dummy of the Special Class, a gas-composed mutant, was seemingly destroyed when his containment suit was pierced. The most notable victim was Sophie of the Stepford Cuckoos, who died in her heroic attempt to stop Quentin. The rest of the Gang was stopped by the efforts of the other X-Men.

Other versions

Exiles: Days of Then and Now

Quentin Quire was one of the surviving heroes during the Annihilation Wave, which was led to Earth by a banished Hulk who had killed Annihilus. Quentin leads a group that includes Speedball, Patriot, Wiccan, Lightspeed, and three of the Stepford Cuckoos: Sophie, Esme, and Mindee. Quentin has begun a relationship with Sophie whose powers have changed to include limited precognition. After listening to Sophie's dream about a group of heroes that help restore order within damaged realities called the Exiles, Quentin went on an interdimensional mission to find the original Exiles. Instead, he eventually recruited a group of heroes from the worlds he visited into a new group of Exiles. He also came up against an alternate version of himself; in the same world he meets and recruits Nighthawk.

House of M

Along with most of the 'New' X-Men characters, Quentin appears as a student of the New Mutant Leadership Institute in the House of M reality. Upon confronting the spying Wallflower, and boasting that no one could stop his mind, Wallflower uses her pheromones to fill him with self-loathing, forcing him to commit mental suicide. In this version, Quentin retained his more clean-cut appearance.

What If?

Quentin briefly appears in the What If: Rise & Fall of the Shi'ar Empire one-shot. After Vulcan is transported into the White Hot Room, he tells Vulcan that he is not meant to be there. He is ultimately killed by Vulcan.

In other media

Film

• In the film X-Men: The Last Stand, the character played by Ken Leung is listed in the screen credits as "Kid Omega"; however, his powers are those of Quill. He kills Dr. Kavita Rao and almost kills Dr. Worthington, but his son Warren saves him. By the end, he is destroyed by Phoenix, alongside fellow Omegas Psylocke and Arclight.

Footnotes

1. ^ New X-Men #134
2. ^ New X-Men #135
3. ^ New X-Men #136
4. ^ New X-Men #137
5. ^ New X-Men #138
6. ^ New X-Men #154
7. ^ X-Men: Phoenix - Endsong
8. ^ ^{a b} John Barber (w), David López (p), Álvaro López (i). "Martha Johansson vs. Quentin Quire in: 7½" Nation X 2 (March 2010), Marvel Comics
9. ^ "IGN.com "Closer Look at the X-Men Civil War"". http://comics.ign.com/articles/117/1173645p1.html. 
10. ^ "Marvel Press Conference: X-Men Schism". http://www.comicscontinuum.com/stories/1106/10/xmenschism.htm. Retrieved 2011-06-11. 
11. ^ X-Men: Schism #1
12. ^ X-Men: Schism #2
13. ^ "Error: no |title= specified when using {{Cite web}}". http://marvel.com/images/gallery/story/16553/x-men_regenesis_-_choose_your_team/image/888100#. 
14. ^ New X-Men #137
15. ^ ^{a b} New X-Men # 135
16. ^ New X-Men #154