Mutator (comics)

Mutator
Publication information
Publisher	Marvel Comics
First appearance	DP7 #1 (1986) (identified in DP7 #17)
Created by	Mark Gruenwald Paul Ryan
In-story information
Alter ego	George Mullaney
Team affiliations	Clinic for Paranormal Research
Notable aliases	Wild Thing, John Mason
Abilities	Constant slow metamorphis, which sometimes provides other powers

Mutator (George Mullaney) is a fictional paranormal in the Marvel Comics imprint New Universe. He first appears in D.P.7 #1, although he was only identified retroactively. He is first called by name in DP7 #17.

Fictional character biography

The Clinic and The Pitt

Mutator was born in Elgin, Illinois on April 20, 1966. He graduated high school in 1984, and after that worked as an usher in a movie theatre.

Two years later, on September 4, 1986, Mutator began to manifest his paranormality, as he began to dramatically shift form. Every day he looked completely different from the last.

Mutator entered the Clinic for Paranormal Research on September 18, 1986 in an attempt to help him with his problem. His life at the Clinic was not easy. Because of his unusual parability, he was picked on by some residents, and avoided by many others. He did make one person he considered a friend, though. When Mutator was being tormented by a teen patient, Jeff Walters stepped in to defend him.

Not long after that incident, he was watching TV in a rec room while Jeff was playing ping pong. A news report came on about some sort of disaster happening in Pittsburgh. Jeff stoppd to watch it, then became agitated and left the room.

Mutator later told some of Jeff's friends about what he saw, and overheard as they pieced together that he had family in the area, and discussed going after them. George wanted to help, considering Jeff the only person to treat him nicely, but he was afraid that if he asked to come along, they'd refuse him, so he waited until they got ready, and stowed away in the Winnebago's washroom.

When they finally discovered him, they'd gone too far to turn back and so the group let him come along. He was still apart from everybody and few people would talk to him, so Mutator became eager to prove himself. As often happened in such incidents, his overeager attempts further distanced himself. .. for example, he knocked a guard unconscious through physical force where others in the group could have tranquilized him peacefully. He also ran off scouting without waiting for permission, and managed to find a temporary shelter for the group in the basement of a destroyed building.

Mutator decided to go scouting again instead of subjecting the others to having him huddle with them for warmth, and in the process was captured by a group of scavengers, who were planning to kill him. Some of the people he was with went after him. They were able to rescue him, but he was knocked unconscious in the process.

George managed to stay with two of the women, Lenore Fenzl and Charlotte Beck, for the next few days, until finally he started to grow wings and was able to fly the two over the terrain.

When they realized the United States Army was heading in their direction, George offered to leave the two women and fly away to draw their attention and their fire, figuring that even if he died, it wouldn't be much of a loss. He appreciated that Lenore passionately (and Charlotte, less passionately) tried to convince him to stay, but George felt they would be better off without him. He was shot (by a tranquilizer) just as he started to fly away, though, so his sacrifice was in vain.

New York City

Mutator was taken to an army base for study, but somehow he managed to escape and make it to New York City. There, he intervened to save three homeless people from a street gang.

At first they seemed to like him despite his bestial appearance, but they were only pretending to be nice in order to steal his 'silver gloves' when he got to sleep. The 'gloves' were actually the first stage of his transformation into a being of pure silver. Mutator slowly became a statue and was unable to move.

The homeless people were prepared to cut him up and sell him piece by piece, but one of the men he saved, Martin, an apparent mute, intervened to try and stop them. Finally Martin spoke to tell them 'No', revealing his own secret paranormality - his breath was so noxious that it caused people to get sick.

This delayed the homeless people long enough for George to progress into the next stage of his transformation, a sort of humanoid squid. George scared the rest of the muggers off and then, along with Martin, sought out a place where paranormals could live in peace.

George and Martin joined a paranormal street gang in the Lower East Side of New York, now going under the name Wild Thing and Wipeout, respectively. They found some measure of acceptance there. George heard some other gangs had been beaten up by a man calling himself Captain Manhattan and styling himself after a superhero, and brought the gang's leader to Acid Queen, the leader of the Para-Troop. They agreed to try and take out Captain Manhattan, although George was punished (by exposure to Wipeout's breath) for bringing outsiders to their gang.

The Para-Troop attempted to steal the Christmas tree from Rockefeller Plaza to get Manhattan's attention, and then ambush him. When they did, several other paranormals joined the fray. Some of them George recognized from the Clinic and their time around the Pitt together, although none of them recognized his current form. The Para-Troop were defeated and most of them were captured, but George managed to escape.

On February 23, 1989, it seemed two prayers at once were answered for George. First, the news was reporting that a man who claimed to be able to cure paranormals was coming to New York. Secondly, for the first time in the two and a half years as a paranormal, George had mutated into a shape that was visually pleasing, that of a handsome black man.

While enjoying his new body, he found Charlotte Beck, from the Clinic. He always had a crush on her but knew she was repulsed by his changes. He'd been following her ever since seeing her at Rockefeller Center. So, when he became handsome, he met her and introduced himself as John Mason. He claimed that he was at the Clinic shortly after she left, and recognized her from the Clinic records. He said his paranormality was that he could read minds of people if they're more than a mile away.

He bought Charlotte lunch, and they wound up spending the day together. She invited him to dinner and introduced him to her friends, all of whom he'd already met as Mutator.

Later that night, he told Charly the truth, that he could never see her again because he was really Mutator, and was already changing (growing several eyes on his chest). She suggested that he get the Cure, and he said he'd planned on it, though his normal form was not quite as handsome.

When the Cure began using his powers on people, George was the third person called. When he went onto the stage, he was a spidery form, and after the Cure laid hands on him, he was once again an average looking male.

Powers and abilities

When he had his parability, Mutator's body was in a constant state of metamorphosis. His body was completely different over the course of 48 hours. Usually this followed a pattern of 24 hours of relative stability followed by 24 hours of gradually becoming less like his last form and more like his next, but this time has varied and it's possible the stable period shrunk as time went on.

His forms are usually generally humanoid in appearance, and often mixed with some sort of animal traits, but he has become completely non-humanoid on at least one occasion^{[volume & issue needed]}. He has also at least once taken on a form that seemed to be silver, although he could not move in this state and did not stay in it very long^{[volume & issue needed]}.

Often his form will provide him with other abilities. For example, some animal forms have enhanced senses, others might have claws or working wings enabling flight. Mutator has no conscious control over his mutation process.

George has appeared in the following forms as a result of his power: A muscular man with many warts, a monkeylike athlete, a porcupine-like man, at least two different spider-like creatures, a mole man, a bird man, a lion-like man, a silver statue, a squid-man, a bat man, something resembling a humanoid pterodactyl, and a handsome human, as well as many transitional forms.

External links

• Mutator at marvunapp.com