X-Men: Deadly Genesis - Back-up Stories

Back-up Stories

In addition to the main plotline about the X-Men and the Mystery Mutant, each issue of the series features a backup story introducing a new mutant character. In each of these, after the character learns of their powers, they use them to overcome a challenge in their life, which brings them to the attention of a woman who specializes in helping mutant youths. That woman is Moira MacTaggert.

• In issue 1, a young girl named Petra runs away to Central Park, using her power of terrakinesis to survive.
• In issue 2, a young boy named Armando Muñoz, becomes a scientific wonder when he is dubbed Darwin, the Evolving Boy.
• In issue 3, Suzanne Chan survives the crossfire of a gang war and solves her parents' murder by using her power to freeze and review time, taking on the name Sway.
• In issue 4, Gabriel, a young orphan in the care of Moira MacTaggert, learns of his mutant power to control and manipulate energy, while dealing with flashes of memory of his life treated as an outcast in the Shi'ar Empire (while under the rule of D'Ken). He then gains the codename Kid Vulcan.
• In issue 5, a young Emma Frost, following the events of the Emma Frost series has just begun working as a stripper at the New York Branch of the Hellfire Club (from here, she will go on to work her way up to the rank of White Queen). Xavier and Moira MacTaggert approach her about joining the X-Men, but she refuses. She briefly encounters Kid Vulcan outside the club before Xavier erases her memory of the encounter, which explains why in the current storyline of the same issue, Emma has a vague recognition of Vulcan.

In the current storyline, it is revealed in that Petra, Sway, Darwin, and Kid Vulcan were placed under the tutelage of Moira MacTaggert, much like the original X-Men trained under Xavier. When the original X-Men were lost during their fight against Krakoa the Living Island, Xavier appeared and psychically accelerated the training of Moira's students in order to send them to rescue his own. In the present, Vulcan claims that Xavier left his team to die on Krakoa (presumably, had Emma Frost accepted the invitation to join, she would have become the fifth member of this team and died on Krakoa as well).