Since his introduction in 1982, Cannonball has been at the center of some of the X-Men's
wildest, strangest, and most compelling stories, and despite having one of the most straightforward
powers in comics, his history is as complicated as they come.
In the early '80s, the X-Men were in the dead center of a long and extremely profitable
reign as the biggest thing in comics. Legendary stories like the "Dark Phoenix" saga and the
time-bending "Days of Future Past" had cemented the team as having a scope that was truly
epic, while the ongoing superhero soap opera kept readers hooked with a web of relationships
and heartache that ran through the stories. These years unquestionably brought some of
the most important comics in Marvel's long history, but along the way, something about
the X-Men had been lost.
As originally created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby in 1963, the X-Men were based around
a school where teenage mutants could learn to hone their powers between their missions
as a superhero team. By 1975, Chris Claremont and Dave Cockrum's introduction of the "All-New,
All-Different" X-Men, had changed. Sure, they had a single teenager hanging around in the
form of superhero trainee Kitty Pryde, but the rest of the team were adults who had very
adult problems, like dealing with the mistakes they'd made in the past,
or being seduced by Dracula.
Marvel had been built on the backs of coming-of-age teen superhero stories thanks to characters
like Spider-Man, and with the merry mutants of the X-Men becoming the hottest thing in
the industry, that probably seemed like a good thing to revisit. The only problem was
that Uncanny X-Men itself was too popular to take a step backwards. If they were going
to do a story with teenage X-Men, they needed some new mutants...which is exactly what Claremont
and artist Bob McLeod did in the appropriately titled Marvel graphic novel The New Mutants.
The setup for the New Mutants graphic novel was a simple throwback to the early days of
the X-Men, mixed with the international flavor that had made the "All-Different" team such
a success. Teenagers from across the world realized they had mutant powers, and came
to Charles Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters to learn how to control them.
Or at least, most of them did. Sam Guthrie, on the other hand, took a slightly different path to
Professor X's doorstep, and it started when he was recruited to the other side.
When his powers manifested, Sam was still living in the fictional Cameron County, Kentucky.
At only 16, he'd dropped out of school to work in an Appalachian coal
mine to provide for his mother and nine brothers and sisters when his father died.
"I thought maybe I could work the mines with you guys."
Unfortunately, his first day at work involved a cave-in that trapped him and a coworker
named Lewis under tons of rubble. The good news was that Sam was, of course, a mutant,
and his "blastin'" power, which propelled him through the air inside a nigh-invulnerable
force field, allowed him to free himself and save Lewis in the process.
The bad news? The coal mine incident was observed by Donald Pierce, a name that X-Fans may recognize
as the mutant-hating cyborg that the X-Men had faced off against when they took on the
Hellfire Club. In a twisted effort to get revenge, Pierce recruited Sam before Xavier
could, taking advantage of the otherwise decent young man's poverty by giving him a huge salary.
Of course, It wasn't long before Sam Guthrie had his face turn. By the end of the New Mutants
graphic novel, he'd shown up at the X-Mansion to join the team, and when the New Mutants
ongoing series launched the following year, he was part of the core cast. He'd remain
with the team through most of its iterations, and would even become the co-leader alongside
Dani Moonstar.
It's worth noting that Sam's adventures alongside the New Mutants were weird, even by Marvel
standards. In fact, they're weird even by X-Men standards. Through it all, though, Sam's
innate friendliness and decency remained a constant, and made him one of the characters
most likely to make friends as they bopped around the Marvel Universe.
When they wound up in Thor's home of Asgard, for instance, Sam struck up a seemingly unlikely
friendship with Eitri the Dwarf, one of the smiths that forged Mjolnir. It started when
Sam found himself wandering around Nidavellir, the realm of the dwarves. Hearing a scream,
he leaped into action to save Eitri's wife, Evganda, from a marauding band of trolls led
by the aptly named Throff the Terrible. Cannonball won the fight, but in the process, he took
a spear to the back courtesy of Throff, and earned Etri's respect and friendship. Eitri
would even gift Sam some high-class magic equipment in exchange for his help, including
an impenetrable suit of armor and a magic sword. Unfortunately, at the end of the adventure,
Loki set everything back to where it was before, stripping Sam of Eitri's magical gifts.
Believe it or not, a hammer-smithing dwarf with an endless supply of magic weapons to
give out for birthday presents was not the most important relationship that Sam struck
up during his time with the New Mutants. That honor goes to Lila Cheney, intergalactic rock
star-slash-space criminal.
In addition to having the best one-sentence resume of anyone in the Marvel Universe, Lila
is an incredibly popular musician who originally bore a suspicious resemblance to Joan Jett.
She's also the frequent target of interdimensional bounty hunters, due to the fact that she's
a mutant with the power of teleportation along a minimum distance of lightyears, and yes,
that's the minimum.
A world-famous musician with a side hustle committing space crimes might seem like an
unlikely romantic interest for the humble, crewcut-sporting son of a Kentucky coal miner.
Still, after Sam rescued Lila from a bounty hunter, the two of them struck up a relationship
that lasted for the next few years. Sadly, they eventually parted ways, but that's to
be expected.
"Long distance never works."
"What?"
"It never works!"
Especially when that distance is measured in parsecs.
At the dawn of the '90s, The New Mutants underwent a pretty radical change. Marvel's various
mutant titles had only grown more popular over the previous decade, and they became
the launching pads for some of the biggest new names in comics. A new crop of creators
had come up with a new kind of aesthetic that would drive their titles to record-breaking sales.
In the pages of New Mutants, Marvel readers were introduced to superstar artist Rob Liefeld.
In his tenure on the title, he introduced Cable in New Mutants #87 and Deadpool in New
Mutants #98. With #100, the series was canceled and relaunched as the all-new, all-violent
X-Force, with Cable leading a strike team to take on more intense threats.
Cannonball stuck around, becoming Cable's second in command, and the only original member
of the New Mutants to make the transition to X-Force. It was also while he was on that
original roster that he died. When he was impaled through the gut by Sauron, the mutant
pterodactyl-man energy vampire, Sam was only dead for a few minutes before he came back
to life. The reason behind his miraculous resurrection? Well...it's complicated.
When you think about the most powerful mutants in the Marvel Universe, you probably think
about the ones like Storm, who can control the fundamental forces of nature itself, or
Jean Grey, whose telekinesis can tap into the world-shattering power of the Phoenix.
If you're up in your Marvel Comics trivia, you might even remember that Iceman was an
"Omega Level Mutant" owing to his ability to create ice by slowing down molecular motion.
You probably don't think about the guy from Kentucky who can fly through the air and crash
into stuff thanks to his exploding bottom half. And yet, here we are.
The reason that Sam was able to come back from the dead, at least according to Cable,
is that he may or may not be an External. If you're not familiar with the term, it's
basically like being a mutant-plus: incredibly powerful mutants who discover at the moment
of their first death that they're actually immortals, with eternal lives that last around
12,000 years and counting. The most well-known of the Externals is probably Apocalypse.
As for Sam, there's still some question about whether he actually is an External or not,
but considering that he did spontaneously recover after being impaled,
there's definitely more going on.
While he's not currently affiliated with the X-Men, Cannonball still has plenty of team spirit.
In fact, when his old teammate Sunspot was looking to put together a new team, Sam
was one of the first people he called.
See, while Sunspot is mostly known for channeling solar radiation into incredible strength and
explosive blasts of heat, he also has a power that was far more effective in dealing with
big problems: a staggeringly huge amount of money. The science-terrorist organization
AIM had been causing widespread destruction in the Marvel Universe since it was introduced
in 1966, but Sunspot came up with a unique solution to the problem: He bought the entire
organization and made a deal to work with S.H.I.E.L.D. and the United States government,
turning Advanced Idea Mechanics into American Intelligence Mechanics and founding his own
team of U.S.Avengers.
The team was an odd one, with Cannonball teaming up with Squirrel Girl, a mustachioed Red Hulk,
a Captain America from an alternate future, and a new version of the Iron Patriot, among others.
A lot of superheroes come from a family tree that's full of super-powered branches, and
Sam Guthrie is no exception. Unlike a lot of characters, though, he was never tasked
with carrying on the heroic legacy of the previous generation. For the Guthries, becoming
mutant heroes at the Xavier School was something that was shared among siblings.
The first of Sam's nine siblings to take up the life of a costumed adventurer was his
sister Paige, who would rise to prominence in the pages of Generation X. As the name
implies, it was essentially the mid-'90s version of the same back-to-school concept that made
New Mutants a hit to begin with, with Jubilee anchoring a cast of even newer mutants. Unlike
most of her classmates, however, Paige wasn't entirely new; she'd first appeared about ten
years earlier as part of Sam's stereotypically huge family. It wasn't until Generation X,
though, that she was fully realized as a character.
With the exception of Jubilee, who anchored the team as its most established member, the
Gen X kids all had interesting and slightly gross powers, and Paige's was arguably the
winner on both counts. As Husk, she could literally tear off her own skin to reveal
the layer beneath it, which would change into whatever material she chose. Then, once done,
she could tear off that layer to revert to her normal form, or even a different material underneath.
"Haha, wow, that's so gross, yeah."
Paige and Sam weren't the only Guthries to seek higher education at the Xavier school...and
sadly, it didn't always end well.
Sam's little brother Josh was introduced way back in the New Mutants days, in a story during
which he was initially terrified of developing mutant abilities like his brother, and harboring
a deep resentment towards Sam for abandoning his family to join the New Mutants.
After going on an adventure with Sam and flying around on his brother's back, he decided that
maybe being a mutant wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. Of course, at the time,
Josh's only "gift," as Ma Guthrie called it, was his singing voice.
Eventually, he'd develop a slightly more noticeable mutation: a pair of bright red wings that
gave him the codename "Icarus." As powers go, that's pretty basic, but it would lead
Josh to tragedy. In 2006, New X-Men embarked on one of the darkest storylines in Marvel
history. The Purifiers, led by Reverend William Stryker, had been feuding on and off with
the X-Men for a while, and that year, they decided to go after the kids. A grand total
of 42 former students were killed when the Purifiers blew up a school bus, with more
casualties to come once they attacked the mansion. The first part of Stryker's plan,
however, was a bit more insidious: he manipulated Josh into cutting off his own wings, then
shot him dead. As far as X-Men deaths go, it's one of the worst, and certainly among the most depressing.
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