Professor Charles Xavier.
Mutant leader.
Loving caretaker.
Genius teacher.
And total, absolute jerk.
And it's not just that he does some pretty messed up stuff sometimes.
Occasionally, Professor X goes full-on supervillain.
For all of Xavier's talk about peace and love and harmony, he's the most unscrupulous, hypocritical,
and manipulative of all the X-Men.
Face it: Magneto was right.
Professor X is downright dangerous, and nothing—not even death—can stop him.
Easy A
You'd think that a man who runs a school would have some respect for the education system...
but you'd be wrong.
When Professor X was just regular old Charles Xavier, he totally scammed his way through
high school in the worst way.
He wasn't even subtle.
In class, Charles would read his teachers' minds for answers, and he became the star
quarterback by psychically stealing plays from the opposing team.
And did he show any remorse about abusing his powers?
At home, Charles devoted an entire shelf to the trophies he didn't really earn, so…
no.
He only retired from athletic competition because he got bored of how severely he dominated
all of the puny humans.
Kinda makes you feel not even too bad about the whole leg thing.
When Charles' half-brother Cain Marko saw through the charade, he went mad with jealousy,
forcing Chuck to put him down with a karate chop.
Later, Charles tried to convince his students that Cain was the true villain, but here's
all you need to know: after Charles' stepfather died, he kept the family's fortunes to himself,
while Cain transformed into Juggernaut and worked as a hired gun.
We're not saying that Charles is the bad guy here, but after all of the X-Men are bedridden
because of Juggernaut's personal vendetta against Charles that they had nothing to do
with… he makes them sweep up the mansion.
Certified jerk move.
Student body
When Jean Grey showed up at old man Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, she was noticed
by pretty much everyone…
except Iceman, who had his own reasons that weren't revealed for about fifty years.
Angel, Beast, and-- Cyclops all instantly have the hots for Jean, and when Wolverine
shows up, it's more of the same.
There's also the creepy bald mentor who serves as both Jean's teacher and her surrogate father
figure... and lusts after Jean in secret for years, after slapping her in a skin-tight
costume.
Thankfully, aside from a single panel in X-Men #3 in which Professor X laments that the only
thing keeping him and Jean apart is his disability, yeah right, the issue only comes up once more,
but in a very big way.
In the '90s, When Professor X's darkest thoughts manifested themselves as an alternate personality
called Onslaught, his crush on Jean makes a surprising re-appearance, making it clear
that Xavier's had a thing for Jean for years.
It's unsettling at best, and makes a lot of those early X-Men comics, in which Jean is
clearly the Professor's favorite student, a whole heck of a lot creepier.
Control yourself, dude.
Big fake out
Professor X used some pretty interesting methods to train the unruly mutants at his school,
and when throwing them into the life-threatening Danger Room wasn't enough, he wasn't above
using psychological abuse to keep them in order.
"Thanks, Jubilee!”
“You were right!”
“Xavier’s totally rad!”
In X-Men #4, Xavier "loses" his powers, only to reveal an issue later that—surprise!—he
was faking in order to give the X-Men a pop quiz.
In X-Men #42, it gets even worse.
In a battle with a creature called Grotesk the Sub-Human, an explosion takes Xavier's
life, and the X-Men spend the next two years mourning.
Two years.
And yet, in X-Men #65, Xavier smugly rolls back into their lives, alive and perfectly
healthy.
Because the guy who died wasn't even Xavier in the first place.
As it turns out , he'd swapped places with a shape-shifting mutant called Changeling,
who was basically the world's most dangerous Make-A-Wish kid.
Changeling, a former villain, had been diagnosed with a terminal illness and wanted to use
his last few months on Earth to make a difference, so Professor X let him lead the X-Men.
Meanwhile, Xavier locked himself in a basement and devised a plan to defeat an impending
alien invasion.
When Changeling fell during battle, Professor X decided to let them grieve instead of letting
them in on the gag.
For two years.
Class act, Charles.
Giant-Size Jerk
In Giant-Size X-Men #1, Professor X recruits a brand new group of X-Men—including mainstays
like Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Colossus—to rescue his original band of mutants from Krakoa
the Living Island, rebooting the struggling X-Men series in the process.
However, as the X-Men learn in Deadly Genesis, in a storyline basically lifted from Futurama,
complete with a bald old weirdo genius, our heroes are actually the B-squad.
"Are you three by any chance interested in becoming my new spaceship crew?”
“NEW crew?
What happened to the old crew?”
“Oh, those poor sons of… that's not important!”
Before Cyclops led the new group of X-Men to victory, Xavier deployed an entirely different
group of superheroes to rescue his former students—and then erased everyone's memory
of the team when they all apparently died.
Unfortunately for Xavier, one of those mutants actually survived and called him out: Gabriel,
a mutant with the code-name Vulcan, who also happened to be the little brother of Cyclops
and Havok.
After the mission to Krakoa goes south, Cyclops is understandably distraught by Vulcan's supposed
death, so Xavier deletes all of Scott's memories of his brother in order to keep him calm.
That doesn't work out so well when Vulcan returns from space.
In his quest for vengeance, Vulcan kills a few mutants, and tells Cyclops and Havok the
truth, turning them against Xavier.
Together, the X-Men stop Vulcan, but Cyclops banishes a now-powerless Xavier from the X-Mansion.
Because honestly, erasing your team leader's memory of his awesome space-bro because you
got him killed is a tool move.
The Xavier Protocols
Everyone knows that when Batman created a series of plans to kill his Justice League
teammates, it didn't work out so well.
Everyone knows, except for Professor X... who did the exact same thing.
Yes, the surrogate father and mentor of the X-Men figured out, in detail, how to kill
each one of them, which is revealed in Excalibur #100.
After Onslaught takes over Professor X's mind, the X-Men visit Moira MacTaggert's research
lab to retrieve the Xavier Protocols, which explain how to murder every mutant on the
team.
Need to get rid of Wolverine?
Simply sever his head and put it somewhere else.
Got a problem with Cable?
Just amp up the techno-virus that's slowly consuming his body, allowing the disease to
ravage his brain and body.
A suit of anti-psionic armor will topple Professor X himself.
If you guessed that this story doesn't have a happy ending, well, you know how comics
work.
In X-Men #65, a human-Sentinel hybrid named Bastion uses the Xavier Protocols to defeat
the team.
In X-Men #84, Professor X's mutant-tracking computer Cerebro comes to life and uses the
Protocols against the X-Men when they try to stop it from taking over humanity.
In both cases, the X-Men prevail, but not for Professor X's lack of trying.
Brain drain
After Cyclops killed Professor X at the end of Avengers vs. X-Men, most people assumed
Xavier's reign of terror was over.
They were wrong.
In Uncanny Avengers #1, the Red Skull steals Professor X's brain and uses its psychic powers
to try and wipe out mutantkind for good.
It almost works, too.
Using Xavier's powers, the Red Skull brainwashes the Scarlet Witch, who drove mutants to the
brink of extinction in House of M, and tries to get her to do it again.
Next, he incites an anti-mutant mob in Manhattan, and manipulates Thor into turning against
his teammates.
Later, the Red Skull transforms himself into Red Onslaught and uses Professor X's powers
to start "World War Hate"—and when the Avengers and the X-Men try to use a spell to bring
out Xavier's better nature, they inadvertently turn all of the heroes into villains and all
the villains into heroes, kicking off Marvel's epic AXIS event.
That's Chuck for you.
Dead for years, and still up to no good.
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