Otherwise known as Mirage, Danielle Moonstar is a mutant born with incredible psychic abilities,
but it’s her leadership skills and sheer tenacity that make her such an important part
of the New Mutants. From her early origins to her latest adventures, this is the untold truth of Mirage.
Dani is one of the five founding mutants to first appear in 1982's original graphic novel
The New Mutants. Ironically, considering she would eventually become one of the team's
leaders, Dani is initially the least cooperative of Professor X's recruits.
Dani is first found in the mountains of Colorado with her mountain lion friend Ridge-Runner.
When Dani's grandfather Black Eagle shows up, urging Dani to become Professor X's student,
she angrily refuses. As a Native American, who is well aware of the betrayals her people
have suffered, Dani is distrustful of anyone outside her own tribe. But Black Eagle insists,
telling Dani that Xavier served in the Army with her father, and even became his blood brother.
It's soon revealed that Black Eagle has already sent a letter to Professor X, and he, Wolfsbane,
and Karma show up in time to save Dani from the mutant-hunting forces of Donald Pierce.
Sadly, by that time, the bad guys have already killed Black Eagle and Ridge-Runner. Dani
agrees to help Xavier and his students, but only to seek vengeance on Pierce himself.
By the end of that first story, Dani has begun to forge friendships with the other New Mutants.
She uses her powers to help save Sunspot from the Hellfire thugs who killed his girlfriend,
and in the final battle, she even lets go of her chance to kill Pierce in order to help
save the wounded Wolfsbane.
In 1983's New Mutants #1, Dani still isn't feeling all that enthusiastic about being
Professor X's student. After unwittingly using her powers to reveal the horrific past of
her teammate Karma, Dani becomes shaken and full of self-doubt. In her eyes, Xavier had
promised to teach her to control her abilities, but all he's done is give her a costume and
make her life miserable.
Unsurprisingly, then, Dani is terrified at the prospect of being tested in the Danger
Room, a high-tech training room that pits automated opponents against Xavier's mutants.
One-by-one, Dani's teammates enter the Danger Room, and each fails in their appointed tasks.
And although her teammates remain safe through the ordeal, Dani is convinced that she won't
survive her round in the Danger Room, so she flees the mansion before her turn arrives.
After a heart-to-heart with Wolfsbane, Dani works up the courage to take on the same test
her teammates faced. Even though her powers can't help her, Dani calls upon the agility
and speed she had developed in the mountains of Colorado and evades the robots to reach
her goal, proving to be the first New Mutant to get the better of the Danger Room.
One of Dani's lesser-known mutant attributes manifests as her empathic connection to animals.
With this power, she can sense the thoughts and feelings of all sorts of creatures, sometimes
going so far as to see through their eyes. In fact, she exhibits this power before any
of her other mutant gifts.
It's because of this ability that Dani shares a telepathic link with her friend and teammate
Rahne, otherwise known as Wolfsbane, who has powers that mimic those of a werewolf. As
early as their first shared appearance, Dani proves to have a stronger connection with
Rahne than her other new teammates, communicating with Wolfsbane while she's in wolf form and
later sacrificing her chance at vengeance so she can help her. Their connection also
allows Dani to calm Rahne down during episodes when her savagery takes over, such as in 2004's
New Mutants #12, when Rahne mauls another young mutant.
When Mirage is first introduced, her powers are relatively limited. Along with her animal
empathy, Dani initially has the ability to create 3D images based on someone's greatest
fear. For example, when Dani helps the New Mutants save Sunspot from the Hellfire thugs,
some of those thugs have felt Wolverine's claws in the past. So Dani pulls an image
of Logan from their mind and projects it onto reality, making them think he's attacking
them again. But that's about it, and even this power is limited. She can't just create
any random image that she imagines.
However, under Professor X's tutelage, the boundaries of Dani's powers expand. In 1983's
New Mutants #4, Dani shows that she can manifest the image of someone's greatest desire, when
she pulls from a teen boy's mind the image of him passionately kissing the teacher he
has a crush on. Eventually, she's able to empathically produce images besides those
connected to such extreme emotions. She also discovers a much more offensive use for her
powers. Dani can focus her psychic energy into so-called "psychic arrows." Appearing
as arrows of energy or fire, the missile weapons can mentally stun her targets, or even cause
them to relive past trauma.
The New Mutants don't have many of their own villains, and most of what you might call
their rogues' gallery is culled from the larger X-Men mythos. But one notable exception is
the Demon Bear, whose introduction to New Mutants marked a whole new visual era for the team's stories.
Among other things, New Mutants co-creator Chris Claremont is known for dropping hints
towards future stories and letting them simmer for a while, before eventually bringing them
center stage. The Demon Bear is a perfect example of this, as he makes an appearance
in Dani's dreams in 1983's New Mutants #3,
but doesn't strike until the end of 1984's New Mutants #17.
The Demon Bear is a dark and powerful spirit from a dimension called the Badlands, who
feeds on its victims negative emotions. Before she joins the New Mutants, Dani believes her
parents were killed by this bear, but at the end of New Mutants #20, she is tearfully reunited
with them, having discovered they were enslaved and transformed into the Demon Bear itself.
When they're separated from Demon Bear by Magik's Soulsword, Dani believes her war with
the spirit is over. Unfortunately, the Demon Bear returns in a number of subsequent volumes
of X-Force, to haunt and battle Mirage.
While most people associate Asgard with characters such as Thor, the otherworldly realm is also
linked to characters outside of Marvel's Norse mythology. For example, a fan-favorite X-Men/New
Mutants crossover from 1985 called The Asgardian Wars had a huge impact on the X-mythos, particularly
when it came to Mirage.
In league with Loki, the Enchantress transports the New Mutants to different parts of the
Ten Realms, and Dani finds herself in Valhalla, home of the honored dead. While there, she
saves a winged horse from a group of hunters, and that act has more significant consequences
than she could ever have imagined.
Likely due to her empathic powers, Dani bonds with the horse, whom she names Brightwind,
and that bond makes her a member of the Valkyrior. These are Hela's Valkyries, whose task, in
ancient Norse myth, was to choose who would die on the battlefield.
"I think it's great, an elite force of women warriors. It's about time."
While most of her teammates notice nothing different about her at first, the Asgardians
are visibly intimidated by Dani, and the alien Warlock attacks her when he first sees her.
While she returns to Earth at the end of the crossover, she retains her connection to the
Valkyrie, and brings Brightwind home with her.
One of the results of her connection to the Valkyrior is that Mirage suffers premonitions
when someone is about to die, in the form of death spirits, that only she can see, hovering over the victim.
When the New Mutants are formed, they're students of Professor X. Eventually, however, Xavier
puts a temporarily reformed Magneto in charge of his school. But in the field and in the
Danger Room, it's Mirage and fellow mutant Sam Guthrie who lead the New Mutants.
Despite having been the most rebellious member of the team when it first formed, Dani proves
to be a natural leader. While her powers aren't always the most useful during battle, this
only serves to help in her role as leader, since her lack of offensive abilities forces
her to become one of the most resourceful and creative members of the team.
Dani's a much-needed guiding hand for the New Mutants, particularly in the late-'80s
era of the group. In the 1988 line-wide event Fall of the Mutants, Cypher is murdered, and
his death drives a wedge between the New Mutants and their headmaster, Magneto. The New Mutants
need Dani more than ever during this time, and even more so after the following year's
Uncanny X-Men #253, in which Magneto leaves the school for good to return to his villainous ways.
Toward the end of the first New Mutants ongoing series, Dani falls under the control of the
Asgardian death goddess Hela.
"I thought you'd be happy to see me."
After that conflict is over and Mirage regains control of herself, she chooses to stay in
Asgard to help clean up the mess she helped cause. While she's on Asgard, most of the
remaining members of New Mutants form the X-Force under the leadership of Cable, and
the next time they see Dani, they think she's gone bad. But things aren't quite what they seem.
A masked Dani reunites with her old friends in 1993's X-Force #27, but it's not on friendly
terms. Calling herself Moonstar, Dani fights X-Force alongside her new teammates in the
Mutant Liberation Front. Worse still, she announces her presence on the battlefield
by shooting one of her psychic arrows into the head of her old co-leader, Cannonball.
Four years later, at the end of X-Force #66, it's revealed that this was all a ruse. When
she returned to Earth, Dani was recruited by S.H.I.E.L.D. as a deep cover agent inside
the MLF. She finally shows her true colors in X-Force #67, when she turns on the Mutant
Liberation Front, joining the ranks of X-Force soon afterwards.
In the penultimate issue of the 2005 miniseries House of M, Wanda Maximoff makes history by
stripping most of the world's mutants of their powers. Doctor Strange manages to shield a
mere 198 mutants from Wanda's wrath so that they keep their abilities, but Mirage isn't one of them.
In New X-Men #20, Emma Frost sends Mirage home along with the other de-powered teachers
and students, but Dani doesn't sit around twiddling her thumbs. And in the wake of 2006's
line-wide event Civil War, she's recruited to help train a new generation of heroes.
Eventually, however, she's shown the door, when she proves more interested in helping
the young hero Trauma rather than turning him into a weapon for the government. She
would later teach younger mutants in the pages of Young X-Men.
With her experience, as well as her on-again-off-again Valkyrie abilities, Dani remains an asset
to the X-Men and other Marvel heroes. However, she doesn't regain her mutant powers until
2019's Uncanny X-Men #15. Earlier, it had been discovered that Dani and other mutants
were infected with the alien Transmode virus, and are subsequently used as government weapons.
But when Dark Beast figures out a cure for the virus, Dani's abilities return, along
with the abilities of her fellow mutants.
The 2019-20 Marvel Comics line-wide event Dawn of X completely revamped the X-franchise.
Now, almost all mutants live on the sentient island of Krakoa where Professor X, Magneto,
and other mutant leaders have built a new utopia. As part of this event, a number of
old titles were given a new lease on life, including New Mutants.
In 2019's New Mutants #1, the old team reforms with most of its classic characters. Dani
is once again part of the team, although it's not initially clear whether she'll once again
assume a leadership role. After all, Magik is one of Krakoa's captains, Cypher is on
the mutant nation's governing body, and Sunspot has led a couple of teams of Avengers since
his last stint with the New Mutants. So if Dani wants to be a team leader, she may have some competition.
Regardless, it's safe to assume Mirage is happy to be back with her old teammates again,
particularly her dear friend Wolfsbane. Rahne had died from a brutal beating in 2019's Uncanny
X-Men #17, but resurrecting mutants is one of the miracles of Krakoa, and New Mutants
#1 opens with Mirage's closest friend returning to the world of the living.
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