M.O. Frisch
May 29, 2002, 01:12 pm
<img src="http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/images/headshots/logos/hellfireclub_logo.jpg" align=left alt="Hellfire Club logo">Purpose: (Inner Circle) World domination through economic and political influence; (Club as a whole) Social organization
Modus Operandi: (Inner Circle) Subversive political and economic activities, recruitment of powerful superhumans, organization of mercenary force
Known Members (Inner Circle, New York): Selene , Roberto DaCosta [Black Rook III; a.k.a. Sunspot], Blackheart [Black King IV], Daimon Hellstrom [White King IV; formerly known as Hellstorm]
[b]Known Members (Club as a whole): Sebastian H. Shaw [formerly Black King I], Emma Frost [presumed; formerly White Queen I], Warren K. Worthington III [a.k.a. Archangel], Anthony Stark [presumed; a.k.a. Iron Man], Norman Osborn [presumed; a.k.a. Green Goblin], Lady Jaqueline Crichton [formerly known as Spitfire], Wo-Han, Ronald Parvenue
Known Former Members (Inner Circle, New York): Sir Patrick Clemens (1780), Lady Diana Knight (1780), Commander Clinton (1780), Lady Grey (1781), Elizabeth Worthington (1781); Anton Pierce (1872) [presumed]; Edward Buckman [White King II], Paris Seville [White Queen II]; Sebastian H. Shaw , Tessa [a.k.a. Sage], Donald Pierce [White Bishop I/ White King I], Harry Leland [Black Bishop I], Emma Frost [White Queen I], Jason Wyngarde [a.k.a. Mastermind], Jean Grey II [Black Queen I; a.k.a. Phoenix II], Friedrich von Roehm [Black Rook I], Emmanuel DaCosta [White Rook I], Magnus [White King III/ Grey King I; a.k.a. Magneto], Ororo Munroe [temporarily shared the position of White King III with Magnus; a.k.a. Storm]; Shinobi Shaw [Black King II], Benedict Kine, Benazir Kaur, Reeva Payge, White Queen III; Scribe [Red Rook, sharing her body with the mutant Mountjoy], Madelyne Pryor II [Black Rook II; a.k.a. Queen Maddie], Trevor Fitzroy [presumed; presumed White Rook II; a.k.a. Chronomancer]; Sir Gordon Philips [Lord Imperial]
[b]Known Former Members (Inner Circle, London): John Stuart (third Earl of Bute; 1760s), Duncan Munro (1760s); Sir Patrick Clemens (late 1700s), Lady Diana Knight (late 1700s); Lord Braddock (1859), Shaw (1859), Franz (1859); Waltham Pierce (1915), Sir Harry Manners (1915); Sir James Braddock ; Red King, Margali Szardos [Red Queen], Scribe [sharing her body with the mutant Mountjoy], Black King III, Red Bishop, Ms. Steed [Black Queen III], Brian Braddock [Black Bishop III; a.k.a. Captain Britain], Adrienne Frost [presumed White Queen IV], Sir Gordon Philips [Lord Imperial]
[b]Known Special Agents: (Inner Circle, New York) formerly Warhawk, Wade Cole, Angelo Macon, Murray Reese, Cannonball II, Axe, Hellions [Empath, Roulette, Catseye, Thunderbird II, Tarot, Jetstream, Firestar, Sunspot, Magma II, Cannonball II, Wolfsbane, Beef, Bevatron], Paul Garwood, White Knights, Ebon Knights, Miss Hoo, Sabretooth; (Inner Circle, London) Rutledge
Known Former Members (Club As a Whole): Major-General Wallace Worthington (1780) [possibly], Captain Steven Rogers (1780) [possibly; a.k.a. Captain America VIII], Heinrich Zemo (1915) [presumed], Zemo (1915) [presumed], Lourdes Chantal [presumed], Howard Stark, Warren Worthington, Jr., John Braddock, Candace Southern, Bianca LaNeige, Elizabeth Braddock [a.k.a. Psylocke]
Known Bases of Operations: Hellfire Club Mansions in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Venice, and Rio de Janeiro; formerly The Massachusetts Academy
Known Extent of Operations: United States, Western Europe, South America and Hong Kong
Known Allies: (Inner Circle, New York) formerly Henry Peter Gyrich, Joey Z, Black Air, Ch’vayre, Paladin, Dr. Roderick Campbell, Upstarts, Candra, Senator Robert Kelly, Steven Lang, Project: Wideawake; (Inner Circle, London) formerly Michele Scicluna, Threadgold, Scratch, Black Air, Devil Under London Town, Sebastian Shaw, Angus Munroe, Apocalypse, Mister Sinister
Major Enemies: (Inner Circle, New York) X-Force, Damocles Foundation, Shadow Hunters, Fantastic Four; formerly Machine Man, Cable, Kingpin, X-Men, New Warriors, Upstarts, Rachel Summers, Nimrod II, New Mutants, Captain America VIII; (Inner Circle, London) formerly Excalibur, Union Jack
First Appearance: (Hellfire Club, New York) <i>X-Men (1st series) #125</i> (mentioned), <i>X-Men (1st series) #129</i> (fully); (Inner Circle, New York) <i>X-Men (1st series) #129</i> (in shadows); <i>X-Men (1st series) #132</i> (fully); (Hellfire Club, London) <i>Excalibur (1st series) #9</i>; (Inner Circle, London) <i>Excalibur (1st series) #96</i>
Profile: The Hellfire Club as a whole is an overt, worldwide organization, open to the most wealthy and powerful members of society. Within the Club, there is a secret cabal of two Inner Circles, one in New York, the other in London, which are only known to a select few. Each Inner Circle – sometimes also referred to as the Council of the Chosen – consists of two rival colors, each generally comprising a set of one Rook, Bishop, Queen and King, as well as, occasionally, members which do not belong to any particular color, and do not hold a specific position. Traditionally, the two colors are Black and White, but cases are known where one was replaced by Red, or when the additional color Grey was introduced by a ruling King. Each Inner Circle is ruled by its set of Queens and Kings, who are referred to as the Lords Cardinal of the Inner Circle. Above both Inner Circles rules the Lord Imperial. Currently, only New York’s Inner Circle is known to be active. Its members include the immortal mutant sorceress Selene (Black Queen), the demon Mephisto’s son Blackheart (Black King), the former Defender Daimon Hellstrom (White King), and Roberto DaCosta, alias Sunspot (Black Rook), formerly of X-Force and the New Mutants. The last known Lord Imperial of the Inner Circles of the Hellfire Club, Sir Gordon Philips, was murdered by Mystique’s Brotherhood of Mutants (III).
History: While it is presumed that the Hellfire Club was founded in the 1760s in London, its only initiators known by name are the Scotsmen John Stuart (third Earl of Bute and Prime Minister of Great Britain) and Duncan Munro, whose descendant, named Angus Munroe, was encountered by Spider-Man in the Scottish town of Ross-Shire. In the 1770s, Club members Sir Patrick Clemens and Lady Diana Knight emigrated to the United States and founded the New York City branch of the Hellfire Club. [See <i>Excalibur #99</i>, <i>Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth</i> and <i>Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Master Edition #28</i>. Other sources: Brandon Peterson, <i>Ultimate X-Men</i>, (New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishing, Inc.: 2000), pp. 86-87.]
In the year 1780, a young British emigrant named Elizabeth Shaw was introduced to the Philadelphia chapter of the Hellfire Club by a woman only known as Lady Grey. In order to gain access to strategic information, Shaw’s mission was to seduce the patriotic Major-General Wallace Worthington, who had just been appointed Commandant of the city Philadelphia. Worthington and Shaw soon married, but in 1781, when the time to deliver the results of her mission to Lady Grey had come, Elizabeth Worthington found herself unable to do so, because she had fallen in love with her husband. Subsequently, Lady Grey and her minions intruded Worthington’s home, tried to retrieve the needed information forcefully without success, and left Worthington to die in the arms of his best friend, Captain Steven Rogers, alias “Captain America” (VIII). [See <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #2</i>.]
Eighty years later, in 1859, the Inner Circle of the London Hellfire Club, among it men referred to as “Shaw” – later revealed to have been Sebastian Shaw’s great-grandfather – and “Braddock”, found itself in the situation to forge an uneasy alliance with the millennia-old mutant despot called Apocalypse, who needed them as pawns in his agenda to bring about his new era of the Survival of the Fittest. Although Apocalypse’s plans were ultimately foiled by Cyclops and Phoenix (IV), who had been transported back in time, it was later revealed that he had left his legacy sleeping in a chamber beneath the present London Hellfire Club Mansion, in the shape of one of his creatures, the so-called Harbinger of Apocalypse. [See <i>Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #1-4</i> and <i>Cable #50</i>.]
In December 1915, Waltham Pierce and Harry Manners offered the young Lieutenant Esau Shaw membership in London’s Inner Circle. Before Esau was able to make up his mind, however, he was murdered in cold blood by his own brother, Jacob Shaw, who had been given the ability of shape-shifting by the man known as Nathaniel Essex, or Mister Sinister. When Jacob Shaw subsequently tried to kill Pierce as well, his attempt was thwarted by England’s national hero, the Union Jack. Later that month, Harry Manners, for reasons unknown, wanted to employ the power of the Harbinger of Apocalypse in order to destroy London, but Union Jack – who, in the shape of his alter ego Lord Montgomery Falsworth, had been unknowingly invited to the Club that very night by Manners himself – was present to prevent the Harbinger from being awakened, and Manners apparently died in the process, accidently being shot by one of his own men. [See <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #3</i> and <i>Cable #50</i>.]
Recorded history of the Hellfire Club in the late 20th century begins with the first encounter of a sixteen year-old Emma Frost, who used her newly discovered telepathic powers to prey on the thoughts of the high society, and the ruthless advocate Harry Leland, both of whom should later belong to Sebastian Shaw’s Inner Circle as its White Queen and Black Bishop, respectively. [See <i>Generation X #-1</i>.]
When the Inner Circle of the New York Hellfire Club, then known as the Council of the Chosen, was ruled by the White King Edward Buckman and his White Queen, Paris Seville, the wealthy, self-made mutant industrialist Sebastian Shaw was introduced to both the Club and the Council as a probationary member. It was during this time that British special agent Elizabeth Braddock, who should later join the X-Men as Psylocke, received the mission to infiltrate the Hellfire Club, since her father, Sir James Braddock, had once been a Black Bishop of the London chapter’s Inner Circle. At Elizabeth’s first meeting with Sebastian Shaw and Sir Gordon Philips, Lord Imperial of the Hellfire Club, she was secretly approached and confronted by Shaw’s personal servant, Tessa, who, secretly acting as a spy for Professor X, convinced her to quit her assignment, because she would be but a toy to the Club’s rulers. [See <i>Excalibur (1st series) #96-97</i>, <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #4</i>, and <i>X-Treme X-Men #3</i>.]
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Shaw, who trusted the White King and regarded him as a friend, Edward Buckman hated Shaw and “his kind”, and intended to wipe homo sapiens superior off the face of the Earth. Thus, claiming that it was his aim to isolate the mutant “X-factor” gene for economic purposes, Buckman allied himself with Dr. Steven Lang, who was revamping the mutant-hunting robots called The Sentinels. When Frost and Leland, who had become two of Shaw’s confidants, were attacked by a Sentinel, however, and Shaw’s fiancé Lourdes Chantal, a mutant teleporter, was killed in the ensuing battle, Shaw vowed to take revenge on Buckman. Subsequently, while the X-Men were fighting Lang’s Sentinels, Shaw and his allies, Emma Frost, Harry Leland and Tessa, confronted Edward Buckman; After Frost had taken over Buckman’s mind and forced him to shoot his personal guard, his White Queen, and his entire Council of the Chosen, Shaw killed Buckman with his bare hands, and appointed himself the Black King of a new Inner Circle. Shortly after this coup d’état, Shaw sent an operative called Warhawk to fight the X-Men and secretly bug their home, preparing the schemes against Xavier’s mutants that should be put in motion in the coming months. Further, the Inner Circle was joined by two more members: The White Bishop Donald Pierce, a self-loathing hate-monger with mechanical body parts that granted him superhuman strength, and Jason Wyngarde, who was actually the X-Men’s old nemesis Mastermind. With his mutant ability to cast hypnotic illusions, and with the help of a device that enhanced his natural abilities, Wyngarde began to slowly but surely seduce the X-Men’s Phoenix (II), who was believed to be Jean Grey at the time. [See <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #4</i>, <i>Classic X-Men #6-7</i> and <i>X-Men (1st series) #110, 125, 126</i>.]
Soon, with all the pieces in place, the Inner Circle’s first full-fledged campaign against the X-Men began: Being on a mission to establish “first contact” with the young mutant girl Kitty Pryde in Chicago, Professor X, Storm, Wolverine and Colossus were ambushed and overwhelmed by Emma Frost and a squad of mercenaries, while Pryde’s mutant ability to “phase” through solid objects allowed her to evade capture. Seeking out a second mutant, a singer calling herself “The Dazzler”, in a Manhattan nightclub, Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Phoenix (II) were attacked by Hellfire mercenaries as well shortly after, but managed to escape with Dazzler’s help. After rescuing Kitty Pryde from her pursuers, the three remaining X-Men and their two new allies tracked Emma Frost and their captive teammates to an industrial plant in Chicago. While Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Kitty and Dazzler fought the Hellfire Club’s henchmen and freed Xavier and the X-Men, Emma Frost herself was confronted by Phoenix. In the conflict that followed, the entire building was destroyed, and the White Queen was apparently killed by “Jean Grey”. [See <i>X-Men (1st series) #129-131</i>.]
One week after this initial confrontation, the X-Men entered a gala at the New York Hellfire Club in disguise, in order to learn more about their new enemies, not realizing that Sebastian Shaw and his allies were still monitoring their every move, and were quickly defeated by the Inner Circle. Although Wolverine secretly survived after Harry Leland believed to have drowned him in the sewers beneath the Club Mansion, the team not only ended up as prisoners of the Circle, but Mastermind’s manipulations finally paid off, as Phoenix (II) turned against her teammates and became the Inner Circle’s Black Queen. Seeing her beloved Cyclops almost die before her eyes in a duel with Mastermind on the psionic plane, however, the woman believed to be Jean Grey broke free of Wyngarde’s control. When Wolverine smashed into the room shortly after, the X-Men were freed, and the tide quickly turned against the Inner Circle. Although the X-Men were ultimately victorious, leaving Shaw, Pierce and Leland on the run, and Phoenix, taking revenge on Mastermind for his manipulations, ruthlessly made her tormentor’s mind “one with the universe”, thus shattering his sanity, the victory was a pyrrhic one; As soon as the dust had settled, the X-Men were blamed by the authorities for attacking the honorable Hellfire Club. Moreso, the repercussions of Wyngarde’s tampering with Phoenix’s mind proved to be disastrous: During the team’s escape from the scene in a skycraft, Phoenix could no longer withstand her dark side. Transformed into the being of pure cosmic hunger and evil known as Dark Phoenix, she subsequently consumed an entire sun in another galaxy, thereby creating a super-nova and killing billions of alien beings on a nearby planet. Meanwhile, Shaw and his Inner Circle were free to continue their schemes, albeit without Mastermind. [See <i>X-Men (1st series) #132-137</i>. Other sources: <i>Official Marvel Index to the X-Men (2nd series) #3</i>.]
In spite of his own traumatic experience with the mutant-hunting Sentinels, Shaw took first steps to turn these deadly robots into his instruments not long after the Inner Circle’s clash with the X-Men. Endorsed by United States Senator Robert Kelly, a friend of Shaw’s who had been a guest at the Hellfire Club when the Inner Circle’s fight with the X-Men occurred, and now regarded the mutants as dangerous terrorists, Shaw came into contact with the Avengers’ former government liaison, Agent Henry Peter Gyrich. Gyrich, with whom Shaw – as the honorable owner of Shaw Industries – worked closely after an initial meeting, was in charge of an anti-mutant task force dubbed Project: Wideawake, whose first priority was the resurrection of the Sentinels. [See <i>Uncanny X-Men #142</i>. Other sources: <i>Official Marvel Index to the X-Men (2nd series) #3</i>.]
Eager to take revenge on the X-Men, Shaw did not hesitate long before making use of the newly created Sentinels under his control; Emma Frost, believed-dead White Queen of the Lords Cardinal and headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy, where Kitty Pryde had been enrolled by her parents, secretly switched bodies with Storm, leaving her in a cell beneath the Academy. Soon, “Storm’s” treachery, combined with the distraction provided by an attack on Xavier’s School by Shaw’s new Sentinels, quickly overwhelmed the unsuspecting X-Men, and their home was invaded by Sebastian Shaw, his aide Tessa, Harry Leland, and a number of their Hellfire mercenaries. Once again, however, the Inner Circle’s victory did not last due to one of its members underestimation of their opponent’s potential, as Storm – in Frost’s body – managed to escape from the Massachusetts Academy along with Kitty, and they came to the rescue of their teammates. Additionally, the White Queen’s lack of control allowed her subconscious to generate a rogue storm outside the School, which resulted in Shaw being hit by a lightning bolt and could only be stopped by Storm, who was able to reverse the body-switch with Frost’s device. Seeing that Shaw was apparently severely injured, and that the rest of her allies were defeated and on the run, Frost agreed to a temporary truce between the Inner Circle and the X-Men, and re-transferred Kitty Pryde from Massachusetts to Westchester. [See <i>Uncanny X-Men #151-152</i>.]
In the months following this last concerted attack against the X-Men, the Inner Circle became entangled in the personal power struggles of its members; Donald Pierce, who had risen to the position of the White King, captured Professor X and tried to use Xavier’s vast telepathic abilities to usurp control of the Lords Cardinal. When his attempt was foiled by Shaw’s aide Tessa and Xavier’s latest students, the New Mutants, Pierce was expelled from the Circle [see <i>Marvel Graphic Novel #4</i>]. Shaw himself, having recovered from his injuries, began attempting to push the New Mutants towards the Hellfire Club’s own Massachusetts Academy shortly after, making use of his connections to Project: Wideawake and to fellow Club member Emmanuel DaCosta, the father of the New Mutants’ Sunspot [see <i>New Mutants #2, 7-8, 12</i>]. Meanwhile, White Queen Emma Frost, the Academy’s headmistress, suffered an attack by Jason Wyngarde, alias Mastermind, who sought revenge on the X-Men and the Inner Circle. Although Mastermind was later stopped once again by the X-Men, his psychic attack left Frost in a catatonic state for several weeks [see <i>Uncanny X-Men #169</i> and <i>Uncanny X-Men Annual #7</i>], before she was able to continue Shaw’s efforts, trying to recruit the New Mutants and Kitty Pryde for her own school, which ultimately failed [see <i>New Mutants #15-17</i>]. In the weeks following these events, Shaw recruited Emmanuel DaCosta, the ancient mutant sorceress Lady Selene and her high priest, the lycanthropic Friedrich von Roehm, into the Inner Circle, as its new White Rook, Black Queen and Black Rook, respectively [see <i>New Mutants #22-23</i> and <i>Uncanny X-Men #189</i>].
Soon after Selene had taken her place with the Lords Cardinal as their new Black Queen, her enmity with Rachel Summers, alias Phoenix (III), led to a clash between the Inner Circle and the X-Men in Central Park. This encounter proved to be the beginning of the downfall of Shaw’s Circle, as both groups were suddenly attacked with lethal force by Nimrod (II), an advanced Sentinel from the future, bent on eliminating all mutants on Earth. Although a truce between the mutants ultimately allowed them to defeat their mutual new enemy, both Harry Leland and Friedrich von Roehm lost their lives in the battle. [See <i>Uncanny X-Men #207-209</i>.]
In the face of such new threats as Nimrod, the Marauders or X-Factor (who appeared to the public as mutant hunters for hire at the time), both the Inner Circle and the X-Men realized that they had to overcome their hostility and forge an alliance in order to survive the coming power struggles, and the reformed Magneto – who had just inherited Charles Xavier’s place as a mentor and teacher of the New Mutants and the X-Men – accepted the Lords Cardinal’s offer to join them as their latest White King [see <i>Uncanny X-Men #210</i> and <i>New Mutants #51</i>]. While the alliance between the Hellfire Club and Xavier’s School lasted for several months and was beneficial to both parties during crises like the Evolutionary War and the Inferno [see <i>New Mutants Annual #4</i> and <i>New Mutants #71-73</i>], there were growing philosophical differences between Magneto and Sebastian Shaw, which ultimately resulted in the latter being deposed as the leader of the Lords Cardinal by Magnus, who now assumed the unique position of the “Grey King” [see <i>New Mutants #74-75</i>]. Still a prominent member of the Hellfire Club proper, Shaw then sought to rebuild his power base by returning to his government-funded Sentinel program, now dubbed Project: Nimrod [see <i>Uncanny X-Men #246-247</i> and <i>Amazing Spider-Man (1st series) #328-329</i>]. Magneto, however, withdrew from Hellfire Club business, beginning to slowly but surey become entangled in his own agendas again, and ultimately, having grown tired of the ongoing struggle for dominance among mutants and humans, left Earth entirely to seek refuge on his new sanctuary, Asteroid M [see <i>Amazing Spider-Man (1st series) #327</i>, <i>Captain America (1st series) #366-367</i>, <i>Avengers West Coast #53-57, 59</i> and <i>Uncanny X-Men #269, 274-275</i>].
The blow which brought the established Inner Circle down for good occurred when a group of ambitious and ruthless young mutants began their “Competition” for power and immortality. Assembled by the Black Queen herself, these so-called Upstarts took out the present and former members of the Lords Cardinal one by one: Shinobi Shaw, the illegitimate son of the former Black King, killed his father in Switzerland; the schemes of Fabian Cortez, the founder of a group of pseudo-religious mutant fanatics called the Acolytes, resulted in the destruction of Asteroid M, Magneto’s apparent death, and that of Cortez’ own fellow Acolytes; the advanced Sentinels of the time-traveling Trevor Fitzroy, a descendant of Shaw’s from the future, hunted down and eliminated Donald Pierce and his group of cyborg mercenaries called the Reavers in the Australian Outback, and severely injured the White Queen in New York shortly after, leaving her in a months-long coma, while Fitzroy himself killed all of Frost’s young students, the Hellions. Finally, Selene, having underestimated the Upstarts’ ruthlessness in her quest for power, fell victim to it herself, as Fitzoy trapped her in a futuristic torturing device, a so-called “spooling chamber”, where she was left for months. [See <i>X-Factor (1st series) #67</i>, <i>X-Men (2nd series) #1-3</i>, <i>Uncanny X-Men #281-283, 301</I>.]
It was Shinobi Shaw who then assumed his father’s mantle as the Black King of the Lors Cardinal. Unlike Sebastian’s leadership, however, Shinobi’s proved to be rather shortlived, and without much success: His attempts to recruit high-profile mutants like Archangel, Psylocke, Storm or Sunspot for his Inner Circle all failed and, though he ultimately forged an alliance with the External Candra and managed to assemble the mutants named Tessa, Benedict Kine, Benazir Kaur and Reeva Payge, Shinobi remained unable to establish a lasting power base. Instead, he kept becoming entangled in fruitless conflicts with the likes of X-Force, the New Warriors, Black Tom Cassidy, and even his own recruit, Benedict Kine. After learning that his father was apparently alive and looking for revenge, and in the face of Bastion’s Operation: Zero Tolerance’s rise to power, Shinobi, along with his version of the Inner Circle, disappeared from the map. [See <i>X-Men (2nd series) #29</i>, <i>X-Force #32-33</i>, <i>New Warriors (1st series) #45</i>, <i> X-Men (2nd series) Annual #3</i>, <i>Generation X Annual ‘95</i>, <i>Generation X #61</i> (flashback), <i>Spider-Man Team-Up #1</i>, <i>X-Man #22</i> and <i>X-Force #62</i>.]
While Shinobi Shaw was in charge of the New York Hellfire Club, he became aware of major events being set in motion by the Inner Circle of the Club’s London chapter. When Shinobi learned that Mountjoy, a mutant “body-jumper” from the future, was infiltrating London’s Inner Circle in the disguise of one of its members, he asked Brian Braddock, alias Captain Britain of Excalibur, to investigate the situation, which he described as a threat to both of them. Braddock then claimed the position of the Black Bishop, which had once been held by his father, Sir James Braddock. As it turned out shortly after, the ruling elite of the Club was looking to unleash an ancient demon referred to as the Devil Under London Town, who had been imprisoned in a vault beneath England’s capital ages ago, and make use of his vast magical powers. To achieve this goal, the Inner Circle had established ties to Sebastian Shaw, to the corrupt British intelligence organization Black Air, and even the British parliament. Additionally, several of the Inner Circle’s members followed their own agendas: Ms. Steed, the Club’s Black Queen, was an agent of the psionic entity called Onslaught (II); the woman only known as Scribe, the group’s record-keeper, turned out to be Mountjoy’s latest host; and the new Red Queen, a powerful sorceress, was revealed to be Margali Szardos, the step-mother of Excalibur’s leader Nightcrawler, and the wielder of the so-called Soulsword. Shortly before the Inner Circle could free the Devil, however, their plans were foiled by Excalibur, and both Black Air and the London Inner Circle were brought down temporarily. While Margali Szardos and the Circle’s Black King apparently died in the final fight, the rest of the group supposedly went to jail. The next time London’s Inner Circle was heard of was when Adrienne Frost, the sister of former New York White Queen Emma Frost, claimed to have been its White Queen. [See <i>Excalibur (1st series) #96-100</i> and <i>Generation X #56, 67-69</i>.]
During Shinobi Shaw and the London Inner Circle’s struggles for power, both the immortal Lady Selene and the believed-dead Sebastian Shaw prepared their return to the ruling class of the Hellfire Club. By manipulating Excalibur members Nightcrawler and Amanda Sefton (ak.a. Daytripper, a.k.a. Magik II), Selene managed to escape from Trevor Fitzroy’s “spooling chamber” after months of torture [see <i>Excalibur Annual #2</i>]. Soon, Selene became aware of the powerful young mutant called Madelyne Pryor (II), lured her away from her companion Nate Grey (a.k.a. X-Man), and turned her into her “apprentice” [see <i>X-Man #7, 13-16</i>]. After killing her fellow Externals Gideon, Saul, Crule and Absalom, adding their life energies to her own [see <i>X-Force #53-54</i>], Selene sent Madelyne to confront Fitzroy, her torturer. Although it first looked like the young girl was no match for Fitzroy’s futuristic battle suit, the fight finally forced Madelyne to tap into her vast powers, and Fitzroy became Selene’s latest minion [see <i>X-Man #17, 20</i>].
In the meantime, Sebastian Shaw had reappeared on an unidentified small island whose population had just been decimated by the otherworlder Holocaust (a.k.a. Nemesis), with whom Shaw now forged an alliance [see <i>X-Force #48</i>]. Along with his new ally, Shaw captured the members of X-Force, and – with the help of Tessa, who had once again become his aide – he brainwashed the young mutants and sent them against their former leader, Cable [see <i>X-Force #49-50</i>]. The attempt failed, however, and Shaw turned his attention to London, where he met the mutant called Scratch, Black Air’s liaison with the London Hellfire Club, and exchanged a magical artifact needed by the British Inner Circle for secret information [see <i>Excalibur #96</i>]. Back in the States, Shaw’s alliance with Holocaust came to a sudden and unexpected end, as his hideout was invaded by Onslaught himself, who defeated both Shaw and Tessa with a wave of his hand, and took Holocaust as an “emissary” [see <i>X-Man #15</i>].
Sebastian Shaw’s Inner Circle was finally rebuilt in New York City, when the Hellfire Club’s current elite had been in hiding for months due to dangers such as Onslaught, Operation: Zero Tolerance or the Legacy Virus; Shaw and Tessa were contacted by Selene, who wanted to regain her position as the Black Queen of the Lords Cardinal by offering Shaw Madelyne Pryor (II) and Trevor Fitzroy as the Inner Circle’s new Black and White Rooks, respectively. While he saw the time-traveling Fitzroy’s potential, Shaw was reluctant at first in regards to Pryor. In order to test her value, he pitched her against his own Red Rook – the woman known as Scribe, who still served as Mountjoy’s host, and had been bailed out of jail by Shaw after the London Inner Circle’s downfall. When Scribe/ Mountjoy was defeated by a relentless Pryor, Shaw finally accepted her as the Black Rook in his new Inner Circle, and Madelyne’s favor soon began to shift towards him, and away from Selene. [See <i>X-Man #21-23</i> and <i>X-Man Annual ‘96</i>.]
Not long after Madelyne Pryor’s introduction as the new Black Rook (II), Shaw regained his position as the Black King of the Inner Circle and moved his base of operations to the Hellfire Club’s Hong Kong chapter. In Hong Kong, he convinced Dr. Roderick Campbell, formerly of Excalibur, to provide him with research data on the terminal Legacy Virus. Campbell agreed to this deal because the Black King had apparently found a cure for the disease, in the shape of the so-called Elixir Vitae, a mythical potion which Shaw intended to use for economical purposes. However, Shaw’s plans failed when the Elixir was destroyed in a tug-of-war between himself, the Kingpin of Crime, the X-Men and the Master of Kung-Fu called Shang-Chi. In the meantime, after confrontations with her genetic counterpart Phoenix (IV), Nate Grey, and Cable, whose mother she believed to be at the time, Madelyne Pryor became Shaw’s lover, and ultimately his consort, much to the Shagrin of Selene, who still had not managed to regain the position of the Inner Circle’s Black Queen yet. After failing to appropiate a mutant powers neutralizer developed by a renegade wing of Worthington Industries, Shaw left Hong Kong for London, having been contacted by a mysterious man claiming to be from the future. [See <i>X-Man #24-25</i>, <i>Cable #44</i>, <i>X-Men (2nd series) #62-64</i>, <i>X-Man #28, 30</i> and <i>X-Men Unlimited #17</i>.]
The enigmatic man who had contacted the Black King turned out to be Ch’vayre, a time-traveling agent of the Clan Askani, an order of rebels against the rule of the immortal despot Apocalypse in a distant future. In order to catalyze the final confrontation between Apocalypse and the Clan’s unwilling champion, the mutant called Cable, Ch’vayre had promised Shaw to lead him to Apocalypse’s lair, thus offering him access to technology far advanced, and to immense power. Being busy with other affairs at the time, Shaw put the cyborg Donald Pierce, who had returned from his early “grave” and had been reinstated as the Inner Circle’s White Bishop by Shaw, in charge of the operation, which was dubbed the “Tomorrow Agenda”. Due to the interference of Cable and the reporter Irene Merryweather, the Tomorrow Agenda did not turn out as a success, however; Although Shaw managed to release the Harbinger of Apocalypse in London, the destructive creature proved indomitable, and Apocalypse himself had long left his mountain hideout in Switzerland Ch’vayre had led Shaw and Pierce to. Having been tracked down by Cable, and facing the base’s self-destruction, Shaw fled the scene, leaving Pierce behind in the Swiss Alpes, while Ch’vayre had been trapped in one of Apocalypse’s stasis capsules. [See <i>Cable #48-53</i>.]
Not long after the failure of the Tomorrow Agenda, Sebastian Shaw, residing in a Hellfire Club Mansion in Venice, Italy, was contacted and handed a secret message by an unidentified being capable of stopping time itself, only referred to as “wraith”. Although Trevor Fitzroy had apparently become a member of Shaw’s Inner Circle, the Black King was facing rivalries within the group, and thus he told the mysterious “wraith” that he would “accept” his offer and “do it” shortly after at the Hellfire Club’s New Year’s gala in Rio de Janeiro. Telling Shaw that this was his only choice, that his world ended and his life began that day, the “wraith” disappeared [see <i>X-Men (2nd series) #71, 73</i>]. Following this episode, Shaw, along with Tessa, indulged in two minor operations, one involving Machine Man, Henry Peter Gyrich and the Sentinels [see <i>X-51 #0, 1-7</i>], the other addressing Irene Merryweather’s continued investigation of Hellfire Club affairs [see <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #1-4</i>], before apparently quitting the position of the Black King once again, withdrawing from the Inner Circle and going into hiding. While Tessa resurfaced as a member of the X-Men months later, revealing that she had been a spy in Charles Xavier’s service all along [see <i>X-Men (2nd series) #103</i>], Shaw’s plans at that point, as well as the “wraith”’s identity or the significance of the alliance forged between the two on New Year’s Eve, remained a mystery.
In the light of Shaw’s withdrawal, and with detractors Fitzroy, Pryor, Tessa and Pierce out of the way as well, who had all been following their own agendas, Selene finally reinstated herself as the Inner Circle’s Black Queen and took control of the Hellfire Club, introducing the demon Blackheart, son of Mephisto, as the Inner Circle’s new Black King. Although Selene’s attempt to bring Blackheart to Earth’s dimension failed due to the combined efforts of the Fantastic Four, the Shadow Hunters and Daimon Hellstrom, and resulted in Hellstrom becoming the new White King of the Lords Cardinal in order to keep Blackheart confined to a pocket dimension beneath the New York Hellfire Club Mansion, the new Black royalty continued to expand its influence; By offering Roberto DaCosta, alias X-Force’s Sunspot, to bring his girlfriend Juliana back from the dead, they manipulated the young mutant into accepting his father’s heritage and joining their ranks as a Black Rook. [See <i>Fantastic Four Annual ‘99</i> and <i>X-Force #94, 96-99</i>.]
Since this latest change of the guard, nothing has been seen or heard of the New York Inner Circle’s activities, and it remains unknown if a London Inner Circle is currently in existence. The most recent known affairs involving the Hellfire Club include a team of X-Men intruding the Hong Kong chapter’s Mansion in search of the group of mercenaries called the Crimson Pirates [see <i>X-Men (2nd series) #104</i>], the Club’s longtime Lord Imperial, Sir Gordon Philips, being murdered by Mystique and her Brotherhood of Mutants (III) [see <i>Uncanny X-Men #388</i>], or former Black King Sebastian Shaw’s lobbying for the Club at a party by media tycoon Tiberius Stone [see <i>Iron Man (3rd series) #37</i>]. The circumstances of his retirement of the Inner Circle still unrevealed, Shaw, with his new ally Lady Mastermind, was also encountered by Storm’s group of renegade X-Men (IV) in Australia, where he attempted to take revenge on Tessa, alias Sage, for her betrayal, and to establish himself as a major force in Sydney’s crime scene [see <i>X-Treme X-Men #5-9</i>].
A Hellfire Club satellite office in Manhattan was publicly attacked by a creature called the Skornn who fed upon mutant life-force. The Skornn massacred several young mutants enjoying a formal dance at the club until his rampage was put to an end by Cable and his allies [see <i>X-Force (2nd series) #5</i>].
APPEARANCES:
Amazing Spider-Man (1st series) #328, 329
Astonishing X-Men (3rd series) #12
Beast #1
Cable #48-53
Captain America (1st series) #369
Classic X-Men #6, 7, 34
Excalibur (1st series) #9, 96-100
Fantastic Four Annual ‘99
Firestar #1-4
Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #2, 3
Generation X #-1, 40, 56, 61, 67-69
Generation X Annual ‘95
Iron Man (3rd series) #37
Marvel Graphic Novel #4
Marvel Super-Heroes (3rd series) #11
New Mutants (1st series) #2, 7, 8, 12, 15-17, 22, 23, 51, 53, 54, 56, 61, 62, 69-71, 73-75
New Mutants (1st series) Annual #4
New Warriors (1st series) #45
Peter Parker: Spider-Man (1st series) #94
Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth
Spider-Man Team-Up #1
Uncanny X-Men #151, 152, 169, 180, 182, 184, 189, 207-210, 219, 246, 247, 281-283, 388
Uncanny X-Men Annual #7
Weapon X (2nd series) #19
X-51 #0, 1-7
X-Factor #67
X-Force (1st series) #32, 33, 62, 75, 94, 96-99
X-Force (2nd series) #5
X-Man #21-25, 28, 30
X-Man Annual ‘96
X-Men (1st series) #125, 126, 129-135
X-Men (2nd series) #29, 63, 64, 71, 73, 103, 104
X-Men (2nd series) Annual #3
X-Men: Deadly Genesis #5
X-Men: Hellfire Club #1-4
X-Men Unlimited (1st series) #17, 33
X-Treme X-Men #3
OTHER SOURCES:
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Master Edition #28
Official Marvel Index to the X-Men (2nd series) #3
Peterson, Brandon. <i>Ultimate X-Men</i>, New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishing, Inc., 2000.
Thanks to Hatebreed (http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/forums/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=1728) for his research help on Adrienne Frost and Bianca LaNeige
Modus Operandi: (Inner Circle) Subversive political and economic activities, recruitment of powerful superhumans, organization of mercenary force
Known Members (Inner Circle, New York): Selene , Roberto DaCosta [Black Rook III; a.k.a. Sunspot], Blackheart [Black King IV], Daimon Hellstrom [White King IV; formerly known as Hellstorm]
[b]Known Members (Club as a whole): Sebastian H. Shaw [formerly Black King I], Emma Frost [presumed; formerly White Queen I], Warren K. Worthington III [a.k.a. Archangel], Anthony Stark [presumed; a.k.a. Iron Man], Norman Osborn [presumed; a.k.a. Green Goblin], Lady Jaqueline Crichton [formerly known as Spitfire], Wo-Han, Ronald Parvenue
Known Former Members (Inner Circle, New York): Sir Patrick Clemens (1780), Lady Diana Knight (1780), Commander Clinton (1780), Lady Grey (1781), Elizabeth Worthington (1781); Anton Pierce (1872) [presumed]; Edward Buckman [White King II], Paris Seville [White Queen II]; Sebastian H. Shaw , Tessa [a.k.a. Sage], Donald Pierce [White Bishop I/ White King I], Harry Leland [Black Bishop I], Emma Frost [White Queen I], Jason Wyngarde [a.k.a. Mastermind], Jean Grey II [Black Queen I; a.k.a. Phoenix II], Friedrich von Roehm [Black Rook I], Emmanuel DaCosta [White Rook I], Magnus [White King III/ Grey King I; a.k.a. Magneto], Ororo Munroe [temporarily shared the position of White King III with Magnus; a.k.a. Storm]; Shinobi Shaw [Black King II], Benedict Kine, Benazir Kaur, Reeva Payge, White Queen III; Scribe [Red Rook, sharing her body with the mutant Mountjoy], Madelyne Pryor II [Black Rook II; a.k.a. Queen Maddie], Trevor Fitzroy [presumed; presumed White Rook II; a.k.a. Chronomancer]; Sir Gordon Philips [Lord Imperial]
[b]Known Former Members (Inner Circle, London): John Stuart (third Earl of Bute; 1760s), Duncan Munro (1760s); Sir Patrick Clemens (late 1700s), Lady Diana Knight (late 1700s); Lord Braddock (1859), Shaw (1859), Franz (1859); Waltham Pierce (1915), Sir Harry Manners (1915); Sir James Braddock ; Red King, Margali Szardos [Red Queen], Scribe [sharing her body with the mutant Mountjoy], Black King III, Red Bishop, Ms. Steed [Black Queen III], Brian Braddock [Black Bishop III; a.k.a. Captain Britain], Adrienne Frost [presumed White Queen IV], Sir Gordon Philips [Lord Imperial]
[b]Known Special Agents: (Inner Circle, New York) formerly Warhawk, Wade Cole, Angelo Macon, Murray Reese, Cannonball II, Axe, Hellions [Empath, Roulette, Catseye, Thunderbird II, Tarot, Jetstream, Firestar, Sunspot, Magma II, Cannonball II, Wolfsbane, Beef, Bevatron], Paul Garwood, White Knights, Ebon Knights, Miss Hoo, Sabretooth; (Inner Circle, London) Rutledge
Known Former Members (Club As a Whole): Major-General Wallace Worthington (1780) [possibly], Captain Steven Rogers (1780) [possibly; a.k.a. Captain America VIII], Heinrich Zemo (1915) [presumed], Zemo (1915) [presumed], Lourdes Chantal [presumed], Howard Stark, Warren Worthington, Jr., John Braddock, Candace Southern, Bianca LaNeige, Elizabeth Braddock [a.k.a. Psylocke]
Known Bases of Operations: Hellfire Club Mansions in New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, London, Los Angeles, Hong Kong, Venice, and Rio de Janeiro; formerly The Massachusetts Academy
Known Extent of Operations: United States, Western Europe, South America and Hong Kong
Known Allies: (Inner Circle, New York) formerly Henry Peter Gyrich, Joey Z, Black Air, Ch’vayre, Paladin, Dr. Roderick Campbell, Upstarts, Candra, Senator Robert Kelly, Steven Lang, Project: Wideawake; (Inner Circle, London) formerly Michele Scicluna, Threadgold, Scratch, Black Air, Devil Under London Town, Sebastian Shaw, Angus Munroe, Apocalypse, Mister Sinister
Major Enemies: (Inner Circle, New York) X-Force, Damocles Foundation, Shadow Hunters, Fantastic Four; formerly Machine Man, Cable, Kingpin, X-Men, New Warriors, Upstarts, Rachel Summers, Nimrod II, New Mutants, Captain America VIII; (Inner Circle, London) formerly Excalibur, Union Jack
First Appearance: (Hellfire Club, New York) <i>X-Men (1st series) #125</i> (mentioned), <i>X-Men (1st series) #129</i> (fully); (Inner Circle, New York) <i>X-Men (1st series) #129</i> (in shadows); <i>X-Men (1st series) #132</i> (fully); (Hellfire Club, London) <i>Excalibur (1st series) #9</i>; (Inner Circle, London) <i>Excalibur (1st series) #96</i>
Profile: The Hellfire Club as a whole is an overt, worldwide organization, open to the most wealthy and powerful members of society. Within the Club, there is a secret cabal of two Inner Circles, one in New York, the other in London, which are only known to a select few. Each Inner Circle – sometimes also referred to as the Council of the Chosen – consists of two rival colors, each generally comprising a set of one Rook, Bishop, Queen and King, as well as, occasionally, members which do not belong to any particular color, and do not hold a specific position. Traditionally, the two colors are Black and White, but cases are known where one was replaced by Red, or when the additional color Grey was introduced by a ruling King. Each Inner Circle is ruled by its set of Queens and Kings, who are referred to as the Lords Cardinal of the Inner Circle. Above both Inner Circles rules the Lord Imperial. Currently, only New York’s Inner Circle is known to be active. Its members include the immortal mutant sorceress Selene (Black Queen), the demon Mephisto’s son Blackheart (Black King), the former Defender Daimon Hellstrom (White King), and Roberto DaCosta, alias Sunspot (Black Rook), formerly of X-Force and the New Mutants. The last known Lord Imperial of the Inner Circles of the Hellfire Club, Sir Gordon Philips, was murdered by Mystique’s Brotherhood of Mutants (III).
History: While it is presumed that the Hellfire Club was founded in the 1760s in London, its only initiators known by name are the Scotsmen John Stuart (third Earl of Bute and Prime Minister of Great Britain) and Duncan Munro, whose descendant, named Angus Munroe, was encountered by Spider-Man in the Scottish town of Ross-Shire. In the 1770s, Club members Sir Patrick Clemens and Lady Diana Knight emigrated to the United States and founded the New York City branch of the Hellfire Club. [See <i>Excalibur #99</i>, <i>Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth</i> and <i>Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Master Edition #28</i>. Other sources: Brandon Peterson, <i>Ultimate X-Men</i>, (New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishing, Inc.: 2000), pp. 86-87.]
In the year 1780, a young British emigrant named Elizabeth Shaw was introduced to the Philadelphia chapter of the Hellfire Club by a woman only known as Lady Grey. In order to gain access to strategic information, Shaw’s mission was to seduce the patriotic Major-General Wallace Worthington, who had just been appointed Commandant of the city Philadelphia. Worthington and Shaw soon married, but in 1781, when the time to deliver the results of her mission to Lady Grey had come, Elizabeth Worthington found herself unable to do so, because she had fallen in love with her husband. Subsequently, Lady Grey and her minions intruded Worthington’s home, tried to retrieve the needed information forcefully without success, and left Worthington to die in the arms of his best friend, Captain Steven Rogers, alias “Captain America” (VIII). [See <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #2</i>.]
Eighty years later, in 1859, the Inner Circle of the London Hellfire Club, among it men referred to as “Shaw” – later revealed to have been Sebastian Shaw’s great-grandfather – and “Braddock”, found itself in the situation to forge an uneasy alliance with the millennia-old mutant despot called Apocalypse, who needed them as pawns in his agenda to bring about his new era of the Survival of the Fittest. Although Apocalypse’s plans were ultimately foiled by Cyclops and Phoenix (IV), who had been transported back in time, it was later revealed that he had left his legacy sleeping in a chamber beneath the present London Hellfire Club Mansion, in the shape of one of his creatures, the so-called Harbinger of Apocalypse. [See <i>Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #1-4</i> and <i>Cable #50</i>.]
In December 1915, Waltham Pierce and Harry Manners offered the young Lieutenant Esau Shaw membership in London’s Inner Circle. Before Esau was able to make up his mind, however, he was murdered in cold blood by his own brother, Jacob Shaw, who had been given the ability of shape-shifting by the man known as Nathaniel Essex, or Mister Sinister. When Jacob Shaw subsequently tried to kill Pierce as well, his attempt was thwarted by England’s national hero, the Union Jack. Later that month, Harry Manners, for reasons unknown, wanted to employ the power of the Harbinger of Apocalypse in order to destroy London, but Union Jack – who, in the shape of his alter ego Lord Montgomery Falsworth, had been unknowingly invited to the Club that very night by Manners himself – was present to prevent the Harbinger from being awakened, and Manners apparently died in the process, accidently being shot by one of his own men. [See <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #3</i> and <i>Cable #50</i>.]
Recorded history of the Hellfire Club in the late 20th century begins with the first encounter of a sixteen year-old Emma Frost, who used her newly discovered telepathic powers to prey on the thoughts of the high society, and the ruthless advocate Harry Leland, both of whom should later belong to Sebastian Shaw’s Inner Circle as its White Queen and Black Bishop, respectively. [See <i>Generation X #-1</i>.]
When the Inner Circle of the New York Hellfire Club, then known as the Council of the Chosen, was ruled by the White King Edward Buckman and his White Queen, Paris Seville, the wealthy, self-made mutant industrialist Sebastian Shaw was introduced to both the Club and the Council as a probationary member. It was during this time that British special agent Elizabeth Braddock, who should later join the X-Men as Psylocke, received the mission to infiltrate the Hellfire Club, since her father, Sir James Braddock, had once been a Black Bishop of the London chapter’s Inner Circle. At Elizabeth’s first meeting with Sebastian Shaw and Sir Gordon Philips, Lord Imperial of the Hellfire Club, she was secretly approached and confronted by Shaw’s personal servant, Tessa, who, secretly acting as a spy for Professor X, convinced her to quit her assignment, because she would be but a toy to the Club’s rulers. [See <i>Excalibur (1st series) #96-97</i>, <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #4</i>, and <i>X-Treme X-Men #3</i>.]
Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Shaw, who trusted the White King and regarded him as a friend, Edward Buckman hated Shaw and “his kind”, and intended to wipe homo sapiens superior off the face of the Earth. Thus, claiming that it was his aim to isolate the mutant “X-factor” gene for economic purposes, Buckman allied himself with Dr. Steven Lang, who was revamping the mutant-hunting robots called The Sentinels. When Frost and Leland, who had become two of Shaw’s confidants, were attacked by a Sentinel, however, and Shaw’s fiancé Lourdes Chantal, a mutant teleporter, was killed in the ensuing battle, Shaw vowed to take revenge on Buckman. Subsequently, while the X-Men were fighting Lang’s Sentinels, Shaw and his allies, Emma Frost, Harry Leland and Tessa, confronted Edward Buckman; After Frost had taken over Buckman’s mind and forced him to shoot his personal guard, his White Queen, and his entire Council of the Chosen, Shaw killed Buckman with his bare hands, and appointed himself the Black King of a new Inner Circle. Shortly after this coup d’état, Shaw sent an operative called Warhawk to fight the X-Men and secretly bug their home, preparing the schemes against Xavier’s mutants that should be put in motion in the coming months. Further, the Inner Circle was joined by two more members: The White Bishop Donald Pierce, a self-loathing hate-monger with mechanical body parts that granted him superhuman strength, and Jason Wyngarde, who was actually the X-Men’s old nemesis Mastermind. With his mutant ability to cast hypnotic illusions, and with the help of a device that enhanced his natural abilities, Wyngarde began to slowly but surely seduce the X-Men’s Phoenix (II), who was believed to be Jean Grey at the time. [See <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #4</i>, <i>Classic X-Men #6-7</i> and <i>X-Men (1st series) #110, 125, 126</i>.]
Soon, with all the pieces in place, the Inner Circle’s first full-fledged campaign against the X-Men began: Being on a mission to establish “first contact” with the young mutant girl Kitty Pryde in Chicago, Professor X, Storm, Wolverine and Colossus were ambushed and overwhelmed by Emma Frost and a squad of mercenaries, while Pryde’s mutant ability to “phase” through solid objects allowed her to evade capture. Seeking out a second mutant, a singer calling herself “The Dazzler”, in a Manhattan nightclub, Cyclops, Nightcrawler and Phoenix (II) were attacked by Hellfire mercenaries as well shortly after, but managed to escape with Dazzler’s help. After rescuing Kitty Pryde from her pursuers, the three remaining X-Men and their two new allies tracked Emma Frost and their captive teammates to an industrial plant in Chicago. While Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Kitty and Dazzler fought the Hellfire Club’s henchmen and freed Xavier and the X-Men, Emma Frost herself was confronted by Phoenix. In the conflict that followed, the entire building was destroyed, and the White Queen was apparently killed by “Jean Grey”. [See <i>X-Men (1st series) #129-131</i>.]
One week after this initial confrontation, the X-Men entered a gala at the New York Hellfire Club in disguise, in order to learn more about their new enemies, not realizing that Sebastian Shaw and his allies were still monitoring their every move, and were quickly defeated by the Inner Circle. Although Wolverine secretly survived after Harry Leland believed to have drowned him in the sewers beneath the Club Mansion, the team not only ended up as prisoners of the Circle, but Mastermind’s manipulations finally paid off, as Phoenix (II) turned against her teammates and became the Inner Circle’s Black Queen. Seeing her beloved Cyclops almost die before her eyes in a duel with Mastermind on the psionic plane, however, the woman believed to be Jean Grey broke free of Wyngarde’s control. When Wolverine smashed into the room shortly after, the X-Men were freed, and the tide quickly turned against the Inner Circle. Although the X-Men were ultimately victorious, leaving Shaw, Pierce and Leland on the run, and Phoenix, taking revenge on Mastermind for his manipulations, ruthlessly made her tormentor’s mind “one with the universe”, thus shattering his sanity, the victory was a pyrrhic one; As soon as the dust had settled, the X-Men were blamed by the authorities for attacking the honorable Hellfire Club. Moreso, the repercussions of Wyngarde’s tampering with Phoenix’s mind proved to be disastrous: During the team’s escape from the scene in a skycraft, Phoenix could no longer withstand her dark side. Transformed into the being of pure cosmic hunger and evil known as Dark Phoenix, she subsequently consumed an entire sun in another galaxy, thereby creating a super-nova and killing billions of alien beings on a nearby planet. Meanwhile, Shaw and his Inner Circle were free to continue their schemes, albeit without Mastermind. [See <i>X-Men (1st series) #132-137</i>. Other sources: <i>Official Marvel Index to the X-Men (2nd series) #3</i>.]
In spite of his own traumatic experience with the mutant-hunting Sentinels, Shaw took first steps to turn these deadly robots into his instruments not long after the Inner Circle’s clash with the X-Men. Endorsed by United States Senator Robert Kelly, a friend of Shaw’s who had been a guest at the Hellfire Club when the Inner Circle’s fight with the X-Men occurred, and now regarded the mutants as dangerous terrorists, Shaw came into contact with the Avengers’ former government liaison, Agent Henry Peter Gyrich. Gyrich, with whom Shaw – as the honorable owner of Shaw Industries – worked closely after an initial meeting, was in charge of an anti-mutant task force dubbed Project: Wideawake, whose first priority was the resurrection of the Sentinels. [See <i>Uncanny X-Men #142</i>. Other sources: <i>Official Marvel Index to the X-Men (2nd series) #3</i>.]
Eager to take revenge on the X-Men, Shaw did not hesitate long before making use of the newly created Sentinels under his control; Emma Frost, believed-dead White Queen of the Lords Cardinal and headmistress of the Massachusetts Academy, where Kitty Pryde had been enrolled by her parents, secretly switched bodies with Storm, leaving her in a cell beneath the Academy. Soon, “Storm’s” treachery, combined with the distraction provided by an attack on Xavier’s School by Shaw’s new Sentinels, quickly overwhelmed the unsuspecting X-Men, and their home was invaded by Sebastian Shaw, his aide Tessa, Harry Leland, and a number of their Hellfire mercenaries. Once again, however, the Inner Circle’s victory did not last due to one of its members underestimation of their opponent’s potential, as Storm – in Frost’s body – managed to escape from the Massachusetts Academy along with Kitty, and they came to the rescue of their teammates. Additionally, the White Queen’s lack of control allowed her subconscious to generate a rogue storm outside the School, which resulted in Shaw being hit by a lightning bolt and could only be stopped by Storm, who was able to reverse the body-switch with Frost’s device. Seeing that Shaw was apparently severely injured, and that the rest of her allies were defeated and on the run, Frost agreed to a temporary truce between the Inner Circle and the X-Men, and re-transferred Kitty Pryde from Massachusetts to Westchester. [See <i>Uncanny X-Men #151-152</i>.]
In the months following this last concerted attack against the X-Men, the Inner Circle became entangled in the personal power struggles of its members; Donald Pierce, who had risen to the position of the White King, captured Professor X and tried to use Xavier’s vast telepathic abilities to usurp control of the Lords Cardinal. When his attempt was foiled by Shaw’s aide Tessa and Xavier’s latest students, the New Mutants, Pierce was expelled from the Circle [see <i>Marvel Graphic Novel #4</i>]. Shaw himself, having recovered from his injuries, began attempting to push the New Mutants towards the Hellfire Club’s own Massachusetts Academy shortly after, making use of his connections to Project: Wideawake and to fellow Club member Emmanuel DaCosta, the father of the New Mutants’ Sunspot [see <i>New Mutants #2, 7-8, 12</i>]. Meanwhile, White Queen Emma Frost, the Academy’s headmistress, suffered an attack by Jason Wyngarde, alias Mastermind, who sought revenge on the X-Men and the Inner Circle. Although Mastermind was later stopped once again by the X-Men, his psychic attack left Frost in a catatonic state for several weeks [see <i>Uncanny X-Men #169</i> and <i>Uncanny X-Men Annual #7</i>], before she was able to continue Shaw’s efforts, trying to recruit the New Mutants and Kitty Pryde for her own school, which ultimately failed [see <i>New Mutants #15-17</i>]. In the weeks following these events, Shaw recruited Emmanuel DaCosta, the ancient mutant sorceress Lady Selene and her high priest, the lycanthropic Friedrich von Roehm, into the Inner Circle, as its new White Rook, Black Queen and Black Rook, respectively [see <i>New Mutants #22-23</i> and <i>Uncanny X-Men #189</i>].
Soon after Selene had taken her place with the Lords Cardinal as their new Black Queen, her enmity with Rachel Summers, alias Phoenix (III), led to a clash between the Inner Circle and the X-Men in Central Park. This encounter proved to be the beginning of the downfall of Shaw’s Circle, as both groups were suddenly attacked with lethal force by Nimrod (II), an advanced Sentinel from the future, bent on eliminating all mutants on Earth. Although a truce between the mutants ultimately allowed them to defeat their mutual new enemy, both Harry Leland and Friedrich von Roehm lost their lives in the battle. [See <i>Uncanny X-Men #207-209</i>.]
In the face of such new threats as Nimrod, the Marauders or X-Factor (who appeared to the public as mutant hunters for hire at the time), both the Inner Circle and the X-Men realized that they had to overcome their hostility and forge an alliance in order to survive the coming power struggles, and the reformed Magneto – who had just inherited Charles Xavier’s place as a mentor and teacher of the New Mutants and the X-Men – accepted the Lords Cardinal’s offer to join them as their latest White King [see <i>Uncanny X-Men #210</i> and <i>New Mutants #51</i>]. While the alliance between the Hellfire Club and Xavier’s School lasted for several months and was beneficial to both parties during crises like the Evolutionary War and the Inferno [see <i>New Mutants Annual #4</i> and <i>New Mutants #71-73</i>], there were growing philosophical differences between Magneto and Sebastian Shaw, which ultimately resulted in the latter being deposed as the leader of the Lords Cardinal by Magnus, who now assumed the unique position of the “Grey King” [see <i>New Mutants #74-75</i>]. Still a prominent member of the Hellfire Club proper, Shaw then sought to rebuild his power base by returning to his government-funded Sentinel program, now dubbed Project: Nimrod [see <i>Uncanny X-Men #246-247</i> and <i>Amazing Spider-Man (1st series) #328-329</i>]. Magneto, however, withdrew from Hellfire Club business, beginning to slowly but surey become entangled in his own agendas again, and ultimately, having grown tired of the ongoing struggle for dominance among mutants and humans, left Earth entirely to seek refuge on his new sanctuary, Asteroid M [see <i>Amazing Spider-Man (1st series) #327</i>, <i>Captain America (1st series) #366-367</i>, <i>Avengers West Coast #53-57, 59</i> and <i>Uncanny X-Men #269, 274-275</i>].
The blow which brought the established Inner Circle down for good occurred when a group of ambitious and ruthless young mutants began their “Competition” for power and immortality. Assembled by the Black Queen herself, these so-called Upstarts took out the present and former members of the Lords Cardinal one by one: Shinobi Shaw, the illegitimate son of the former Black King, killed his father in Switzerland; the schemes of Fabian Cortez, the founder of a group of pseudo-religious mutant fanatics called the Acolytes, resulted in the destruction of Asteroid M, Magneto’s apparent death, and that of Cortez’ own fellow Acolytes; the advanced Sentinels of the time-traveling Trevor Fitzroy, a descendant of Shaw’s from the future, hunted down and eliminated Donald Pierce and his group of cyborg mercenaries called the Reavers in the Australian Outback, and severely injured the White Queen in New York shortly after, leaving her in a months-long coma, while Fitzroy himself killed all of Frost’s young students, the Hellions. Finally, Selene, having underestimated the Upstarts’ ruthlessness in her quest for power, fell victim to it herself, as Fitzoy trapped her in a futuristic torturing device, a so-called “spooling chamber”, where she was left for months. [See <i>X-Factor (1st series) #67</i>, <i>X-Men (2nd series) #1-3</i>, <i>Uncanny X-Men #281-283, 301</I>.]
It was Shinobi Shaw who then assumed his father’s mantle as the Black King of the Lors Cardinal. Unlike Sebastian’s leadership, however, Shinobi’s proved to be rather shortlived, and without much success: His attempts to recruit high-profile mutants like Archangel, Psylocke, Storm or Sunspot for his Inner Circle all failed and, though he ultimately forged an alliance with the External Candra and managed to assemble the mutants named Tessa, Benedict Kine, Benazir Kaur and Reeva Payge, Shinobi remained unable to establish a lasting power base. Instead, he kept becoming entangled in fruitless conflicts with the likes of X-Force, the New Warriors, Black Tom Cassidy, and even his own recruit, Benedict Kine. After learning that his father was apparently alive and looking for revenge, and in the face of Bastion’s Operation: Zero Tolerance’s rise to power, Shinobi, along with his version of the Inner Circle, disappeared from the map. [See <i>X-Men (2nd series) #29</i>, <i>X-Force #32-33</i>, <i>New Warriors (1st series) #45</i>, <i> X-Men (2nd series) Annual #3</i>, <i>Generation X Annual ‘95</i>, <i>Generation X #61</i> (flashback), <i>Spider-Man Team-Up #1</i>, <i>X-Man #22</i> and <i>X-Force #62</i>.]
While Shinobi Shaw was in charge of the New York Hellfire Club, he became aware of major events being set in motion by the Inner Circle of the Club’s London chapter. When Shinobi learned that Mountjoy, a mutant “body-jumper” from the future, was infiltrating London’s Inner Circle in the disguise of one of its members, he asked Brian Braddock, alias Captain Britain of Excalibur, to investigate the situation, which he described as a threat to both of them. Braddock then claimed the position of the Black Bishop, which had once been held by his father, Sir James Braddock. As it turned out shortly after, the ruling elite of the Club was looking to unleash an ancient demon referred to as the Devil Under London Town, who had been imprisoned in a vault beneath England’s capital ages ago, and make use of his vast magical powers. To achieve this goal, the Inner Circle had established ties to Sebastian Shaw, to the corrupt British intelligence organization Black Air, and even the British parliament. Additionally, several of the Inner Circle’s members followed their own agendas: Ms. Steed, the Club’s Black Queen, was an agent of the psionic entity called Onslaught (II); the woman only known as Scribe, the group’s record-keeper, turned out to be Mountjoy’s latest host; and the new Red Queen, a powerful sorceress, was revealed to be Margali Szardos, the step-mother of Excalibur’s leader Nightcrawler, and the wielder of the so-called Soulsword. Shortly before the Inner Circle could free the Devil, however, their plans were foiled by Excalibur, and both Black Air and the London Inner Circle were brought down temporarily. While Margali Szardos and the Circle’s Black King apparently died in the final fight, the rest of the group supposedly went to jail. The next time London’s Inner Circle was heard of was when Adrienne Frost, the sister of former New York White Queen Emma Frost, claimed to have been its White Queen. [See <i>Excalibur (1st series) #96-100</i> and <i>Generation X #56, 67-69</i>.]
During Shinobi Shaw and the London Inner Circle’s struggles for power, both the immortal Lady Selene and the believed-dead Sebastian Shaw prepared their return to the ruling class of the Hellfire Club. By manipulating Excalibur members Nightcrawler and Amanda Sefton (ak.a. Daytripper, a.k.a. Magik II), Selene managed to escape from Trevor Fitzroy’s “spooling chamber” after months of torture [see <i>Excalibur Annual #2</i>]. Soon, Selene became aware of the powerful young mutant called Madelyne Pryor (II), lured her away from her companion Nate Grey (a.k.a. X-Man), and turned her into her “apprentice” [see <i>X-Man #7, 13-16</i>]. After killing her fellow Externals Gideon, Saul, Crule and Absalom, adding their life energies to her own [see <i>X-Force #53-54</i>], Selene sent Madelyne to confront Fitzroy, her torturer. Although it first looked like the young girl was no match for Fitzroy’s futuristic battle suit, the fight finally forced Madelyne to tap into her vast powers, and Fitzroy became Selene’s latest minion [see <i>X-Man #17, 20</i>].
In the meantime, Sebastian Shaw had reappeared on an unidentified small island whose population had just been decimated by the otherworlder Holocaust (a.k.a. Nemesis), with whom Shaw now forged an alliance [see <i>X-Force #48</i>]. Along with his new ally, Shaw captured the members of X-Force, and – with the help of Tessa, who had once again become his aide – he brainwashed the young mutants and sent them against their former leader, Cable [see <i>X-Force #49-50</i>]. The attempt failed, however, and Shaw turned his attention to London, where he met the mutant called Scratch, Black Air’s liaison with the London Hellfire Club, and exchanged a magical artifact needed by the British Inner Circle for secret information [see <i>Excalibur #96</i>]. Back in the States, Shaw’s alliance with Holocaust came to a sudden and unexpected end, as his hideout was invaded by Onslaught himself, who defeated both Shaw and Tessa with a wave of his hand, and took Holocaust as an “emissary” [see <i>X-Man #15</i>].
Sebastian Shaw’s Inner Circle was finally rebuilt in New York City, when the Hellfire Club’s current elite had been in hiding for months due to dangers such as Onslaught, Operation: Zero Tolerance or the Legacy Virus; Shaw and Tessa were contacted by Selene, who wanted to regain her position as the Black Queen of the Lords Cardinal by offering Shaw Madelyne Pryor (II) and Trevor Fitzroy as the Inner Circle’s new Black and White Rooks, respectively. While he saw the time-traveling Fitzroy’s potential, Shaw was reluctant at first in regards to Pryor. In order to test her value, he pitched her against his own Red Rook – the woman known as Scribe, who still served as Mountjoy’s host, and had been bailed out of jail by Shaw after the London Inner Circle’s downfall. When Scribe/ Mountjoy was defeated by a relentless Pryor, Shaw finally accepted her as the Black Rook in his new Inner Circle, and Madelyne’s favor soon began to shift towards him, and away from Selene. [See <i>X-Man #21-23</i> and <i>X-Man Annual ‘96</i>.]
Not long after Madelyne Pryor’s introduction as the new Black Rook (II), Shaw regained his position as the Black King of the Inner Circle and moved his base of operations to the Hellfire Club’s Hong Kong chapter. In Hong Kong, he convinced Dr. Roderick Campbell, formerly of Excalibur, to provide him with research data on the terminal Legacy Virus. Campbell agreed to this deal because the Black King had apparently found a cure for the disease, in the shape of the so-called Elixir Vitae, a mythical potion which Shaw intended to use for economical purposes. However, Shaw’s plans failed when the Elixir was destroyed in a tug-of-war between himself, the Kingpin of Crime, the X-Men and the Master of Kung-Fu called Shang-Chi. In the meantime, after confrontations with her genetic counterpart Phoenix (IV), Nate Grey, and Cable, whose mother she believed to be at the time, Madelyne Pryor became Shaw’s lover, and ultimately his consort, much to the Shagrin of Selene, who still had not managed to regain the position of the Inner Circle’s Black Queen yet. After failing to appropiate a mutant powers neutralizer developed by a renegade wing of Worthington Industries, Shaw left Hong Kong for London, having been contacted by a mysterious man claiming to be from the future. [See <i>X-Man #24-25</i>, <i>Cable #44</i>, <i>X-Men (2nd series) #62-64</i>, <i>X-Man #28, 30</i> and <i>X-Men Unlimited #17</i>.]
The enigmatic man who had contacted the Black King turned out to be Ch’vayre, a time-traveling agent of the Clan Askani, an order of rebels against the rule of the immortal despot Apocalypse in a distant future. In order to catalyze the final confrontation between Apocalypse and the Clan’s unwilling champion, the mutant called Cable, Ch’vayre had promised Shaw to lead him to Apocalypse’s lair, thus offering him access to technology far advanced, and to immense power. Being busy with other affairs at the time, Shaw put the cyborg Donald Pierce, who had returned from his early “grave” and had been reinstated as the Inner Circle’s White Bishop by Shaw, in charge of the operation, which was dubbed the “Tomorrow Agenda”. Due to the interference of Cable and the reporter Irene Merryweather, the Tomorrow Agenda did not turn out as a success, however; Although Shaw managed to release the Harbinger of Apocalypse in London, the destructive creature proved indomitable, and Apocalypse himself had long left his mountain hideout in Switzerland Ch’vayre had led Shaw and Pierce to. Having been tracked down by Cable, and facing the base’s self-destruction, Shaw fled the scene, leaving Pierce behind in the Swiss Alpes, while Ch’vayre had been trapped in one of Apocalypse’s stasis capsules. [See <i>Cable #48-53</i>.]
Not long after the failure of the Tomorrow Agenda, Sebastian Shaw, residing in a Hellfire Club Mansion in Venice, Italy, was contacted and handed a secret message by an unidentified being capable of stopping time itself, only referred to as “wraith”. Although Trevor Fitzroy had apparently become a member of Shaw’s Inner Circle, the Black King was facing rivalries within the group, and thus he told the mysterious “wraith” that he would “accept” his offer and “do it” shortly after at the Hellfire Club’s New Year’s gala in Rio de Janeiro. Telling Shaw that this was his only choice, that his world ended and his life began that day, the “wraith” disappeared [see <i>X-Men (2nd series) #71, 73</i>]. Following this episode, Shaw, along with Tessa, indulged in two minor operations, one involving Machine Man, Henry Peter Gyrich and the Sentinels [see <i>X-51 #0, 1-7</i>], the other addressing Irene Merryweather’s continued investigation of Hellfire Club affairs [see <i>X-Men: Hellfire Club #1-4</i>], before apparently quitting the position of the Black King once again, withdrawing from the Inner Circle and going into hiding. While Tessa resurfaced as a member of the X-Men months later, revealing that she had been a spy in Charles Xavier’s service all along [see <i>X-Men (2nd series) #103</i>], Shaw’s plans at that point, as well as the “wraith”’s identity or the significance of the alliance forged between the two on New Year’s Eve, remained a mystery.
In the light of Shaw’s withdrawal, and with detractors Fitzroy, Pryor, Tessa and Pierce out of the way as well, who had all been following their own agendas, Selene finally reinstated herself as the Inner Circle’s Black Queen and took control of the Hellfire Club, introducing the demon Blackheart, son of Mephisto, as the Inner Circle’s new Black King. Although Selene’s attempt to bring Blackheart to Earth’s dimension failed due to the combined efforts of the Fantastic Four, the Shadow Hunters and Daimon Hellstrom, and resulted in Hellstrom becoming the new White King of the Lords Cardinal in order to keep Blackheart confined to a pocket dimension beneath the New York Hellfire Club Mansion, the new Black royalty continued to expand its influence; By offering Roberto DaCosta, alias X-Force’s Sunspot, to bring his girlfriend Juliana back from the dead, they manipulated the young mutant into accepting his father’s heritage and joining their ranks as a Black Rook. [See <i>Fantastic Four Annual ‘99</i> and <i>X-Force #94, 96-99</i>.]
Since this latest change of the guard, nothing has been seen or heard of the New York Inner Circle’s activities, and it remains unknown if a London Inner Circle is currently in existence. The most recent known affairs involving the Hellfire Club include a team of X-Men intruding the Hong Kong chapter’s Mansion in search of the group of mercenaries called the Crimson Pirates [see <i>X-Men (2nd series) #104</i>], the Club’s longtime Lord Imperial, Sir Gordon Philips, being murdered by Mystique and her Brotherhood of Mutants (III) [see <i>Uncanny X-Men #388</i>], or former Black King Sebastian Shaw’s lobbying for the Club at a party by media tycoon Tiberius Stone [see <i>Iron Man (3rd series) #37</i>]. The circumstances of his retirement of the Inner Circle still unrevealed, Shaw, with his new ally Lady Mastermind, was also encountered by Storm’s group of renegade X-Men (IV) in Australia, where he attempted to take revenge on Tessa, alias Sage, for her betrayal, and to establish himself as a major force in Sydney’s crime scene [see <i>X-Treme X-Men #5-9</i>].
A Hellfire Club satellite office in Manhattan was publicly attacked by a creature called the Skornn who fed upon mutant life-force. The Skornn massacred several young mutants enjoying a formal dance at the club until his rampage was put to an end by Cable and his allies [see <i>X-Force (2nd series) #5</i>].
APPEARANCES:
Amazing Spider-Man (1st series) #328, 329
Astonishing X-Men (3rd series) #12
Beast #1
Cable #48-53
Captain America (1st series) #369
Classic X-Men #6, 7, 34
Excalibur (1st series) #9, 96-100
Fantastic Four Annual ‘99
Firestar #1-4
Further Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix #2, 3
Generation X #-1, 40, 56, 61, 67-69
Generation X Annual ‘95
Iron Man (3rd series) #37
Marvel Graphic Novel #4
Marvel Super-Heroes (3rd series) #11
New Mutants (1st series) #2, 7, 8, 12, 15-17, 22, 23, 51, 53, 54, 56, 61, 62, 69-71, 73-75
New Mutants (1st series) Annual #4
New Warriors (1st series) #45
Peter Parker: Spider-Man (1st series) #94
Spider-Man: Spirits of the Earth
Spider-Man Team-Up #1
Uncanny X-Men #151, 152, 169, 180, 182, 184, 189, 207-210, 219, 246, 247, 281-283, 388
Uncanny X-Men Annual #7
Weapon X (2nd series) #19
X-51 #0, 1-7
X-Factor #67
X-Force (1st series) #32, 33, 62, 75, 94, 96-99
X-Force (2nd series) #5
X-Man #21-25, 28, 30
X-Man Annual ‘96
X-Men (1st series) #125, 126, 129-135
X-Men (2nd series) #29, 63, 64, 71, 73, 103, 104
X-Men (2nd series) Annual #3
X-Men: Deadly Genesis #5
X-Men: Hellfire Club #1-4
X-Men Unlimited (1st series) #17, 33
X-Treme X-Men #3
OTHER SOURCES:
Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Master Edition #28
Official Marvel Index to the X-Men (2nd series) #3
Peterson, Brandon. <i>Ultimate X-Men</i>, New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishing, Inc., 2000.
Thanks to Hatebreed (http://x-mencomics.com/xfan/forums/member.php?s=&action=getinfo&userid=1728) for his research help on Adrienne Frost and Bianca LaNeige