X-Men Mutant Registration

Verified Timeline

Lore & Background

Caliban is born an albino mutant with a pale complexion and large yellow eyes. At some point in his life, he is banished from his home by his father, who called him Caliban, after a character from the play The Tempest by William Shakespeare. Growing up, a still young Caliban, who speaks in the third person, is discovered by the mutant Callisto and taken under her wing. Learning of his mutant tracking ability, Callisto uses Caliban to locate other disenfranchised mutants and organizes them into the Morlocks, a band of homeless, rejected mutants. The founding Morlocks consist of Caliban, Callisto, Masque, Plague, and Sunder. The Morlocks live in the sewers and abandoned subway tunnels running underneath New York City, and, like Caliban, most of them had grotesque appearances. Caliban senses the presence of nearby mutants and enters a New York City nightclub seeking their friendship. He finds Storm, Dazzler, Kitty Pryde, and Spider-Woman in the club, and has a misunderstood confrontation with them. Though the battle ends peacefully, Caliban returns to his home underground. Shortly thereafter, Callisto desires a consort and has the Morlocks abduct Angel to be her husband. The X-Men arrive in the sewers to rescue their ally, and Kitty is infected with a virus by Plague. Caliban takes her to his quarters to care for her. Kitty pleads with Caliban to allow her to assist her teammates. Caliban agrees, but only if she will return after the fight and stay with him. Though Kitty promises to stay with him forever, she leaves and returns home. Weeks later, Callisto, vengeful after losing a one-on-one battle with Storm, orders the Morlocks to kidnap Kitty to force her to marry Caliban, knowing Storm would return. Caliban, however, realizes that Kitty does not truly love him and releases her.

In Their Own Story

During the Morlock massacre, X-Factor rescues Caliban from the Marauders, who he swears vengeance upon. With nowhere else to stay, Caliban moves to X-Factor's headquarters with several other surviving Morlocks. Shortly thereafter, Rictor goes missing and Caliban volunteers to help X-Factor find him, officially joining the group. Alongside X-Factor, he battles the Horsemen of Apocalypse. Caliban voices his wish for increased power, so Iceman begins training Caliban in unarmed combat. Not long after that, Apocalypse kidnaps the X-Factor team after changing Angel into Death. Caliban, intrigued by Apocalypse's transformation of the fallen Angel, betrays X-Factor and asks Apocalypse to do the same to him. Agreeing, Apocalypse promises to give Caliban enough power to gain revenge against the Marauders who killed his Morlock family. Caliban agrees to become Apocalypse's servant and locator of mutants. Apocalypse renames him Hellhound. Through genetic manipulation, Caliban becomes the second Horseman of Apocalypse known as Death. When Apocalypse relocates to the moon in a confrontation with the original X-Factor and the Inhumans, Caliban returns to the Morlock tunnels. There, he locates Sabretooth, a ferocious mutant and member of the Marauders, who is stalking the sewers to find and kill more Morlocks. In combat, Caliban breaks Sabretooth's back and leaves him for dead, not realizing that he has a healing factor. Caliban then attacks and defeats Archangel. He later finds and defeats Sabretooth again. As Death, Caliban performs various tasks for his new master, serving as his warrior servant. During the 'X-Cutioner's Song' event, Caliban attacks former X-Factor members (and current X-Men) Jean Grey and Cyclops, under Apocalypse's (actually Mister Sinister posing as Apocalypse) orders. Alongside War and Famine, Caliban kidnaps Cyclops and Jean Grey so Apocalypse can give the pair to Stryfe, who believes the couple to be his parents. Famine, War, and Death then battle the X-Men and are defeated by them.

Reader's Guide

Caliban is a mutant with the ability to psionically sense other mutants out to several miles away and track their movement. He also has the uncontrolled ability to psionically sense, absorb, and turn the psionic energy of fear radiated by humans against them, inducing more intense fear within their minds. He could also utilize fear from others to boost his strength to a level sufficient to easily overpower Spider-Woman (Jessica Drew). He is a formidable hand-to-hand combatant, having been trained by Iceman and later Apocalypse. As Death, he attained superhuman strength, speed, agility, reflexes, coordination, balance, endurance, claws and fangs as well as imperviousness to physical injury through Apocalypse's genetic manipulation. He also has great skill at climbing and possesses superhuman leaping ability. He was also mentally conditioned to attack Apocalypse's former ally Mister Sinister on sight. His fear siphoning abilities had also been augmented and he can now control them as well as cast his power over a much wider net; not only gaining in strength from siphoning the anxiety of others but could harness strengthen and redistribute it in much stronger quantities by force of will. As Pestilence, Apocalypse gave him the ability to generate a mental plague, a virus that attacks from within on the highest planes of the psyche and breaks down the mental functions of the target. Being reverted to his original form by Masque, Caliban still appears to retain some superhuman strength affected by his adrenaline, as he was shown lifting rubble off of Skids that proved difficult for even Warpath to hoist. After being reanimated through the Technarch transmode virus, his ability changed to psionically sense not living mutants but dead mutants.

Did You Know?

• Caliban first appeared in The Uncanny X-Men #148 (August 1981), written by Chris Claremont and illustrated by Dave Cockrum.
• He was named Caliban by his father after a character from William Shakespeare's play The Tempest.
• Caliban was chosen twice by Apocalypse as one of the Horsemen of Apocalypse, first as Death and the second time as Pestilence.
• As Death, Caliban broke Sabretooth's back and left him for dead, not realizing Sabretooth had a healing factor.
• After being reanimated through the Technarch transmode virus, Caliban's ability changed to psionically sense dead mutants instead of living ones.