BLACK TOM: Page 3 of 3

BIOGRAPHY - Page 3

Black Tom's injuries at Penance's hands and claws were severe. He was forced to go into hiding to recuperate. Juggernaut came to his friend's aid and spent months building up cash and taking jobs to fund the doctors working to cure Tom's condition. [Peter Parker, Spider-Man (1st series) #84, X-Men (2nd series) #70] The recuperation was eventually a success. Not only was Tom's body healed, the viral wood in his flesh was apparently removed altogether, reverting him back to his original appearance and powers.

Black Tom Cassidy got involved when Juggernaut was lured into a trap by the Cult of Cheju-Do. The power of the Juggernaut was drained from Cain Marko into a crystal based on the original Ruby Gem of Cyttorak. With Cain weak and atrophied by the extraction, Black Tom cared for him the way Marko supported him during his illness. He contacted Storm and Gambit of the X-Men to use their skills as thieves to retrieve the crystal from the cult, and Marko was restored to his full power and health. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #361] Weeks later, however, the entire sequence of events was revealed as a ruse by the cult. By reabsorbing his power, Juggernaut also drew the essence of their evil master into his body, and was possessed. Juggernaut became so unstoppable that he broke through the barriers between dimensions, and Tom was sucked through the spatial tear after him. Tumbling through non-Euclidean reality, Black Tom was rescued by the Oktid, a native species threatened by the great evil in Marko. Tom explained to the Oktid who the X-Men were, and they sent one of their dimensional teleporters to retrieve the heroes. Thanks to the X-Men, Juggernaut was cleansed of the evil influence, and he and Black Tom were returned to Earth. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #368-369, X-Men (2nd series) #88]

The time came when the real Mondo finished training in the use of his powers, and wanted to take his long awaited revenge on Cordelia Frost for selling him out. Black Tom knew Cordelia would run right to Emma, Banshee and Generation X again, and agreed to support Mondo. His protégé chased Cordelia to the steps of the Massachusetts Academy and engaged Generation X when they tried to defend her. Black Tom and Juggernaut stepped in when Mondo was knocked unconscious by Banshee's sonic scream. The surprised students were overpowered by the Juggernaut, who restrained them so that Black Tom could give a villainous monologue finally offering a full explanation for his plan with Mondo and Mondo's clone. Tom's crowing went on long enough for Skin to escape confinement, however, and the fight turned against Black Tom and his allies when Juggernaut's helmet was removed, leaving him vulnerable to Emma Frost. Black Tom had Mondo transport the three of them to safety, vowing to strike at his cousin again another day. [Generation X (1st series) #60-61]

Black Tom and Juggernaut continued operating as mercenary partners for a time, taking out a contract on Cyclops' life from Ulysses, although they failed to complete it. [Cyclops (1st series) #1-2] Tom soon experienced an uncontrollable secondary mutation, however. The wood and plant-based powers that had been dormant since he recovered from Penance's attack returned, now apparently a completely natural mutant ability that mutated his body into an interchangeable mass of plant matter. The transformation was grueling and Tom was driven out of his mind with pain while convalescing at Cassidy Keep. Juggernaut finally went so far as to call the X-Mansion for help. Tom was in no mood for company, however, and he turned on both Cain and the X-Men when they arrived. Black Tom's struggling destroyed much of Cassidy Keep, and he cast out Juggernaut along with the X-Men, all of whom barely escaped. Left with nowhere to go, Juggernaut actually joined up with the X-Men in the aftermath. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #410-412]

Tom eventually recovered but, while he could now control his new powers, the roguish scoundrel was gone. Black Tom had become homicidal, mercurial and sadistic in his dealing with other people. He became part of Exodus' Brotherhood of Mutants as they prepared for an all-out assault on Xavier's School. Black Tom reconnected with Juggernaut, who agreed to act as the Brotherhood's inside man to help them infiltrate the mansion and catch the X-Men unawares.

During their planning session in the woods, however, the student Sammy Pare caught the Brotherhood. Sammy had bonded with Cain during his time with the X-Men and looked up to him like a father figure. Sammy felt betrayed and spat on Juggernaut when Black Tom caught him. Sammy defiantly claimed he was an X-Man and would stop the Brotherhood, which Black Tom took as an excuse for mayhem. He pulled Samy into a thicket of branches and snapped his bones, piece by piece. Juggernaut -- who had only been pretending to work with Tom and the Brotherhood on behalf of his team leader, Havok -- was horrified by Sammy's death and turned against the Brotherhood until the other X-Men arrived to support him.

The attack on the mansion began, and the Brotherhood began causing massive property damage and death. Black Tom in particular took time to brutally murder staff members he came across. Several members of the Brotherhood were taken down as the X-Men rallied their forces, but Black Tom proved impossible to injure in his current state, much less stop. He expanded his consciousness throughout the grounds, gaining more and more mass as he tore up the landscape. Finally, he was temporarily halted by the Exile named Nocturne, who possessed his physical form. The enigmatic X-Men guest called Xorn then opened up the black hole in his mind to draw the Brotherhood in and displace them to another space entirely. [X-Men (2nd series) #158-164]

[Note: Earlier in the arc, before the revelation that Juggernaut was Havok's double agent, Black Tom claimed he and Cain had planned it all along for Juggernaut to infiltrate the X-Men for nefarious purposes. Tom's recap simply does not make sense in light of the events depicted in Uncanny X-Men #410-412, and should be considered a product of his diseased mind.]

Black Tom and the Brotherhood wound up on Mojoworld, where they bartered with Mojo to secure passage back to Earth. [Uncanny X-Men (1st series) #461] Fortunately for Tom, he returned in time to experience the Decimation. His secondary mutation was undone, reverting him back to his original bio-blasting powers and restoring the bulk of his sanity. Although he now recognized the horror of what he did to Sammy (and by extension, Cain), Tom Cassidy was never good at accepting responsibility. He went back into mercenary work and even took a job that would put him directly in conflict with Juggernaut in his new role as a hero for the British super-team, Excalibur, perhaps as a cry for help.

Tom also worked with the renegade intelligence agency Black Air, who were interested in acquiring the evil extra-dimensional "Shadow X-Men" as allies. Excalibur and MI-13 were overseeing a prison transfer for the captive villains, and so Tom disguised himself as the warden before Pete Wisdom and his people arrived. Despite regaining his human features, Black Tom retained some control over plant life, and employed a series of bio-mechanical seed pods for the heist, presumably provided by Black Air. These allowed him to plant rapidly growing tangle vines into the city streets, catching the MI-13 hovercraft before it could transport the prisoners. He also deployed the bio-mechanical plants at a nearby disaster site to occupy Cain and other members of Excalibur.

Once the plan was in motion, Black Tom removed his disguise and bio-blasted Excalibur's Dazzler, killing her. Unfortunately for Tom, Dazzler had recently learned she was immune to death and recovered to counter-attack. Scicluna and Black Air managed to load most of the Shadow X-Men into their transport, and then bugged out, leaving Black Tom behind. Tom's distraction at the disaster site had failed as well by this point, leading Juggernaut to arrive and face Black Tom for the first time since Sammy's death. Tom fled into a nearby house and took a woman hostage at cane-point as Juggernaut stalked him down. Black Tom tried to deflect responsibility for killing Sammy, saying he wasn't in his right mind. Cain wasn't having it, saying the act was still Tom's and he had to own it. Juggernaut offered Black Tom one chance to surrender, and Tom finally relented. [New Excalibur #6-7]

Cain came to see Tom in prison, and they talked through their problems. Tom accepted responsibility for Sammy, regardless of his mental state, and admitted to Cain he would see the boy's face every night before he went to sleep until the day he died. Cain forgave Tom, but they quietly agreed that for men like them, some acts could never be washed clean from their hands. They would just have to carry on as best they could. [New Excalibur #13]

Sometime later, Black Tom Cassidy was free and contacted by the Black Box about their mutual enemy, Deadpool. Turned out Wade Wilson had recently lost his healing factor, and was therefore mortal for the first time in years. Seizing the opportunity, Black Box recruited Black Tom and Black Swan to go after Deadpool and finally kill him for all the trouble he'd caused them. Black Tom used his plant control and bio-blasts to harass Deadpool until he was isolated at a gas station in Texas. In a spectacular display of his powers, Black Tom cast off his cane and used a flatbed truck full of tree trunks to channel his power instead, creating a massive blast. Deadpool was playing a long game, however, and he had saved Black Swan's life during a previous encounter to get the assassin in his debt. Once Black Box arrived on the scene, eager to move in for the kill, Wilson had Black Swan mentally wipe the knowledge of his mortality from the minds of Black Tom and Black Box. No longer knowing Deadpool was vulnerable, Black Tom Cassidy broke off his attacks on Wilson. [Deadpool (3rd series) #58-60]

When the M-Pox began to threaten the mutant race, many former foes came together as allies. Magneto led his own team of X-Men while employing separate field agents and reassuming his role as White King of the Hellfire Club. Black Tom Cassidy was part of this new Hellfire Club, ironically assuming the role of White Bishop, brandishing his title as the rightful heir of Cassidy Keep to secure his position. Black Tom and the X-Men worked together investigating the Someday Corporation, a company offering suspended animation services to mutants who wished to avoid the Terrigen clouds spreading M-Pox. Naturally, Someday was corrupt at its core, and the X-Men and Hellfire Club joined forces to deal with them. [Uncanny X-Men (4th series) #11-14]

It wasn't long, however, before Black Tom was no longer associated with the Hellfire Club. (Perhaps they learned he, in fact, wasn't the rightful heir of Cassidy Keep.) Black Tom and Juggernaut put aside their differences and began working together as partners as they did in the old days. They staged a robbery on a fancy pleasure yacht in the middle of the ocean, expecting to intimidate some fine valuables from their rich victims. Instead, the time-tossed original five X-Men confronted Tom and Juggernaut and defeated the criminals. It seems everything old is new again. Perhaps this time around Tom can stay merely a criminal, and not degenerate into a homicidal madman like he has before. [X-Men: Blue #1]