Onslaught is the name of an extremely powerful, malevolent mutant thought-form created by the combined consciousness of Professor Xavier and Magneto - at first Onslaught wanted to follow the mindset of Magneto and have mutants rule the world, yet after he saw a vision of the Age of Apocalypse timeline from the mind of Dark Beast, he became convinced that neither human nor mutant could rule the world and set upon exterminating both races, in effect wiping out pretty much all life on Earth.
To achieve this end he kidnapped Franklin Richards and Nate Grey in order to add their formidable psychic abilities to his own, making himself all but a god -this new, immensely powerful Onslaught would fight with the Avengers, X-Men, Hulk and Fantastic Four.
After much fighting Hulk was able to break Onslaught's armor - destroying the monster's physical form but exposing his raw psychic energy in the process, in order to defeat him many of the non-mutant heroes sacrificed their lives by entering Onslaught's exposed form (the mutant heroes could not do so as he would have fed off them and become even more powerful) - weakening him enough for the X-Men to finish him off.
This battle led to the Heroes Reborn story arc and made Onslaught one of Marvel's "love or hate" villains, with some fans liking him and others seeing him as little more than an elaborate tool for needless retconning of the Marvel universe.
Regardless of this Onslaught was, for better or worse, one of Marvel's most powerful villains and his actions would have profound changes on the universe as a whole.
Onslaught Reborn
a new Onslaught is born
There, with the help of recreated versions of the Fantastic Four, Avengers and their allies and foes, Franklin would do battle with Onslaught. The fight would take them to the Baxter Building where Bucky would sacrifice her life knocking Onslaught into the Negative Zone. Bucky would find herself transported to Earth-616 while Onslaught would remain trapped in the Zone. He was last seen floating near Wonderland curious of its purpose. Onslaughts future plans remain unknown at this time.
Red Onslaught
See the main article: Red Onslaught
During World War Hate the Red Skull would finally cross a line so heinous that Magneto took it upon himself to personally murder the madman - yet in the process, he unleashed a merged version of Onslaught and Red Skull, which became known as Red Onslaught.
Powers and Abilities
Onslaught possessed all of the mutant abilities of his progenitors Professor X and Magneto. He later added the powers of Franklin Richards and Nate Grey to his, making him even more powerful.
Astral Plane Tap: Ability to Tap into the enormous psychic resources of the astral plane in order to manipulate matter and energy.
- Astral Travel: Capable of forging psi-links to travel in astral form.
- Material Astral Projection: Give substance to astral energy to solidify psychic forms or forge protective psi-armor and even pull the astral projections of other telepaths into the physical world.
- Psychometry: Can read residual thought imprints left on objects touched by people.
- Dimensional Sense: Capable of sensing dimensional rifts or anomalies.
Telepathy: Onslaught is able to read minds and project his own thoughts into the minds of others in vast distances from him with little to no resistance from even the most powerful telepaths.
- Telepathic Illusion: Ability to create realistic telepathic illusions and cause people to experience events which are not actually occurring.
- Telepathic Camouflage: Ability to mask himself, and other peoples' presence from those around him. Can telepathically disguise himself, making his appearance to those around him quite different (changing the appearance of clothing, as well as more involved disguising).
- Mind Blast: Ability to place large amounts of information in another mind.
- Mind Control: Ability to control the minds of others upon mere concentration. This power can allow him to completely shut down several peoples' minds, making it appear as if time has stopped.
- Mind Possession: Ability to possess the mind of another, and use that being's body as his own.
- Mind Alteration: Ability to alter the minds of others by force of will.
- Mental Amnesia: Ability to cause loss of particular memories, and amnesia in another person or even in a group of people. Powerful enough to make a person have total mental paralysis.
- Psionic Shield: Ability to erect a psychic shield for protection of himself and of others minds and is sufficient to protect himself from other psychics on the Omega-level.
- Psionic Blasts: Can project psionic force bolts which have no physical effects but which can affect a victim's mind so as to cause the victim pain or unconsciousness and can even kill an adversary.
- Astral Projection: Ability to Astral Travel and communicate with others astrally through his own will, or through contact with the thoughts and memories of others. In the astral realm, he can use his powers to create "ectoplasmic" objects. He cannot engage in long range astral projection on the earthly plane.
- Mental Detection: Can sense the presence of another superhuman mutant within a small but as yet undefined radius of himself by perceiving the distinctive mental radiations emitted by such a being.
Telekinesis: Telekinetically, Onslaught is capable of very fine control over objects; he can disassemble complex devices explosively (separating every last component, such as screws, nuts, circuit boards, etc.), and just as quickly and easily assemble complex devices. This also has enabled him to even attain awareness and control over objects as small as individual electrons in an atom. For instance, Onslaught could detect if a seal was hermetic, or not, by checking for the presence of penetrating oxygen molecules. He could even detect and discern individual oxygen molecules, and determine the atomic weight of molecules, by the number of atoms present. On larger levels, Onslaught can levitate great weights, into the tons, but his upper limit has remained undisclosed.
- Psionic Spikes: Ability to create destructive psionic spikes that destroy the physical objects that the spikes come into contact with.
- Force-Fields: Ability to create protective force shields that could detect even the most powerful of attacks (even filter bacteria from the air). The upper limits of this ability remain unknown, but it is believed that he could probably protect himself from harm at the ground zero detonation of a 1 kiloton nuclear warhead (4.18 terajoules of energy from the heat, concussion, and radiation effects) with ease. Onslaught has also displayed such control over the fields to shape them precisely, even to conform very closely to his body’s form. There does not appear to be any correlation between field strength and the thickness of the telekinetic fields.
- Concussive Blasts: Can project his telekinetic energies as powerful blast beams directed from his brain that could apparently affect matter with concussive force.
- Flight: By levitating himself, he can fly at incredible speeds.
- Intangibility: Can phase through solid matter by mentally shifting his molecules around another object's as he moves forward.
- Telekinetic Holograms: His mental fine motor skills are so acute that he can mentally manipulate dust particles and water vapour to refract lightwaves and create holograms.
Electromagnetic Spectrum Manipulation: Onslaught has some ability to project or manipulate any form of energy that is related to the electromagnetic spectrum. He can fire and absorb bolts of electricity and magnetic force, reverse lasers and other forms of radiation or energy, create enough intense heat as infrared radiation to level a city, and become invisible by deflecting visible light around his body. Heat or infrared radiation is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, which also includes visible light, radio waves, ultraviolet light, gamma rays, and x-rays. Onslaught can project any of these. Onslaught can maintain total control of an entire planet's electromagnetic field and can manipulate it accordingly. He has also dispersed a "flame cage" created by the Human Torch, but whether he had simply expanded his personal force field or employed something else entirely is unclear. Onslaught once used his powers to create a traversable wormhole between two points in space.
- Electromagnetic Sight: Onslaught can perceive the world around himself as patterns of magnetic and electrical energy. He can perceive the natural magnetic auras surrounding living beings.
- Electromagnetic Pulses: He also has creative uses of his powers such as using his telekinesis to channel the Earth's magnetic field through the electro-current of his brain and generate devastating electromagnetic pulses.
- Magnetokinesis: Onslaught has the power to shape and manipulate magnetic fields that exist naturally or artificially. He can draw magnetic force from outside himself, or can also generate magnetic force within himself. Onslaught's power is psionic and physiological in nature. He can lift, move, and alter objects. Onslaught can project metal at an unparalleled velocity and place tremendous pressure on metallic substances to liquefy and reshape them, manipulate the iron-enriched blood-flow to one's brain to induce aneurysms or unconsciousness, redirect the flow of blood through one's brain to alter thoughts and perceptions or blank a person's mind completely, levitate a person or control a person's actions by manipulating the iron in their bloodstream, remove the iron from the bloodstream entirely through a person's skin, control ferrous particles in the atmosphere, alter the Earth's magnetic field which extends into space as the Onslaught sphere, prodigiously increase his own strength to superhuman levels, and achieve a wide range of other effects.
- Magnetic Force-Fields: Onslaught usually protects himself with a personal force field that he can quickly expand to protect large areas. His forcefield has withstood the effects of multiple nuclear weapons, volcanic eruption, the depths of space and attacks from multiple Avengers or X-Men, including Phoenix, Thor, and even Galactus.
- Organic Iron Manipulation: Onslaught can control the iron within any organic matter which allows him to have full control over an opponent's body. Onslaught has also demonstrated the ability to control the blood flow within one's body thus causing them to die a painful or even quick death.
Superhuman Strength: Onslaught possesses the vast superhuman strength of unknown limits. However, he is able to lift at least far beyond 100 tons with ease without using his psionic or magnetic powers to increase his strength. While using those powers to enhance his strength, the upper limits of his strength are unimaginable. He demonstrated sufficient strength to overpower a fully powered Juggernaut and punch him with enough force to sending flying through the air from Canada to New Jersey with a single blow and was able to pin down and casually restrain an enraged Banner-less Hulk with ease.
Impervious Armor: Onslaught’s armour is nigh-invulnerable and nearly impossible to crack. The only exception was blown from an enraged/Banner-less Hulk and Thor (even then, he only allowed this to happen so that he could go into the next step of his evolution).
- Telepathic Immunity: His mind is immune to all traces of telepathy, due to his armour, his mind cannot be manipulated nor can it be read. Although, his telepathy is capable of exiting his armour, allowing his telepathy to be used on others.
Mutant Absorption: As a psychic entity, Onslaught had the ability to absorb any mutant into his being and thus permanently gain their powers for himself. X-Man and Franklin Richards were two mutants that he consumed to further his vast power.
Reality Manipulation: Ability to manipulate reality itself. Nigh-omnipotent reality warping powers on a potentially infinite level, and perhaps even up to a cosmic scale. His abilities are so great that he can create "pocket" universes in alternate realities (A pocket universe is a cosmos that does not equal our own in size).
Videos
Supervillain Origins Onslaught-0
In other media
Video games
- Onslaught is a boss character and the main antagonist of Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes voiced by Maurice Dean Wint. In this game, he appears as the final boss, and he has two forms the player must defeat: the first form which is that of a normal-sized character, and the second and final form which is that of a floating giant. He is then revealed to be Xavier upon defeat.
- Onslaught appears as a villain character in Marvel Super Hero Squad Online.
Toys
- Toy Biz has released two action figures of the character, the first in the "X-Men Onslaught" series, which came with attachable armour to emulate his final transformation; the second was the Build-A-Figure in the 13th series of the "Marvel Legends" series, and bore more of a resemblance to his final form.
Miniature gaming
- An Onslaught miniature is part of the Heroclix Giant-Size X-Men set. This miniature is randomly found in the newly created "Super Booster" which contains larger size figure.
