When Kuan-Yin Xorn’s mutation manifests, his brain, just like his twin brother’s, becomes a star. Flaring out of control, the pair devastates their village in China. Deemed too dangerous, the anti-mutant Communist regime incarcerates them both, though Kuan-Yin stays in prison for half a century, meant to serve them as a weapon. He escapes thanks to the X-Men, who recruit him onto the team as Xorn where he heals others.
A Lifetime of Isolation
Alongside his twin brother, Shen, Kuan-Yin Xorn’s mutant abilities manifest a mere two days after puberty as tiny stars inside their heads flare out of control, devastating their small village in China until villagers managed to encase the remains of their heads within metal masks. The anti-mutant Communist regime separates the brothers, keeping Shen shackled in isolation in the village, while Kuan-Yin is incarcerated in the underground Feng Tu Facility prison, named for the Chinese underworld. Save for a two-week escape, Kuan-Yin spends over 50 years incarcerated, with the Chinese government believing he would someday serve as a doomsday weapon against enemies of China.
Eventually, Kuan-Yin’s warden, Ao Jun, makes a deal to sell him to the sentient bacterial colony John Sublime, AKA Sublime, who seeks to harvest Kuan-Yin’s mutant mind. Rather than face such a grisly fate, Kuan-Yin attempts suicide by reversing his star’s power, creating an event horizon—the point where nothing can escape the gravity of his brain—threatening to destroy the world. While investigating Sublime’s illegal mutant organ harvest, the X-Men learn of Kuan-Yin, and Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, convinces him not to commit suicide and defuses the situation by inviting him to join the team.
Kuan-Yin chooses to stay at a Chinese monastery for a time and is later brought to America by Cyclops to help in their battle against the malevolent psychic entity Cassandra Nova. Captured by Nova-controlled Shi’ar aliens, Cyclops and Kuan-Yin escape moments before their execution. Returning to Earth, Kuan-Yin heals the X-Men from Nova’s Nano-Sentinel infection, and assists in opposing Nova’s plans of domination. Kuan-Yin also heals X-Men founder Professor Charles Xavier, Professor X’s damaged spine, allowing him to walk once more. Kuan-Yin then accepts a teaching position at the Xavier Institute, and at Xavier’s suggestion, begins experiencing the modern world by exploring New York City. Though outside of his cell, the chaos of the world emotionally and philosophically challenged Kuan-Yin, he strives for inner peace.
Miniature Star
Kuan-Yin possesses a miniature star in his head, and it manifests as a sun, while Shen’s star manifests as a black hole. Kuan-Yin’s sun can emit blinding light that can instantly incinerate another being. Like his brother, he could reverse the natural state of his star, Kuan-Yin’s becoming a black hole, Shen’s becoming a sun. Since his power has such a devastating effect, his head is encased in a metal helmet that contains his star and protects others from exposure.
He can feel the movement of energy and emotion on many levels and possesses gravitational senses that allow him to manipulate energy for a variety of purposes. These purposes include the warping of gravitational and magnetic fields, sensing when a death has occurred in his vicinity, and shaking gravitational particles in the air around him to comprehend and speak other languages. Kuan-Yin can use his powers to heal others.
Kuan-Yin does not need oxygen, food, or water to survive. When decapitated, Kuan-Yin’s energy and consciousness can survive and possess a host.
From Friends to Enemies
The Chinese government sees Xorn, and his twin brother, as significant threats to their citizens and country, but also as potential weapons to be used. The government incarcerates him for over 50 years, calling him monster, but he does nothing to take vengeance upon them when freed by the X-Men.
He goes up against Cassandra Nova and Sublime’s army while a part of the merry mutants’ team, and serves as a teacher at Xavier’s school.
When he goes through a drastic physical and mental change into Max Eisenhardt, AKA Magneto, thanks to Wanda Maximoff, AKA Scarlet Witch’s reality-warping powers, he starts acting like the X-Men’s typical foe, but more extreme. He recruits mutants into his Brotherhood, including Esme Cuckoo of the Stepford Cuckoos, but eventually betrays and kills her. In becoming Magneto and killing thousands of humans, his former friends the X-Men become his enemy.
When James Howlett/Logan, AKA Wolverine, decapitates him, his energies ultimately end up in American mutant Michael Pointer, AKA Omega, but when combined with him they become known as the Collective.
A Twisted Tale
Kuan-Yin began teaching the special remedial class of marginalized, sensitive, and traumatized students at the Institute, trying to teach them peace and self-acceptance. Kuan-Yin helped protect his wards from an attack by Sublime’s U-Man army ,and assisted in squelching a drug-fueled student riot on the grounds of the Institute, but was unable to save the life of one of his students, Dummy, from apparently being killed during the chaos.
Magneto’s daughter, the then-insane reality-manipulating Scarlet Witch, for unrevealed reasons, transformed Kuan-Yin into a duplicate of the X-Men’s nemesis Magneto. “Magneto” then began secretly building a mutant brotherhood, unsuccessfully attempting to recruit immensely powerful mutant Carter Ghazikhanian, son of the Institute’s human nurse Annie, but successfully recruiting the easily-influenced special class students and the telepathic student Esme Cuckoo for his Brotherhood of Mutants’ ranks. He helped foster Esme’s resentment of Emma Frost, helping her plan an assassination attempt on Frost’s life. Failing that, Esme left the Institute, and at some point introduced “Magneto” to the highly addictive mutant power-enhancing drug Kick, getting him addicted.
Once his Brotherhood was gathered, and now apparently able to manipulate magnetic forces like Magneto, Kuan-Yin scattered the X-Men through complex manipulations, destroyed the Institute, and reversed the healing of Xavier’s spine, leaving him paralyzed once more. Then with the help of his Brotherhood, the Kick-addicted “Magneto” launched a devastating attack on New York City, killing over 5,000 people and causing billions in damage to the five boroughs. This event was his first salvo in a war that would eliminate humans and raise mutants to royalty by reversing Earth’s poles.
He also distributed Kick to any mutant that came to follow him, creating an army of drug-crazed super-powered followers and began exterminating humans. However, when some of his former special class students balked at his Nazi-like approaches, he unintentionally killed Basilisk while trying to teach him discipline. He also attempted to kill Barnell Bohusk, AKA Beak, when he openly defied him.
Believing Kuan-Yin to be Magneto, human resistance and the X-Men opposed him. During the resistance, the lovelorn Esme, now feeling scorned by “Magneto,” attacked him, and was killed when he detached her earrings and drove them into her brain. During the resulting battle with the reunited X-Men and Charlie Cluster-7, AKA Fantomex, “Magneto” learned that the mutants under his command were not satisfied with his leadership and manifesto. He then attacked the X-Man Jean Grey, AKA Phoenix, with a massive electromagnetic pulse, provoking a stroke that apparently killed her. He was then physically slain by Wolverine, who used his claws to sever Kuan-Yin’s head.
However, his energies and consciousness continued outside of his dead body, which Xavier took to the island of Genosha for burial. However, Xavier knew Kuan-Yin was not truly Magneto, as Xavier was privately in communication with Magneto following the New York attack.
Later, the truth about Xorn’s transformation into Magneto came to light. It was Sublime who caused Xorn to go mad and pose as the Master of Magnetism.
After “M-Day” depowered the majority of mutants, Xorn’s consciousness inhabited a host body, American mutant Omega. Calling himself the Collective, he murdered the Super Hero team Alpha Flight save Walter Langkowski, AKA Sasquatch, and attacked the Avengers. He traveled back to Genosha and confronted the real Magneto. Though disrupted by the New Avengers, his plans to merge himself with Magneto failed and Robert Reynolds, AKA Sentry, threw his energies into the sun. For his misdeeds, Xorn’s soul remained in Hell, and during this time Satan forced him to fight Wolverine’s soul.
When Professor X, Magneto, and Moira MacTaggert started the mutant nation-state of Krakoa and had their resurrectionist group, The Five, bring back fallen mutants, Xorn, and his twin brother who had previously died, returned.
