Bastion (Marvel)
Bastion is a male robotic supervillain who features in Marvel Comics.
Contents |
Biography
Origin
Bastion was the designation of a robotic being whose origins were tied to the Sentinels of an alternate future timeline that became Earth-811 in the Multiverse. In an effort to eliminate Mutants, a new breed of Sentinel was manufactured with these being the Nimrod Hunter Series where the prototype unit traversed the timestream into the modern day. The unit battled the X-Men on numerous occasions where during this time he encountered a Master Mold housing the brain engrams of the comatose Steven Lang. This saw the Master Mold assimilate Nimrod in his guise as Nicholas Hunter where the amalgam battled the X-Men only to be wrenched through the pan-dimensional gateway of the Siege Perilous. The inorganic systems of the two machine intelligences re-integrated into a new form that was stripped of their artificial nature and emerged in an organic body after being charged by the higher powers beyond the Siege Perilous. In a human body, the man attempted to live a normal life but came to see all the reports regarding conflict with Mutants and tensions rising globally. This saw him abandon the family he came to form and instead looked to consolidate efforts that targeted Mutants where he took the name Bastion. (Machine Man/Bastion Annual v1 '98)
Operation: Zero Tolerance
Bastion's prime directives were soon reawakened, and he began assembling the international anti-mutant strike force Operation: Zero Tolerance (OZT). They attempted to reconfigure the Sentinel force assembled by Project: Wideawake, but Bastion deemed most of them outdated. Instead, he had a number of humans secretly outfitted with nano-technology to be Prime Sentinels. (X-Men v2 #65)
Bastion's head was later retrieved by U.S. government agents in order to access the information he had stolen from Xavier's files. The information was retrieved by Shadowcat, Wolverine, and Gambit, but not before Bastion attempted to sow mistrust among them by confronting them with misleading holographic scenarios. Although they got the files, the X-Men were showing signs of doubt within themselves and their team. (X-Men: Declassified v1 #1)
Messiah War
The Purifiers infiltrated a S.H.I.E.L.D. facility with the help of some double agents and stole back Bastion's head and reattached it to a Nimrod's body. Once online, he alerted the Purifiers to the presence of the mutant team X-Force in their church. (X-Force v3 #1) After their escape, Bastion realized there was no terrestrial force that could destroy the X-Men and finally eliminate the remaining mutant population, so he created one by capturing some of the prominent enemies of the X-Men and resurrecting others that had been dead. He took control of them by implanting the techno-organic virus of Magus on them. (X-Force v3 #3) After that, he faced a coup d'état from Matthew Risman and his Choir, while also contending with the X-Force team which had followed Archangel, who sensed his stolen wings within the Choir. Bastion fought Wolverine, but calculated that the risk was too high to fight him directly and escaped with the resurrected X-Men enemies. (X-Force v3 #6)
As part of Bastion and the Human Council's plan to kill the Messiah Child and destroy mutantkind, when Cable and Hope returned to the current time, Bastion ordered William Stryker's Purifiers, the Leper Queen's Sapien League, and Cameron Hodge's Right Smiley Faces to kill them. As a secondary plan, he ordered the death of all teleporters and transportation on the X-Men's Utopia base. A large dome appeared over the Bay Area to cut off the X-Men from escape or help. Once the dome was activated, Bastion opened a dimensional portal from his home reality to allow in more Nimrod-Series Sentinels. (X-Men: Legacy v1 #236)
Return
Despite his apparent destruction, Bastion had actually survived his battle with Hope as he activated his temporal drives that shunted him a few years into the future. The encounter had led to catastrophic damage that compromised and corrupted his systems with him observing the events as Mutants were being poisoned by the Terrigen Mists. As a result of the corruption, an error occurred where Bastion concluded that Mutants were now an endangered species that needed to be saved. As a result, he reprogrammed a group of Sentinels that were tasked with aiding and saving Mutants. A group of these saved a Mutant girl and led to an encounter with the time-displaced Original Five X-Men who were brought before Bastion. They learnt that Bastion's corrupted programming meant that he sought to save Mutants only to the point where they became a viable large population that flourished whereupon he would reinitiate his programming of destroying them. The X-Men battled Bastion and his Sentinels who refused to engage in combat with them instead transrelocating away from the scene. (X-Men: Blue v1 #3) He joined in a cabal alongside Emma Frost, Havok and Miss Sinister where the four sought to use Mothervine to increase the number of Mutants on the planet. Bastion and Havok targeted a Prime Sentinel base in Colombia where they destroyed the cyborgs as they along with Core Command were at a cross purpose to his own goals. (X-Men: Blue v1 #23)
Overview
Personality and attributes
Powers and abilities
Bastion's technorganic frame has vast metamorphic capabilities, so much so that he could merge himself into any mechanical, cybernetic or techno mechanical substance he pushed his consciousness through. Changing anything or anyone else around him along with his form at will. Through this he is able to assume his normalized and Nimrod forms at will. (Warlock v5 #6)
He had the natural ability to create cyborg mutant killers called Prime Sentinels using a nanite based conversion process. (X-Men Unlimited v1 #27)
After the introduction of the T.O. Virus into his system, now bastion's sentinel tech Robotization enables the creation of Nimrod like Omega Prime Sentinels in those whom he's resurrected within his Council. (X-Force v3 #28)
Notes
- Bastion was created by Mark Waid and Andy Kubert where he made his first appearance in X-Men v2 #52 (May, 1996).
Alternate Versions
In other media
Video games
- In X-Men: Next Dimension, Bastion appeared as the primary antagonist where he was voiced by actor Don Morrow. He was an android that was the head of Operation: Zero Tolerance that had failed with his body being destroyed but his robotic head still functional that was kept contained in a secure facility. The Prime Sentinels freed him and restored his body in order to continue his directive to eliminate Mutants. He spearheaded an alliance with the Brotherhood of Mutants to get them to attack the X-Mansion so he could kidnap Forge in the confusion. Bastion then tortured him so that he could draw upgrades from his mind for the Prime Sentinels along with an anti-Mutant power Neutralizer. He was confronted by the X-Men where he used a trans-mat system to teleport to Asteroid M. The game had two endings with the good ending leading to him being defeated whilst the bad one saw him killing Cyclops causing Jean Grey to become Dark Phoenix and destroy him.
- In Marvel: Avengers Alliance, Bastion appeared as a character in the Facebook video game with his own Dossier profile entry.
- In X-Men: Destiny, Bastion was the main antagonist where he was voiced by actor Keith Szarabajka. It was mentioned that in the past he had attacked the X-Men with this leading to the death of Professor X and Bastion seemingly killing Bastion in response. However, he uploaded his mind into the orbiting Telos satellite and used it to take control of Luis Reyes who headed the Mutant Response Division. From the shadows, Bastion manipulated anti-Mutant sentiment to bring about conflict with Mutants. As a result, he secretly made use of the Mutant Response Division, Purifiers and the U-Men.
- In X-Men: Battle of the Atom, Bastion appeared as a playable card in the iOS video card game.
Appearances
- X-Men v2: (1996)
- Uncanny X-Men v1:
- Machine Man/Bastion Annual v1 '98 v1: (1998)
- X-Men: Blue v1:
External Links
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