On January 23 at 8:00 pm Eastern Standard Time, Marvel's mighty mutants experience an animated rebirth when "Wolverine and the X-Men" slashes its way onto the Nicktoons Network! Until then, stay glued to Marvel.com every day for sneak peeks, clips, exclusive art and looks back at the history of the X-Men in animation!
By Marc Strom
From a land where no mutant could walk free to a safe haven for those gifted individuals, Genosha's tumultuous history has made it a center for some of the X-Men's greatest adventures and worst tragedies.
Now, with "
Wolverine and the X-Men" about to introduce a whole new generation of fans
to the island nation, Marvel.com gives you the skinny on everything you need to know about one of the most fascinating locales in the Marvel Universe!
Of Mutates and Magistrates
The island nation of Genosha, built on the back of mutant slave labor, first came to the X-Men's attention when a friend of theirs, Jenny Ransome, was kidnapped by the Press Gang, a group of Genoshans tasked with apprehending any mutants who may have escaped their captivity.
The X-Men quickly discovered what the nation had kept secret from the outside world for decades: Genoshan law forced all of its citizens to undergo genetic testing to determine if they had the mutant X-gene. The government took any citizen who tested positive and transformed them into mindless drones known as mutates, putting them in service to the state.
The team narrowly succeeded in rescuing Jenny Ransome, though Genosha's Magistrates, a police organization responsible for keeping mutates in line,
made a number of attempts at bringing her back to the island.
Claiming that the X-Men had stolen a "piece of bio-technology"—i.e., Jenny—from them, Genosha launched an attack on the team, as well as the
New Mutants and
X-Factor. Spearheaded by X-Factor's one-time spokesman, Cameron Hodge, the Genoshan forces succeed in imprisoning a number of New Mutants and
Storm.
After coming together for a major counterstrike, the three teams defeat Hodge while Chief Magistrate Andersen led a coup and took control of the island's government. However, Hodge's attack resulted in the death of New Mutant
Warlock and the transformation of
Wolfsbane into a mutate.
Though mutant rights improved in the ensuing period, a Legacy Virus epidemic soon struck the nation's mutate population, while at the same time Genosha's economy began crashing due to the loss of the mutates' free labor.
Magneto Rex
Genosha remained in turmoil until the United Nations ceded control of the island to Magneto as appeasement to prevent him from shifting the Earth's magnetic poles. The Master of Magnetism quickly established himself as Genosha's new ruler and brought a measure of peace to the island in his attempt to transform it into a sanctuary for mutants.
However, with his powers failing him, Magneto had trouble maintaining his rule, using first
Fabian Cortez and then
Polaris to give him power boosts. While fighting insurrectionary forces in Carrion Cove, the lone Genoshan town not yet under his rule, Magneto discovered a machine that allowed him to regain his full power.
Shortly thereafter,
Colossus cured the Legacy Virus literally overnight, leaving Magneto with an island full of healthy mutants with which to form an army. Taking advantage of this opportunity, he began preparations for a full scale war on the human race and kidnapped his longtime rival, Charles Xavier.
Jean Grey formed a rag-tag group of X-Men to infiltrate the island and retrieve
Professor X. The team managed to distract Magneto long enough for Wolverine to sneak up on him and stab him, leaving Genosha's ruler wheelchair bound and ending his brief war on humanity.
Genosha Burning
Almost immediately following Magneto's defeat,
Cassandra Nova dispatched a new breed of
Sentinels to tear apart the island, massacring its entire population of more than 16 million mutants.
The island remained mostly uninhabited for some time, with only a few small groups of mutants, including
Toad and
Unus, seeking refuge in the devastated capitol.
Magneto and Xavier came together on the island to try and once again forge a refuge for mutants, but the damage done proved too much. Not long after, however, the entire issue became moot as Magneto's daughter, the
Scarlet Witch, wiped the X-gene from existence, leaving slightly less than 200 mutants with their powers intact.
In a misguided attempt to restore the powers of any depowered mutants left on the island,
Quicksilver used the
Inhumans' Terrigen Mists with deadly results. While the former mutants regained some form of their powers, they proved to be unwieldy, leading the O.N.E. agency to evacuate the island and take its inhabitants away for treatment.
Since then, a depowered Magneto hid himself on the island until being discovered by the
Avengers and taken prisoner by
S.H.I.E.L.D. Genosha currently remains unpopulated, its major cities in ruins, a silent graveyard housing 16 million dead mutants.
Don't forget to tune in to Nicktoons Network at 8:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on January 23 for the debut of the "Wolverine and the X-Men" animated series! Also, get up to speed on Wolverine's Greatest Battles on Marvel Digital Comics Unlimited!
Check out the official Marvel Shop for everything X-Men!
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