Fictional Character Biography
Bolivar Trask was an anthropologist who saw the rise of mutants as a threat to humanity. Bolivar was also the father of Larry Trask, who ironically is revealed to be a mutant precognitive. Bolivar had realized this, and gave his son a medallion which suppresses his power. Bolivar's other child, Tanya, was also a mutant and her ability to travel through time causes her to vanish. Tanya would be rescued by Rachel Summers in a far future and become a part of the Askani under the alias Madame Sanctity. Tanya's travels through time would result in property damage to Trask's land. This mysterious situation would only further cement his attitudes.
Bolivar decides that humanity has to fight back against the mutants and develops robotic guardians for humanity, known as the Sentinels. His son Larry was protected from the Sentinels' ability to detect mutants due to the medallion Bolivar had given him. Bolivar publishes articles on the threat of mutants. One of these articles showed an illustration of mutant overlords keeping humans as slaves. This illustration would become a symbol for human/mutant relations and several years later Quentin Quire and his Omega Gang would base their appearance on this picture.
Professor Charles Xavier invites Trask for a public debate on human/mutant relations. Xavier's arguments that mutants were just like humans and not evil did not convince Trask and he reveals the Sentinels. But Trask and his scientists had apparently created a too adaptive, open-ended tactical/strategic programming, and as a result the Sentinels turn against him, claiming that they were superior to humans. The Sentinels left with Trask and brought him to his first creation, the Master Mold, who orders him to construct more Sentinels.
To stop the Sentinels, Xavier summons his X-Men. The X-Men fight the Sentinels, but Beast is captured. To reveal the X-Men's secrets, the Sentinels tell Trask to use a device to read Beast's mind. Trask discovers that the X-Men were mutants protecting humanity and realizes that he had been wrong. He helps the X-Men defeat the Sentinels by sacrificing himself to destroy the Sentinel's base.
Recently in X-Force, Bastion (who has been reactivated by the Purifiers) has apparently resurrected Bolivar Trask through use of a Technarch to be part of a team of the world's foremost mutant killers. He was inexplicably reported to have the highest record of mutant kills: 16,521,618. Consistent with the remorse he had displayed at the time of his death, he killed himself after escaping Bastion's mental control.
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