Holocaust (comics) - Fictional Character Biography

Fictional Character Biography

Holocaust, originally known as Nemesis, is the purported son of Apocalypse, and also served as one of his Four Horsemen in the Age of Apocalypse timeline. His first assignment, from his alleged father, was to spy on the X-Men and attack them when the chance arose. Nemesis waited in a nearby mountain range until most of the mutant team had left. He then attacked the base, which was only guarded by the Scarlet Witch and a small group of young mutants. Nemesis killed most of the students early in the fight, fought the Scarlet Witch and killed her.

During Apocalypse's blitzkrieg launched against Europe and Asia, Nemesis joined Apocalypse in Japan. The Horseman slaughtered thousands of humans in Apocalypse's name and captured Sunfire, but before they could kill him, Sunfire unleashed a nuclear level plasma blast. Nemesis absorbed the blast, saving himself and Apocalypse.

When Apocalypse returned home to recuperate, Nemesis, now charged with Sunfire's energies, was left to take care of Japan. A small squad of X-Men attacked him. Using Sunfire's energy, Nemesis was about to murder Quicksilver when Magneto, still enraged by the death of the students and his own daughter at the hands of Nemesis, used his powers to strip away most of Nemesis' flesh. The X-Men then retreated, many of them injured, and left Nemesis for dead.

The burnt corpse of Nemesis was however still alive and he was eventually recovered by Apocalypse. Nemesis awoke in the labs of the Dark Beast and his spiritual essence was fitted with a near indestructible crystalline exo-armor that would not only channel his energy but also contain him and keep him from dissipating. This was the birth of Holocaust and he would eventually become a Horseman again.

When culling the state of California, Holocaust was annoyed to find that his hound Sabretooth was finally fed up with murdering innocent women and children and instead began hiding some children from the cullings. He announced Sabretooth’s betrayal to his Infinites and ordered them to take him away to prison. The Infinites wondered aloud why Holocaust would let Sabretooth live. None of them could figure it out, but Sabretooth knew. Holocaust knew Sabretooth was not afraid to die. He also knew that Sabretooth’s only fear is that of the uncontrollable beast inside him. Instead of letting him die, he wanted Sabretooth to become the feral monster he had the potential to be.

Later, hoping to get his revenge against Magneto for forcing him to live out the rest of his years in a specially made suit of armor, Holocaust sent his hound Wolverine to eliminate the one closest to Magneto. However, Wolverine would fail in his mission.

In recent times, Holocaust would be a mainstay of Apocalypse's Horsemen, he would clash with Blastaar and his Baluurians, invaders from the Negative Zone who sought to take over the Earth, Holocaust would manage to fight them into fleeing. With the signing of the Kelly Pact, Apocalypse was to cease his ghastly experiments and genetic cullings, however Apocalypse would have no desire to do so. Later when his fellow Horseman Sinister defected, Apocalypse and Holocaust failed their attempt to search for him.

Holocaust would later be dispatched to Chicago to initiate a culling of the humans that were living there. Learning about this, the X-Men would send a squad to stop him. Sabretooth, now an X-Man would seek to defeat Holocaust on his own and have his teammate Blink teleport him and Wild Child closer to the site of the culling. In a one-on-one battle, Sabretooth would smash Holocaust's armor, however he would fail to stop him, but not before his comrade Wild Child could escape to tell the other X-Men where Holocaust was located. Holocaust would savagely maim Sabretooth, and leave him for dead before resuming his operations. Coming across Sabretooth's seemingly dead body, Blink would go after Holocaust alone and the overconfident Horseman was taken by surprise and nearly killed by the young X-Man who hold her own until the other X-Men arrived to help her out. Rogue nearly defeated Holocaust but he teleported himself to Apocalypse’s stronghold just in time, but not before telling Rogue that Apocalypse had captured her husband Magneto.

During the final battle in the Age of Apocalypse, Holocaust attempted to slay Magneto but would be stopped when Nate Grey intervened. Holocaust battled Nate Grey which ended with Holocaust being stabbed with a shard of the M'Kraan Crystal. This caused an unexpected result as both vanish without a trace.