Phalanx (comics) - Earth Phalanx

Earth Phalanx

The Phalanx on Earth were initially formed by a group of human mutant-haters who voluntarily infected themselves with the transmode virus, taken from the ashes of Warlock, a renegade Technarch who had joined the New Mutants, in an attempt to turn themselves into "living Sentinels". Steven Lang, the man who had used the Sentinels against the X-Men many years before, was recruited from a mental hospital to become an "interface" - not actually infected with the transmode virus himself, he was intended as a buffer to keep the Phalanx "on track" for their intended purpose. He was assisted by Cameron Hodge, a traitorous former friend of Archangel who had obtained immortality from the demon N'astirh, who did infect himself, and who had been the one to kill Warlock some years before in a prior attempt to infect himself with the virus.

Initially, the aim of these Phalanx was to simply assimilate mutants into their collective. When this proved impossible, as mutants possessed a resistance to the virus, they organized an attack on the X-Mansion, kidnapping most of the X-Men and replacing them with Phalanx members in disguise, in an attempt to use the X-Men's knowledge base on the mutant genome to solve the problem. Banshee, absent during the kidnapping, returned and suspected something. Discovering the ruse when the impostors failed to realize Professor X was currently unable to walk, Banshee recruited Sabretooth from a cell in the complex. He then aided Banshee in saving Emma Frost and Jubilee from the beings. Banshee, after discovering that the Phalanx had accessed the location of several young mutants for use in further study, then destroyed the knowledge base in an attempt to prevent the Phalanx accessing any further information.

While Banshee and his group scrambled to save the young mutants, he sent messages to Wolverine and Cable on the location of the X-Men, and who in turn recruited Cyclops and Jean Grey to aid them in recovering the X-Men; and to Professor X, Excalibur, X-Factor and X-Force on the location of a third, unknown, group of Phalanx.

Banshee's group were followed closely by the Phalanx, who impersonated several beings, notably police officers. The group was joined by the mutant Synch, who could copy powers which proved helpful as Banshee's screams easily subdued many Phalanx entities. The rest of the targeted mutants were being held in an old, decommissioned battleship. One of the Phalanx disguised itself as an imprisoned mutant, a farm-boy type. This disguise was suspected by some of the prisoners. Eventually, the group saved all the targeted new mutants but one - Blink, who sacrificed herself to save the rest. One of the original Phalanx entities was destroyed in this attempt, parts of his physical body detached from the rest. He was unable to survive the trauma.

The rest of these young mutants went on to become the core of Generation X, tutored by Banshee and Frost. Meanwhile, the other mutant teams found a group of Phalanx attempting to follow their genetic instruction to construct a Babel Spire to contact the Technarchy. Douglock, a resurrected Warlock with Cypher's memories, led a small team, Forge, Wolfsbane and Cannonball in destroying the spire. Cyclops' group assaulted the core Phalanx base on Mount Everest, where the X-Men were held. They were covertly assisted by Lang, who realised the Phalanx had grown beyond his ability to manipulate and were threatening the general human population. The smaller Phalanx nests around the world were destroyed as a result of this confrontation.

Recently the Phalanx returned for a special one-shot issue of UNCANNY X-MEN. Its revealed that before the Phalanx Covenant happened, Mister Sinister managed to capture one member of this techno-organic race and experimented upon it in order to clone himself into the single-minded collective. As Sinister experimented on it, the Phalanx member lost the mental link to his brethren. When Sinister eventually succeeded, he destroyed the lab and everything inside, including most of this being. However, a tiny scrap of him remained and combined with earthworms, which didn’t have minds, so they simply added to his physical makeup, growing and growing slowly. Upon surfacing, he attempted to link up with the Phalanx, but was too weak.

Left alone, it eventually discovered that when it attempted to assimilate humans to form a new collective mind, their minds are wiped out and the humans essentially die, adding just their physical mass. Desperate to locate the rest of the Phalanx, to once more feel the sense of unity and togetherness they shared, it absorbed more and more people, hopping to gain the strength needed to signal them.

However its energy signature is detected by Agent Abigail Brand of S.W.O.R.D., who alerts the X-Men, who are horrified to find this Phalanx member had absorbed an entire town. As the X-Men face it they can't prevent this Phalanx from turning into a Babel Spire so it could contact the Technarchy, yet, things do not go as it hoped, and the X-Men eventually destroyed the techno-organic virus as Storm wonders, “It said we didn’t understand. Could we have understood one another? Is there anything we shared?” Cyclops’ response, “I doubt we’ll ever know.”