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With the Infinity Stones scattered around the Marvel Universe, the Avengers just saw some vile X-Men villains experience their awesome power.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Avengers Annual #1, available now from Marvel.
The X-Men and Marvel’s other mutants have never been the most popular residents of the Marvel Universe. However, they’ve never been as collectively powerful as they’ve been since most of them came together on the mutant nation Krakoa, either. While Krakoa’s existence has ignited a new wave of anti-mutant sentiment on a global scale, some of the smaller groups that used to prey on mutants have turned their attention to other non-humans in recent months.
And in Jed McKay, Travel Foreman, Jim Campbell and Cory Petit’s Avengers Annual #1, several members of the villainous Sapien League target a young synthetic person who just became the host of the Soul Stone.
After most of the world’s mutants were depowered during House of M, the Sapien League emerged with aims to wipe out the rest of the world’s mutants in Chris Claremont, Randy Green and Aaron Lopresti’s Decimation: House of M – The Day After #1 in 2006. With a stated focus on recruiting members from less urban areas, the mutant hate group was founded by the Leper Queen, a woman whose young mutant child scarred her and burned their house down with her powers. Distinguished by their featureless white masks, the League killed several mutants, attacked the X-Men and were used as part of Bastion’s anti-mutant campaign in 2010’s “Second Coming” crossover.
Although the Sapien League was initially a dedicated anti-mutant organization, it’s since expanded its purview to include “mutants, aliens [and] robots,” as one member claims here. Given the recent increase in mutantkind’s political power, that’s not surprising. Another mutant hate group, the Friends of Humanity, have shifted the focus of their attacks to alien symbiotes in the wake of the symbiote invasion in the King in Black crossover.
Although they’ve targeted the X-Men plenty of times, groups like the Sapien League and the Friends of Humanity have always thrived on targeting relatively weak, untrained individual mutants that they could overpower. Now, new mutants have started finding themselves under Krakoa’s protection almost as soon as their powers emerge. Hopelessly outclassed by Krakoa and its defenders, these anti-mutant groups have shifted focus to other vulnerable populations.
But as these Sapien League members learned first-hand when they attacked Ward, some of the new targets of their venom aren’t as defenseless as they might seem. Despite a history of consistent losses, the hateful villains of the Sapien League are still attacking anything they don’t understand, regardless of the infinite power lying within it.
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